Plague Journal, Cruise Ship Or Dinghy
This morning the news feed conveyed word of rioting in Minneapolis. Police officers in the course of arresting a black man while he was pinned to the ground, forced a knee into his neck long enough to kill him I’ve seen rioting, burning and looting before in the aftermath of the killing of M. L. King jr. The collapse of order is a sign that the status quo is riven with injustice. The pain and revulsion over the-way-things-are is expressed in violence that risks the lives of the perpetrators.
For a white guy, that makes sense in the abstract. But how could I possibly “know” as a matter of my own experience?
Last night, I perused The Leo, a Louisville Kentucky publication. I’ve spent some time there, and like the town and the people. I was raised in the South after all. This column by Hannah Drake captured my attention. Here is an excerpt:
As a resident of Kentucky, I tuned in daily to Gov. Andy Beshear’s briefings, and each day he asked us to say along with him, “We will get through this. We will get through this together.” We even learned how to say this with sign language.
And for a minute, I believed that. America was going through something that many of us never had and never would experience again in our lifetime. The coronavirus was not a random event that was selective about who it impacted. It was a virus that would go wherever it wanted to go, not concerned with economic status, race, employment, marital status, sexuality, etc. The virus has one goal — to survive by any means necessary. This virus is promiscuous and will go where it wants and infect whomever it desires.
However, as the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, it became very apparent that we are not all in this together. Indeed, we were all facing the same virus, but we are not all having the same pandemic experience. It has become glaringly apparent that while we are all in the same storm, we are not all in the same boat. If America was out to sea and a storm set upon the ocean, many white people are on a cruise ship, and Black people are in dinghies.
Black people are fighting two pandemics — coronavirus and racism.
Black people are dealing with the reality that the coronavirus is disproportionately affecting our community. We understand that years of oppression, predatory policies, lack of access to healthcare and low-wage jobs despite education, all under girded by systemic racism, impact our health and well being. You would think that in itself would be enough for Black people to fight.
If you’d like to read the entire column by Drake CLICK HERE.
2 thoughts on “Plague Journal, Cruise Ship Or Dinghy”
Hey Jerry !
I didn’t know you are from the South, I was born in Louisville. Most of my kin are scattered along the old ‘Dixie Hwy’ (US 31) – from Louisville, through ‘E-Town’, and down to Bowling Green. And we are all buried in a small town almost thirty miles NW of there – Morgantown, in a cemetery on a bluff overlooking the Green River.
Those are my nearest relatives now. Mostly educators, except for cousin Brad, who retired from the army a ‘full bird’ Colonel at 49. My daddy was the black sheep of the family, settling up here after fighting WWII at Great Lakes Naval Station and meeting my mother in Chicago. Rest assured, I’ve done my best to follow in his footsteps.
Blessings
I am somewhat familiar with the area that you mention. My daughter attended Lindsey Wilson College in Columbia Kentucky. I’ve spent a few weekends in Louisville more recently. I like Kentucky a lot. Reminds me of my home state of North Carolina. I lived my adult life in the atmosphere of Chicago. Sometimes I have said that the South is a good place to be from. Yet, there are many aspects of Southern culture that will always be a part of me. Native born Southeners take great stock in family, and in the place where they are from. The land is important to us because traditionally the South is an agrarian society. I read many years ago that Atlanta is what the old Confederacy fought to prevent. A joke certainly, — but there is some truth to it.