Inequality, distance and fear
We struggle to relate across our human differences as equals. As a result, those differences are misnamed and misused in the service of fear and confusion.
Somewhere, on the edge of our consciousness, there is what some call a mythical norm, something that we say, well ‘that is not me’. When you learn about how many refuse to #stayhome, you start thinking that all they can hear is a distorted echo. Too often, it seems we pour the energy needed for recognising and exploring difference into pretending that those differences do not exist at all. If we fail to recognise what is different, e.g. different needs, different abilities, different levels of resilience, we confine it to what we consider to be undecipherable. It becomes as foreign and distant as those vulnerable fissures of our being that we are too afraid of seeing.
Social distancing, as some have rightly pointed out, should be reframed as physical distancing, for we do not need more social isolation. We need more solidarity and compassion. Until we understand how to contain Covid-19, something that has become painfully clear with this pandemic is that inequality can kill. Our sympathy and efforts to flatten the curve should go to those that are being punished by policymakers that favour markets over publicly funded services, perpetuating systems that are ableist and ageist. And even well intended responses can have uneven consequences: despite (provisional) estimates of lower female mortality, given women’s predominant roles as caregivers within families and as front-line health-care workers, we should be considering the gendered impacts of the Covid-19 outbreak, including increasing instances of domestic violence during isolation.
Furthermore, this crisis intersects with aspects of precarity that were brewing in our economies. Think of informal dwellers, homeless people, self-employed workers, small businesses that cannot afford to be idle. Consider the low- and middle-income families in which parents cannot switch to telework, have any access to sick leave, childcare and other essential social services that could allow them to stay home. They are left to their own means to navigate the harshness of markets without the state’s support.
Economic, political and social forces mediate a crisis like this. Seeing those forces at play and their uneven consequences on human lives make me angry. What to do with the anger? How to transmute it into transformative change? A week ago, my interview for Humans of Humanities was released. It was recorded before this crisis, and I was already torn between anger and hope. Still, this crisis offers us the chance to rewrite history. Let us document the discussions and keep in our collective memory the number of people that have gone through preventable suffering because of fissures in the system. We should use this crisis to create resonance for a more socially just world, for the right to live a life with dignity, care and protection. We might have taken those things for granted.
Let us stay safe and face this crisis with compassion, solidarity and humility.
