The deep investment that many
Americans have in the US exceptionalism,
in
the belief that their nation has a providential mission to spread
liberty
around
the world, prevents them from seeing US history clearly.
Claudio
Saunt
Neil
Degrasse Tyson (NDT): If you’ve seen the sun in the middle of
the day, it’s white. That’s the proper color of the sun
in the middle of the day.”
Chuck
Nice (CN): Let’s not get racist. Don’t have to be the
proper color.
(NDT):
It’s just…
(CN):...the
color.
(NDT):
Damn, Chuck, why is everything about race with you?
(CN):
‘Cause I live in America!
I
was struggling to manage trips to the hospital for blood tests and
PET Scan with the medical transportation services. I have Multiple
Myeloma. Like so many Americans and fellow humans around the world,
I’d like to find the dollar store or the grocery store with
toilet paper and then toilet paper that isn’t pure bark or
costing a third of my income. Paper towel is up to two dollars and,
if I’m not careful, one roll might last just two days. We live
in the days of Coronavirus and everything from the store has to be
wiped down and the counters cleaned at least twice a day.
For
two weeks, I tried to order groceries online only to realized that
the whole town of Kenosha is ordering food online. Instacart charged
nine dollars for $38.00 worth of food—well, mainly two packages
of boneless chicken. Five bags of blueberry and a tub of butter.
But
finally, just last week, a transport service has come through for us
senior with compromised health issues. Finally.
We
have a stay-at-home order and we clean our hands and we clean our
kitchen counter tops and we clean our bathroom surfaces and our
clothes—every outfit and even the jacket is thrown into the
washing machine after we return home. We are careful to discard the
latex gloves and clean the masks with soap and water or hydrogen
peroxide, if you have the later. Like the hand sanitizes, you are
limited to two bottles of hydrogen peroxide. Wash and clean for your
life!
Washing,
cleaning. Don’t tough the face! I think my cat thinks I’m
crazy.
Keep
the physical distance! Keep the physical distance! It’s a dance
of sorts, as we pay close attention to the closest person to our left
and to our right. Who’s in front of me and should I slow down
to keep the six feet between us?
There’s
a young, twenty-something somewhat close and without a mask. How we
stare at the unmasked these days!
Life
is so different. Surreal. Because there’s a pandemic happening
in the world! Really that’s the reality we humans are in at
this time.
In
the building where I live, a new senior complex, there’s no
gathering in the community room. No gathering in the halls, please.
Or by the mailbox. No exercising in the exercise room. Please keep
the traffic down, and if you have to have family, friends, if you
think it’s necessary and safe—there are compromised
neighbors here—then these guests must use the stairway, not the
elevator. Please. Let’s think about the Other.
We
are still a community. Still in this together.
But
in the last week, I have felt cut off from the world in which the
pandemic is a struggle for those who come down with it and those
trying to recover and those family members who’ve lost loved
ones. We know what’s happening in the hospitals with doctors
and nurses begging for PEP and witnessing the extinguishing of life
on the ventilators.
Cut
off—not the same as isolated. As a writer, I’m used to
spending a good part of my day alone. I can fill a day easily with
reading and writing, keeping up with the news, the art world and
science. That’s not isolation, it’s solitude which I
treasure.
But
now, all of a sudden last week, I became cut off. Cut off from the
world where my fellow human beings are wearing masks, latex gloves,
washing and cleaning everything obsessively. I have been pulled into
a world consisting of one individual, a woman, possibly in her
fifties. But youngish. White.
After
over a month of stay-at-home, cabin fever has kicked in, and there’s
a ready-made object to toy with—a subject obsessed with “race.”
In a “community” where people assume that an educated
black (and woman to boot, with no children!) has had all the help
from government programs, Affirmative Action programs, give-away
programs, to talk about “race” is equivalent to talking
about the greatness of “commies.”
The
target of resentment, I became an “enemy” in my home.
I
went to bed one night, experiencing sharp chest pains. Earlier in the
month, I had been told by my oncologist that the PET Scan taken a few
days before revealed an aneurysm in the middle of my chest. But I
suppose I was too disoriented that night as I shifted my attention
from my own health to what I was meant to perceive—an
interruption of that “intellectual” lifestyle, too
bizarre to be normal, let alone, acceptable in our “working
class” community.
I
went to bed and tried to sleep. A sound system had been set to bass
and low enough for me to feel it underneath my bed. It could only be
emanating from below, I thought. I was told that the man was mentally
challenged. Little did I know, my next door neighbor may very well
have been responsible for the noise; she had been the noisiest person
on the floor for months. At any rate, the man below is more
physically challenged, and incapable to the disturbance I experienced
for a week or so.
After
a night of chest pains, I woke up and prepared to take my first
Car-A-Van ride to pick up groceries.
I
remember thinking of the conversation I had with my sister about
being careful not to use too much curry or thyme in my food, and no
sooner had I remembered this conversation, I felt my chest an arms
feeling so heavy, as if someone was pressing down on my chest with
another was pulling my arms by the hands down to the floor.
None
of this matters in a building and in a town and in a country where
I’m looked at suspiciously. I can’t step out my apartment
door and ask for help.
Sometimes
I dream that Americans wake up one morning collectively decide with
wrangling to read. To learn something about themselves. About the
foundation of this country arising not of innocence and goodwill but,
instead of sheer greed and brutal violence. To dream that Americans
would one day wake up a collectively decide, yes, it’s time,
let’s do it, let’s read Howard Zinn’s A People’s
History of the United States. Or read An Indigenous Peoples’
History of the United States by Dunbar-Ortiz, or Slave Nation or Race
for Profit. Just read and read. Learn.
How
simple it would be to know and not turn away in anger, not attack
with club, sword, bayonets, semi-automatics, drones? How simple would
it be to not turn people into scapegoats to marginalize, to punish,
to kill? How simple would it be to not commit to the same response to
hearing the truth by “addressing” racism with a
determination to see to the removal of black Americans asking for
rights to be protected and respected?
Corporate
slogans are best when served with a straight face, mouthing the
words, “we’ll address the problem directly.” Which
means, we’ll remove the one who dared pose the question, dared
disturb the “peace.”
That’s
more in line with how living in a “community” operates in
America!
The
word racism, I imagine, must buzz annoyingly in the ears of those who
don’t want to hear the word. The ship isn’t being steered
anywhere close to calmer waters.
There’s
a feeling of being cut off that has nothing to do with isolation. Or
the COVID-19 pandemic.
A
few months ago, I reached out to management on behalf of a white
woman below another white woman who, for whatever reason, found it
necessary to stomp when she walked and drop as many heavy items as
she could over this older woman’s head. She told us, she walks
dogs, or, at least she did before the stay-at-home order.
She
told me that she was about “peace,” and, on three
occasions, she took it upon herself to offer me food. On the first
occasion, it was a brick of something frozen that might have been
rice and beans. The second time, it was a bag of greens left on the
mat in front of my apartment door—all night. Neighbors said
they noticed it the evening before. The last time, this year, I
opened my door to discover a head of cabbage with brownish leaves. On
all three occasions, I threw the food away.
I
suppose these food items were “peace offers” to hint that
I should keep my silence about the ratchet she finds necessary to
keep up on my wall and over this older woman’s apartment.
I
spoke out about the pounding, finally—pounding often so sudden
and loud that it was enough to cause my heart to “jump”
every time and my cat to run off the next room.
So
for little over a week, I was to think the behavior of the man below
changed drastically.
The
neighbor below is intellectually oriented. His apartment has books.
He has a tall bookcase filled with books. He reads. He has art on the
wall. He sat in an armchair and, in front of him, a laptop on a
stand.
He
doesn’t socialize, he said, because neighbors seemed to
business trying to figure out what he’s about. He’s has
nurses and other assistance coming to the apartment. Otherwise, it
was clear, he’s a quiet man.
He
hears the pounding, even what sounds like a “bowling”
ball, he thought, dropped above him—from my apartment! And yes,
he has felt the heat, as I have—emanating I now know, not from
him, but from this woman next door.
Well
are you sure? How do you know? Maybe that’s not what’s
happening to you at all!
I
remember stopping by the office after a resident, possibly a friend
of the woman next door, coughed on me. It was a few days after the
lockdown, and I wasn’t wearing a mask yet. I just stepped out
of my apartment to toss my trash out. The resident, a white woman in
her fifties, could have taken the elevator, but she saw me, and
decided to come up the stairs. I was walking down and saw her and
stopped. She approached my landing and coughed in my direction.
I
got rid of my garbage and stood by the office door.
“How
can I help you?” But is she looking at me? Not at all. Eyes on
the screen in front of her, the fingers continue to move along her
keyboard. How can I help you—just the right words delivered to
welcome me and make me feel intimidated.
I
told this 30- or maybe early 40-something what happened.
“Well,
just stay away from her.”
What?
I
left the office. Intellectually, I understand the resentment, but,
on a personal level, I know I’m helpless alone. And she knows
that.
Some
weeks before, the woman who coughed on me told me she noticed that
the manager didn’t respect. She doesn’t respect you!
And
people take note of how local managerial figures respond to the
presence of black people in a town such as Kenosha, Wisconsin.
We
are all women but I’m the one representing a difference that is
perceive collectively by them to be a threat to their existence.
In
America, pretending to be ignorant is a lifestyle. But for any
corporation to thrive in America it does so with the violence of
resentment that is present in the board rooms where the planning and
construction of the building is imagined. It travels to the site of
groundbreaking and ribbon cutting, to the selection of managerial
staff and opening day. Resentment and hate determines who will serve
as loyal staff and who will become a member of the “community.”
The corporate mindset controls what will and will not consist of a
community.
It
has nothing to do with love.
Collecting
rent and looking professional isn’t enough. Speaking within the
corporate narrative to communicate with fellow human beings only
reveals a personal focus on self-promotion with the goal of rising to
the top tier of the corporate ladder.
It’s
no coincidence that this behavior from the neighbor next door began
in the week in which America discovered that black Americans made up
a disproportionate number of Coronavirus victims. “It has been
observed that (largely white) Republicans have escalated their calls
to reopen the economy soon after it has become clear that COVID-19
hits the black communities and vulnerable people the most, and I do
think there are Nazi-ish undertones to some of the anti-lockdown
protests, which seem to operate on the premise that it doesn’t
matter how many members of the underclass die to save the privileges
of the rich,” writes journalist Nathan J. Robinson.
The
protests and the buzz is about the economy—not the people. No
one from the larger community is coming up with creative ways on Zoom
or whatever to stage a protest (virtual protest) expressing outrage
on behalf of black and Latinx dying from COVID-19. The economy is
embattled. The disadvantaging the economy is hurting America! Don’t
worry about the disadvantaged populations of Americans.
“Community”?
Until
the corporate mindset is eliminated from the way we relate to one
another to the world around us, until we create communities based on
compassion, cooperation, justice, love, calls to local managers,
refusing to understand race and respond to it’s presence among
residents, will fail to effect change. Letters to corporate
headquarters will become evidence of someone not “happy”
with life in the “community”--a community intended
foremost to provide a profit for owners.
Let’s
hope the younger generation has had enough of corporate communities.
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