The ‘us and them’ pandemic shows America is still impervious to black pain
https://www.newsbreakapp.com/n/0P7STNNu?s=a99&pd=05JApfN4
“Blacks are Dying from Corona Virus and Whites Don’t Care”
If this was a headline it would be overly simplistic due to the all or nothing reasoning. The statement is too black and white (pun intended lol) to be totally accurate but it’s pretty close. The article I linked you to did tell me something I hadn’t considered; people began protesting the stay at home orders when the stats about race and the virus became widespread news. Pkus, the protesters are white and we’ll off. I didn’t know that. I also didn’t know there’s a new code word for black, like “urban” or “at-risk” or “inner city.” Whites talk about “demographics.” As in, “you look at the ‘demographics’ and you feel there’s nothing to worry about,” say whites in the article. And they say it with a shrug and a smirk. I imagine white people thinking: “Oh well. Sucks to be them. Anyway…” I felt angry until I realized an essential truth: the reaction is not a white reaction but a human one.
It is my firm belief that if white people are indifferent to black pain, as the writer posits, it is not necessarily a reflwction of extraordinarily bad race relations. Nor is said indifference proof that whites are particularly hard hearted. We are witnessing an altogether ordinary, not extraordinary way humans deal with threats to life and limb. What do survivors of tragedies always, not sometimes, but always say? They never thought it could happen to them. Other people, sure. Something you read about in the paper…but me? Us? Here? No way. The only way we can get through lives of powerlessness is to cling to the illusion of imperviousness. I wrote a post about surviving the jungles of Vietnam. Vets that made it back knew they could’ve been killed but believed they never would get shot. What else can you do so you don’t do stark raving mad.
If You Believe the Bible You Accept That Delight Bc Tragedy Happens to Others is to be celebrated🎁
One way of looking at the celebration of Passover is that it is Schadenfreude. The Jews enslaved in Egypt celebrated when the Angel of Death passed over their homes, with the doorframes anointed with the blood of the lamb, and took the first born sons from Egyptian families. That’s codified schadenfreude, or delight in another’s misfortune. Maybe the emphasis of the celebration is not happiness that others are suffering but happiness that we are not. It’s splitting hairs. For thousands of years we have understood that it’s human nature to turn a blind eye to the problems of others, especially when we escaped a similar fate.
Any scrap of evidence is used to support the confirmation bias we all have as humans that horrible things we are powerless to prevent, Sony happen to us. This innate confirmation bias is why whites are relieved to write off corona virus as a black thing. That’s a normal human reaction. There’s always some guilt when you discover that, for example, the firetrucks were rushing to a house near yours but not yours. We feel guilty we aren’t noble enough to wish upon ourselves a fair portion of suffering. We simply are not noble. Was it Paul who wrote “in this flesh dwells no good thing”?
If corona virus were seen as a white thing, you’d be hardpressed to find many in the black community sympathetic to the White man’s pain. The difference would be we wouldn’t feel any guilt for not clamoring on behalf of whites bc whites have everything they need and don’t need our community concern.
Maybe I sound like I don’t think much of humanity. One thing I don’t appear to be in this post, is wrong. Do thesr words ring true to anyone else?
Hawaii Street Life-a Trusted Insider Tells All 