Who We Are Now
I have spent most of the last decade socially isolated. Between a switch to an at home career and various mental and physical health problems I don’t get out much. Does this make me particularly prepared for the situation we find ourselves in? I don’t know. What is different for me is to watch the people I love struggle with both the isolation and of course the financial implications of being suddenly out of work. What hurts them hurts me.
The admonitions to take this time to learn something new, write that novel, bake that bread, learn a new instrument, language, etc. are all over my Facebook feed, but who are the people who have both time and resources? The members of the professional classes who are working from home are working as hard as ever, with the added stress of being home without daycare for the children who are also home, being home with a coworking partner, learning how to homeschool, how to manage zoom meetings with the toddler calling from the bathroom, “Mama, I did a poop.”
Hospitality workers are home wondering if the government will come through for them and if they will be able to make next month’s rent. Hardly leads to the emotional environment necessary to take on creative work. And when social distancing comes to a pause before the second wave of coronavirus how many of the restaurants they used to work for will still be standing?
And yet, there is time for rethinking the trajectory of one’s life (often desperately) in this situation. Who are we? Who do we want to be?
After Trump became president there was a rise in racially motivated hate crimes, even in my community of supposedly liberally enlightened people. At one point one of my politically conservative friends said in exasperation, “That’s not who we are.” So, I can rehash the whole argument of when you buy a package you’ve bought the whole package and you do have personal responsibility for the results of that. But, instead I’d like to take a look at who we want to be.
We (and I’m speaking to white people here) have a chance to join a community that looks out for the historically marginalized, that takes some personal responsibility for the uneven impact that Covid-19 has had in the black community especially in Milwaukee. We can become educated about how this is the result not only of historic racism, but of ongoing day-to-day acceptance of racial stereotypes, just to name a thing.
We can decide whether our community consists of the most marginalized AND the working class precariat AND the fairly newly created professional class precariat AND us. We can decide whose interests we support when we come out of this. We can decide who it is we really want to be, now, going forward. I’ve been preparing for this for a long time. You, perhaps, have newly been forced into this, but one way or another when this is over you will decide who you really want to be.
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