Derrick Clifton is a writer and commentator focusing on the intersections of identity, culture, and social justice issues. Clifton wrote the Reader‘s award-winning Identity and Culture column during the 2016 election season.
The loved ones I’m sheltering with live in a food desert, so I journey at least four to five miles away to the south suburbs to gather groceries and supplies. That includes venturing for paper products at the Walmart superstore in Evergreen Park where two employees recently died from complications of COVID-19. I drive just a little farther away for groceries, opting for stores that are less crowded.
And in Kentucky, a white doctor was caught on video and arrested for strangling a Black teenager and pushing others to the ground, reportedly out of anger that the teen and her friends weren’t social distancing enough from each other in public.
Black people already know that we can do everything right, in any realm, and still end up with the short end of the stick. Wearing a mask and gloves may offer some semblance of protection from a deadly virus, but that mask won’t hide the very Blackness that subjects us to the surveillance, bodily harm, and destitution we’ve constantly tried to evade because of racial bigotry.
