EXPOSED def. having been uncovered and made visible
THIS virus is like a darkroom light working on a sheet of photographic paper. It makes visible what w as a society already knew was there but were often trying to ignore. The pandemic has brought us ourselves in full definition, shining its way into the cracks in our society – the inequality, the structural racism, the under-appreciation and underfunding of care – and shaming us. And we should be shamed.
In this light, we can see George Floyd’s death at the hands of restraining police officers, and the statistics that show African-Americans dying at a rate three times that of white people in the United States, as linked by systemic racism.
We can also see Public Health England’s figures around BAME deaths from Covid-19 as indicative that something similar is happening in the UK. This is a different kind of exposure. At least in England, anyway, BAME people are more exposed than white people to the disease and dying.
We in Scotland might want to say "That’s just England". Nicola Sturgeon has said that Public Health Scotland’s May statistics suggest the number of those seriously infected with the virus among the BAME population “appeared no higher” proportionally than the rest of the population. But we’re not off the hook. We don’t yet have a clear picture.
As Professor Nasar Meer and Dr Kaveri Qureshi wrote last week, there are a number of reasons to suspect that the impact will be greater on those groups. Ethnic minority groups are more likely to be living in poverty, more likely to be key workers with jobs in transport, retail, healthcare. “Certain ethnic minority groups in Scotland have disproportionate underlying profiles of chronic ill health,” they observed.
And when it comes to parallels with George Floyd, there are stories that echo here in Scotland. Sheku Bayoh’s sister has spoken about how the video of Floyd’s death brought back memories of her brother, who never regained consciousness after he was restrained by police in Kirkcaldy five years ago.
As the pandemic exposes the flaws and faultlines in our society, it issues a further question of how we ourselves are involved. White people feel exposed as individuals too, the light shone on our complicity, the lack of effort we have made to play our own part in being not just “not racist” but anti-racist, and might not want to go there. I look back over the past week and think I was too silent, too caught up in other things I had to do, too uncertain what would be the right thing to say.
Did that make me racist in some way? Perhaps. As Ibram X Kendi, author of How To Be An Antiracist, puts it: “One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of'not 'racist.'”
These recent events are a reminder that we all need to respond. A light has been shone on the system in which was live, and our own part in it. It’s a reminder of the need for us all to participate in the fight against racism. We can only make the change together.
Bored
(def. feeling weary and impatient because one lacks interest in one’s current activity)
WE got bored. That’s what I think every time I look out the window or bump into someone out in the street, and get the feeling that rather than easing out of lockdown there’s a sense that the door is now wide open.
It’s what I thought when I read VisitScotland chief Malcolm Roughead describe his dismay at last weekend’s “scenes of rubbish-strewn parks and beaches and very little thought about social distancing”.
It wasn’t because everyone stopped believing that they needed to socially distance. It was because we got bored, and boredom is one of the most dangerous feelings.
Studies have shown people who get easily bored are more likely to indulge in risky behaviour. People seem bored of listening to experts, watching the briefings and more keen to make up their own rules. We’re not following the science – we’re just following the boredom.
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