If your brain is still intact from the galactic inanity of coronavirus media coverage, read the latest New York Times offering by Jamelle Bouie.
Bouie on Friday wrote that the anti-economic lockdown protesters are — what else? — motivated by racism.
Yes, we’ve reached that point.
“It’s true that not every racial disparity speaks to some deeper dynamic of race and racism,” wrote Bouie, who has yet to find any racial disparity that doesn’t speak to some deeper dynamic of race and racism. “But this one does.” (Of course.)
In recent weeks, several thousand people have protested the ridiculously strict economic shackling imposed by their state and local governments. Even if well-intentioned, the rules, in many cases, are hurting the very people they aim to protect.
For too many people, unemployment and aid checks from the federal government aren’t coming in fast enough. The only other option for protesters who are suffering, or who simply understand that the lockdowns are excessive, is to pressure their officials to let them return to normal business in order to make money and fend for themselves once again.
It would be difficult for the average person to find racial motivation in any of this, but Bouie is not the average person.
“I don’t think you can separate the vehemence of anti-lockdown protesters from their whiteness,” he wrote, “nor do I think we can divorce their demands to ‘reopen’ the economy from the knowledge that many of those most affected belong to other racial groups.”
It’s true that blacks and other minorities have suffered disproportionately from coronavirus complications, with more of them dying compared to whites. There are a lot of different reasons for that — mostly socioeconomic ones, including that more whites hold jobs allowing them to work from home.
But I can promise you, the people protesting outside for the right to open their businesses or return to their jobs are not the same people who can work from home. They’re just as susceptible to contracting the virus from close contact as many blacks or Latinos who work in the same type of jobs, whether it involves factory work or restaurants or retail.
That aside, there is virtually no racial difference in public opinion on the fear of spreading the virus to a loved one, nor is there any racial difference in skepticism of the aggressive lockdown measures.
A poll conducted in early April by the New York Times (maybe Bouie ought to read his own paper’s poll) asked respondents how “worried” they were about themselves or a family member being exposed to the coronavirus. Among whites, it was 77%. Among blacks, it was 75%. Among Latinos, it was 82%.
The same poll asked respondents for their thoughts on the forced business closures. Among whites, 18% said they had gone too far. Among blacks, it was 19%. For Latinos, it was 16%.
So, concern over the virus and the economy both transcend racial lines.
The vast majority of the anti-lockdown protesters probably are white. But their natural desire to return to work and support their families does not make any of them racist.
