Month: June 2020

Mourning

chuckpearsonLeave a comment

I attempted to run a distraction from this pandemic this spring and summer.

It’s a bracket game, where the participants vote on one of two songs from the history of Contemporary Christian music. I did something similar last year. It was a good time then. I figured, with a whole host of people cooped up in their houses, it would be a better time now.

Some strange things happened on the way to the execution of this bracket game, though: people started ignoring the pandemic.

There are important reasons to neglect the pandemic, mind, and demonstrations that are increasingly hopeful are necessary responses to the injustice of the time, even (and especially) given the risks that come with this moment. But those aren’t the reasons to ignore the pandemic that I tend to see in East Tennessee.

Those reasons range from selfishness to apathy to even active disbelief. At the very top of our leadership, the anti-intellectual streak in how we respond to even suggestions of best practice to avoid sickness has been obvious. “In many states and cities, you have the leadership actually giving the right guideline instruction. But somehow, people for one reason or another, don’t believe it or not fazed by it. And they go ahead and do things that are either against the guidelines that their own leadership is saying.”

And while other nations around the world arrest the spread of this novel coronavirus and citizens of other places cooperate for the good health of their neighbor, the United States of America leads the world in spread of the pandemic and neglect of their own.

I found myself turning on my own effort to distract. I found myself being negative and vindictive towards the very game I was trying to get people to play. I found myself letting a thing I’d put months into preparing atrophy and fall apart.

I’ve stated in the past that I’m given over to depression, and I am progressively getting better at recognizing the patterns of depression that can hit my life – and this response surely fits into that pattern. But as I’ve sat with the realizations of what I’m feeling, to simply call it “depression” really doesn’t satisfy, because the impacts of this spring and summer have been far too wide-ranging.

And the realization that as of Sunday, we can account for 119,429 people who have died from this pandemic in the United States – with no end to the running total in sight – drives the reality home.

Where is the mourning?

When the decision of whether to wear a mask or not wear a mask is cast as a political debate that predicts your agreement with the current president, the actual lives impacted by a rapidly spreading disease are lost in the rhetorical tempest.

There are people dedicated to telling those stories. I came across a PRX broadcast called A Sudden Loss dedicated to eulogies of people whose lives were lost to COVID-19, read over the course of an hour. There are journalistic efforts that are local, national and global.

Those efforts are the exception and not the rule, however. As impossible as it was for me to follow national news before this spring, much of what I hear in the current moment simply doesn’t matter. The familiar battle lines of cable news trivialize the failures that have led us to this moment and the human toll this has exacted.

And those familiar battle lines propagate to the wider population. Where are the flags at half-mast over the lives lost? Where is the outrage over the magnitude of lives lost? Where is our concern for our fellow humans?

The fact that the social media fury is reserved for this viral video of someone refusing to wear a mask or that latest outrage from the current occupant of the White House and not for another day’s death toll in the hundreds or thousands is so telling. Maybe we’re desperate to avoid the humanity; maybe we take comfort from familiar political debate; maybe we simply can’t bear the thought that the death toll that surrounds us in the country could ultimately include us, too.

Humanity is nothing if not shared. Whatever the reason we choose to do so, to simply reduce the death toll from COVID-19 to a mere number and not to human lives lost is to cut that humanity off, to pretend that we don’t share the same human experience.

Statistics matter, however, and we are entering into a new reason to protest, a new reason for outrage.

The radical spike in positive cases across the Sun Belt over the course of the past week is predictive of a new spike in deaths within the next two weeks. The spread of cases that has been allowed to progress unchecked is a death sentence for entirely too many Americans who simply don’t deserve what is going to transpire. Leaders saying “the window is closing for us to take action and get this under control” should be ominous, instead of just another Sunday morning news show quote.

It becomes very evident that not merely is this not over, this is really only beginning.

And the only way I know how to respond at this point is to mourn.

I am out of ways to make people feel better. There is nothing to feel better about. I have spent a whole spring trying to seek out ways to be optimistic in this difficult time. I’m out of optimism. Things are bad. Things are going to get worse.

The very least we can do is recognize that there are 119,429 people whose unique stories have ended in ways that the supposed most advanced country on earth could not stop.

And we need to ask ourselves why our efforts to stop this relentless onslaught of death and dying have been so timid.

Those are questions nothing should distract us from.

The data from the graph are taken from the COVID Tracking Project‘s daily updates. The treatment of the data to yield seven-day moving averages for smoothing is my own, generated through Google Sheets.

Why you shouldn’t call me an ally

chuckpearsonLeave a comment

I’m a white dude. Start there.

I’m a white dude who was raised in the rural South, steeped in the prejudices and the casual hatred of the place. Sure, I had Black friends. They were always at arms’ length, though; when I got told that they weren’t the people I was supposed to be hanging out with, I didn’t argue.

I was taught the use of slurs, and I was taught how to make them acceptable by explaining what they actually meant. You didn’t use the N-bomb against just anybody, you see. You only used it against Black people who thought the world owed them something because they were black. You’re not against all Black people; you’re just against that kind.

I got out of the rural South into the Midwest, to a college that was exclusively male and overwhelmingly white, with the odd Asian thrown in for flavor. I was educated in the most secure bubble you could possibly imagine. Even when I went to graduate school, and discovered the joys of diversity, of studying with people from literally around the world, one shade of skin was elusive, and nobody really understood why.

So when you look for people to talk to you about how Black Lives Matter, I’m the last person you should be talking to. Precious little in my raising put me face-to-face with racial issues [1]; nothing in my education prepared me to live in this time.

I’m nearly two decades into an academic career. I’ve had multiple advisees come through my supervision, and I’ve been fortunate enough that I’ve been able to serve a great diversity. The same color has been elusive; the same color has started working with me only to disappear and not remain, despite my enthusiasm and interest.

The major I’ve been most responsible for where real change could be affected is chemistry, particularly physical chemistry and biochemistry, where the diversity of graduates is especially low. If I was an ally, I could point you to the ways that I’ve made a difference in that diversity, the ways that I’ve helped bring more Black students along in their study.

Folks, I’ve got nothing. No evidence. No change. The same white faces make it to the other side. No new faces who come through general chemistry and start to believe that there is a place in the discipline for them.

I can’t point to Black work done in my field. I can’t point to books by Black authors in my discipline that I’d recommend. I have precious few names of Black scholars that I’d have students emulate, and I can’t claim that there are any substantial relationships that are authentic and real that would advance a potential young Black chemist.

But, again, like I’ve seen a young Black chemist willingly talk to me. About anything, really.

It’s still clear to me, rapidly approaching a half-century on this planet, that not only do I have work to do, I haven’t even started the real work.

So nobody should call me an ally. I might want the title. I sure don’t deserve it.


The last time I took the times I was living through even close to seriously enough, I did what I thought was preparatory work. I still even remember the exact title of the writing I did at the time – “clearing Ferguson out of my brain”. In retrospect that title’s offensive on its face, as if racial injustice is something I just needed to face one time, be direct about, and then put past me so I could move forward with the real work.

I didn’t take seriously enough the reality that facing racial injustice is the real work, and there are a lot of times to be doing that, and the most important times to be doing that are the times when the world isn’t melting down all around you.

But here I am writing while the world is melting down all around me.

And let me be even more pointed about my privilege – the world might be melting down all around, but it’s not melting down where I’m at. I live in a pocket of peace, isolated by being a white dude surrounded by Trumpists, caring about a place that at once shelters and neuters me.

Another reason I’m not comfortable being called an ally: I know where I live. Racial justice coming to this place would simply mean knowing my Black neighbors and being able to identify with them – if those Black neighbors are anywhere to be found at all. 

Six years ago, when I wrote, I said I just wanted to be someone who helped. The evidence that I’ve helped doesn’t exist. The evidence that I’ve isolated myself away from being in position to help does. I could protest about my intentions all I want, but these matters are results-based, and intentions don’t matter. 


This is a moment where a lot more self-examination should be taking place, and a lot fewer claims of allyship should be taking place. I hope this doesn’t come across as self-flagellation; that isn’t my intent. It’s staring down cold, stark reality. I don’t get to claim  wins for half-hearted attempts to be kind, and if I ever was in the business of trying to claim such wins, that’s my own time wasted. 

This came across my feed this morning:

That’s directed towards employers and institutions, I know. But I think it also is appropriate to ask of individuals working within those institutions as well. There are a lot of us who come up against results and outcomes and find ourselves wanting, and more specifically, find the specific actions we’ve taken to support those outcomes nonexistent.

If we’re really interested in talking about the importance of Black lives? Well, Black lives need jobs. Black lives need representation. Black lives need a place in the practice of our day-to-day work, especially in the academic world, where diversity of thinking improves the quality of outcomes. 

It is completely appropriate and fair to hold my own actions to support Black lives in my workplace to account. I don’t care where I live, I don’t care where I work, I don’t care about the systemic obstacles in the discipline I work in. 

We can talk about my role as an ally when I can point to specific actions I’ve taken and specific results I’ve achieved in supporting Black lives – and Latinx lives, and Native American lives, and lives of underrepresented people across the spectrum. 

I’m hopeful that I have outcomes to share in my next two decades that are more substantial than the outcomes of my past two.

Cover photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash.

 

[1] My mother would tell you different; she would say that it was an invitation to a black classmate that wound up integrating a roller rink in South Georgia for a birthday party in my youth. And my mother stood up for my invitation list in ways that I didn’t understand at the time.
But that’s just it; I was blind to the whole business, and I didn’t understand what my invitation list caused, and my mother thought it more important that a scene not be caused than explaining why this was a big deal. I’m not arguing with Mama. But I’m not claiming any wins, either.