By George! #BlackLivesMatter deserves a more authentic response.
1.12 | June 7, 2020 | Faith, Hope and Love in the Time of Corona
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of these is love.
1 Cor 13:13
IMAGE: Lina Abojaradeh
Just as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic keeps raging ahead with no sign of abatement, there has been another social epidemic — racism — that has been simmering beneath; and has not too occasionally given fillip to this pandemic. What appears to be two distinct phenomena do in fact influence each other.
The recent killing of George Floyd in the United States that has reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement that campaigns against racism towards black people, questions our engagement with systemic inequality that drives such deep-seated prejudices towards people. Historian Evelynn Hammonds notes how notions of black bodies being different (and dangerous) as compared to the whites have been constructed across time, and notably during epidemics. While such notions have been extended to cultural differences between black and white peoples, they have been deeply ingrained within medical theory and practice and have in turn produced conditions of social inequalities that further stigmatise black people. George Floyd’s life was also shaped by these very conditions which ultimately had a bearing on his killing. As much as we might want to believe that an epidemic is a great equaliser, medical data reveals that those at the lower rung of the social order have suffered the worst fatalities during this pandemic. Understanding the social factors that produce the conditions for racism are an important first step in our struggles against such social inequalities.
The protests against the killing of George Floyd have by now received widespread, even global, solidarity. This is commendable as our solidarity for such causes needs to be globalised. However, such a solidarity could also reveal the politics of our engagement. For instance, why would a section of Indians find it easier to support the Black Lives Matter movement and yet be deaf to violence back at home? Or as the Dutch historian Karwan Fatah-Black remarks, “We find it easier to take to the streets to protest something overseas than Zwarte Piet.” Paroma Soni further argues: as much as this sounds hypocritical, could this be our sense of performative wokeness? But this need not be the case.
We only need to turn the mirror towards ourselves to realise that while the sceptre of racism does indeed have a global dimension, it is well embedded within our own local contexts. Right during this pandemic we have seen the stigmatisation of north-east Indians within India; the scapegoating of Romas within EU member states; racism-driven travel bans in the United States; the expulsion of Africans from China; racial slurs against Asians in Australia; the discrimination of Haitians in Chile; and more. What could be our response?
Mario Powell’s passionate plea for empathy and solidarity with the Black American community reveals how one’s solidarity first begins with one’s own engagement and experience of the suffering — rather than “the banal and vanilla statements put out by many.” It is only from our own lived experience with the marginalised that we can share in the experience of others. This form of lived experience has the potential of revealing the intersectionality of racism with other social inequalities. It informs a more authentic response on our part in our encounters with racism. The solidarity expressed by the Syrian painter Aziz Asmar as well as the Palestinian artist Lina Abojaradeh come from such an engagement. Any other response, without a desire for engagement, would amount to empty tokenism.
Black lives matter — so does an authentic response to it! And wouldn’t that begin from our own contexts?
Wishing you faith, hope and love,
Rinald D’Souza SJ
HISTORIA DOMUS
Readings
FAITH
‘How long, O Lord?’ Psalm 13 is the cry of black Americans
We have been crying out this question for centuries. But we cannot cry it alone anymore.
Mario Powell SJ | America | 3 June 2020
As a 38-year-old black Jesuit priest, this is a familiar smell for me. It stinks. Its smell and the reactions it provokes in black Americans is impossible to avoid. It is a strange and bitter fruit.
And let me be clear: This is Christianity. This sharing in the experience of others is what it is to be one body in Christ. I am not inventing this. Here are Pope Francis’ words: “Christian doctrine...is alive,” he insists. “[It] knows being unsettled, enlivened.” This means Christianity has flesh, breath, a face. In the pope’s words, Christianity “has a body that moves and grows, it has a soft flesh: It is called Jesus Christ.”
Psalm 13 is the cry of black Americans. We have been crying out this question for centuries. But we cannot cry it alone anymore. Until you grow close to our suffering, until it fills your eyes and ears, your minds and hearts, until you jump up on the cross with black Americans, there can be no Easter for America.
HOPE
How Racism Is Shaping the Coronavirus Pandemic
The historian Evelynn Hammonds talks about how false theories of “innate difference and deficit in black bodies” have shaped American responses to disease, from yellow fever to syphilis to COVID-19.
Isaac Chotiner | The New Yorker | 7 May 2020
[W]hen the news came out that African-Americans were disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, immediately some observers said it is because, you know, black people have these preëxisting conditions, like high rates of hypertension and high rates of diabetes and high rates of obesity. And there was at least one commentator who said, Oh, they just don’t take care of themselves. And that’s why they’re more vulnerable to the disease. So it’s something that black people either do or that’s in their bodies that makes them more susceptible to disease, rather than observers looking directly at the social conditions that, in fact, have produced higher rates of obesity and hypertension and other comorbidities that seem to have an impact on who’s more susceptible to the coronavirus. So, again, a narrative of black bodies being different, and deficits in black people’s behavior being responsible for them being more vulnerable to disease, harkens back to some of the themes of the earlier epidemics.
LOVE
NHS ‘heroes’ should not have to risk their lives to treat coronavirus patients
Jennifer Mathers and Veronica Kitchen | The Conversation | 20 April 2020
In the UK, the first ten doctors and three of the first six nurses to die from COVID-19 were from the black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) community. In thanking the medical professionals who treated him in hospital, Johnson gave special praise to two nurses – one from New Zealand, the other from Portugal.
This is a stark demonstration that the NHS relies heavily on the work of a multi-ethnic and global community of healthcare providers.
The NHS simply cannot survive without the contributions and expertise of a very diverse group of people, including some who have come to work in Britain from the EU or further afield.
How much does Britain really value its NHS heroes? Will their hero status protect them from discrimination, racism or even the threat of being deported in the future?
Securing adequate resources for hospitals and healthcare workers is an immediate priority. We should be able to express gratitude to our health workers for working long hours and providing excellent care without also asking them to risk their own lives.
Postscript
Postscript
Palestinian Artist responds to Black Lives Matter Movement
Lina Abojaradeh | Al Jazeera | 2 June 2020
For it is not so much knowledge that fills and satisfies the soul,
but the intimate understanding and relish of the truth.
The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola, #2
What is Faith, Hope and Love in the Time of Corona all about?
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