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<font size="1"><a href="http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-race-politics/shaun-ossei-owusu-coronavirus-and-politics-disposability?fbclid=IwAR1VephNgqUAXQb5cb3K9K2DcHJXNwYT0zmVrMe4wxxmFq9QrK3neSQO94M">http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-race-politics/shaun-ossei-owusu-coronavirus-and-politics-disposability?fbclid=IwAR1VephNgqUAXQb5cb3K9K2DcHJXNwYT0zmVrMe4wxxmFq9QrK3neSQO94M</a></font>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Coronavirus and the Politics of Disposability</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Shaun Ossei-Owusu - April 8, 2020</div></div><div class="gmail-content"><div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-line-height4 gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div id="gmail-detail-body"><div id="gmail-detail-secondary-mobile"><div></div></div><p>COVID-19 is having a disproportionate
effect among vulnerable populations. When the dust settles, as in all
U.S. disasters, there will be a tale to tell of who mattered and who was
sacrificed.</p>
<p>In the final chapter, “The Space Traders,” of his 1992 book <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/derrick-bell/faces-at-the-bottom-of-the-well/9781541645530/"><em>Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Persistence of Racism</em></a>,
Derrick Bell, Harvard Law School’s first tenured black professor,
described a fictive world eerily similar to the one we know today. Local
and federal governments ostensibly had no money. “Decades of
conservative, laissez-faire capitalism had emptied the coffers of all
but a few of the very rich,” the narrator says. Because of a host of
poor choices, the country “was struggling to survive like any
third-world nation,” and financial exigencies “curtailed all but the
most necessary services.” The parallels are acute: “the environment was
in shambles, as reflected by the fact that the sick and elderly had to
wear special masks whenever they ventured out-of-doors.”</p>
<p>Demographic data about COVID-19 deaths are beginning to bear out the politics of disposability.</p>
<p>In the story, English-speaking extraterrestrial beings land on the
shores of New Jersey and offer to solve everything: gold to bail out
companies, chemicals to unpollute the environment. The country could
have this deal for one sweet price: “all the African Americans who lived
in the United States.” This was the central, controversial claim in
Bell’s science fiction: that white people would sell black people to
aliens for the right price. The story concludes with a successful trade.
Twenty million black men, women, and children are stripped to just one
undergarment, lined up, chained, and whisked away, like many of their
ancestors’ centuries before.</p>
<p>Bell’s story lays bare the politics of disposability. But unlike the
cosmos of the Space Traders, the world of coronavirus is not simply
black/white. It is white <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/30/coronavirus-cases-could-soar-blacks-latinos-and-native-americans/2917493001/">and</a> non-white; poor <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-will-supercharge-american-inequality/608419/">and</a> not poor; essential and non-essential; white collar <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/04/coronavirus-highlights-who-can-and-cant-work-from-home.html">and</a> blue collar; Asian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/24/coronavirus-us-asian-americans-racism">and</a> not Asian; undocumented <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/03/29/823438906/what-happens-if-undocumented-immigrants-get-infected-with-coronavirus">and</a> citizen; able-bodied <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-05/coronavirus-services-disabled-families-california">and</a> sick; young <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/people-at-higher-risk.html">and</a> elderly; first-generation higher ed students <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/When-Coronavirus-Closes/248228">and</a> their wealthier counterparts; the free <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/03/31/why-jails-are-so-important-in-the-fight-against-coronavirus">and</a> imprisoned; celebrities with access to instant testing <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/nba-explains-why-its-players-have-access-to-coronavirus-tests-while-general-public-does-not-152251784.html">and</a> plebeians; red states <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/how-republicans-and-democrats-think-about-coronavirus/608395/">and</a>
blue states; and countless other binaries. From these overlapping
inequities we get a glimpse of who is disposable: the people who occupy
the wrong category. The scholar and cultural critic Henry Giroux <a href="https://www.crcpress.com/Stormy-Weather-Katrina-and-the-Politics-of-Disposability/Giroux/p/book/9781594513299">analyzes</a> this politics in his book <em>Against the Terror of Neoliberalism</em>
(2008). “It is a politics in which the unproductive (the poor, weak and
racially marginalized) are considered useless and therefore
expendable,” he writes—and “in which entire populations are considered
disposable, unnecessary burdens on state coffers, and consigned to fend
for themselves.”</p>
<p>Tragically, demographic data about COVID-19 deaths are beginning to bear this vision out. On Monday Kaisher Health News <a href="https://khn.org/morning-breakout/a-disproportionate-number-of-african-americans-are-dying-but-the-u-s-has-been-silent-on-race-data/">reported</a> that “A Disproportionate Number Of African-Americans Are Dying, But The U.S. Has Been Silent On Race Data.” <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2020/04/70-percent-of-people-killed-in-chicago-by-the-coronavirus-are-black/">Seventy percent</a> of those who have died from coronavirus in Chicago are black. Last week saw calls from a range of <a href="https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2020/03/30/elizabeth-warren-ayanna-pressley-are-racial-data-coronavirus-tests">politicians</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/opinion/coronavirus-black-people.html">journalists</a>, and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/stop-looking-away-race-covid-19-victims/609250/">scholars</a> for more fine-grained data than has been made available thus far. But for many observers, who was being impacted was the <em>first </em>question
on their mind. Beyond the latest numbers, we have other data points:
history, what is visible from news and experience, and media accounts.
These are imperfect, but they supply some information, and the
implications are grim.</p>
<p>The people whose disposability is on widest display are those who
work in immediate-risk industries: the financially precarious service
workers, the health care workers tasked with “equity work.”</p>
<p>This is certainly <em>not</em> to say—as some multiracial groups of <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/03/coronavirus-is-creating-fake-news-nightmarescape-social-media">conspiracy theorists</a>
allege—that there is some sinister grandmaster plot afoot to harm
vulnerable populations. In Bell’s allegory intent can often be a
sideshow, if not an outright distraction. The truth is more banal:
systemic social inequalities have made some groups more vulnerable than
others, and the question of intent is irrelevant. As a criminal law
professor, I teach my students that intent matters, but in some <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/strict_liability">instances</a> it does not. In this context, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/03/30/coronavirus-stock-sales-senators-burr-inhofe-loeffler-feinstein/5086707002/">malfeasance</a>, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/covid-ny-hospital-medicaid/">misguided policies</a>, and <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/15/fauci-coronavirus-young-people-130229">indifference</a> suffice. Moreover, while government is the easy and most identifiable culprit, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-photos-people-ignoring-self-isolation-mandates-crowds-around-world-covid19-2020">popular complicity</a> is at play here too, which makes this version of disposability different from Bell’s telling.</p>
<p>The people whose disposability is on widest display are those who work in immediate-risk industries. The financially precarious <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/who-are-the-workers-already-impacted-by-the-covid-19-recession/">service workers</a>
out with the epidemiological wolves so the rest of society can buy
groceries. The health care workers plastered on the news, who labor in a
profession that tasks minority and women nurses, physician assistants,
and technicians with what sociologist Adia Harvey Wingfield calls “<a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300347/flatlining">equity work</a>”: labor that makes health institutions more available to marginalized groups. The homeless <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/philadelphia-coronavirus-covid-19-homeless-response-social-distancing-20200319.html">population</a>, which was already noticeable in U.S. cities, but is now more conspicuous because of their inability to shelter in place.</p>
<p>Then there are the undocumented <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-01/california-farmworkers-coronavirus">agricultural workers</a>
in the west and southwest who can’t work on Zoom like their
white-collar counterparts and have now become more precious in a country
that has insisted on calling them illegal. There are Native
Americans—some of whom have been facing a long-standing <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/26/822037719/coronavirus-cases-spike-in-navajo-nation-where-water-service-is-often-scarce">water crisis</a>—who have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/04/04/native-american-coronavirus/">uniquely</a> high rates of diseases that make COVID-19 more lethal. There the Asian Americans who have been subject to <a href="https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/490373-attacks-on-asian-americans-at-about-100-per-day-due-to">hate crimes</a> since this virus surfaced in the U.S. And there are the residents in poorly serviced public housing projects in places like <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/coronavirus-chicago-housing-authority-residents">Chicago</a>, <a href="https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-douglass-homes-baltimore/">Baltimore</a>, and my native South Bronx, where 2,000 public housing residents <a href="https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-jackson-house-coronavirus-20200404-6bcrmzgscrd2tpiucbnmjutwle-story.html">woke</a> up to no water during an epidemic that requires vigilant hand washing.</p>
<p>Collective pronouns—the “we” and “our” and “us” of public
discourse—are dangerously comforting. They give the impression of equal
susceptibility, while celebrities and other prominent figures gain
access to testing and top-flight health care.</p>
<p>The recent history of other U.S. disasters is also telling. The <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/443213in.html">Chicago</a>
Heatwave of 1995 killed more than 700 people, mostly poor and elderly,
and necessitated refrigerated trucks for dead corpses in ways that are
similar to New York <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/490252-fema-sending-refrigerator-trucks-to-nyc-for-coronavirus-deaths">now</a>.
A decade later, Hurricane Katrina took the lives of more than 1,800
people in Louisiana, many of whom were poor and could not leave their
homes as advised. Poor people in New York City face the same today: they
do not have the benefit of escaping to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/2020/03/29/as-wealthy-depart-for-second-homes-class-tensions-come-to-surface-in-coronavirus-crisis/#28b2ec68344d">second homes</a>
in Long Island and New England. And then there was Hurricane Maria,
which was a little more than eighteen months ago. That disaster, which
killed approximately 3,000 people in Puerto Rico, elicited similar
criticisms of the federal government’s slow response and accusations
that the death count was severely <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/490541-coronavirus-its-time-to-get-real-about-the-misleading-data">understated</a>. Jason Cortés has <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10455752.2018.1505233">described</a> President Trump’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEe7_zgZbuI">paper-towel-throwing</a>
spectacle during his visit to Puerto Rico as “the American
commander-in-chief [choosing] to toss disposable paper to disposable
people.”</p>
<p>On Palm Sunday, Surgeon General Jerome Adams gave an ominous <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/04/05/surgeon-general-jerome-adams-coronavirus-rivals-pearl-harbor-9-11/2950230001/">warning</a>.
“This is going to be the hardest and the saddest week of most
Americans’ lives, quite frankly,” he cautioned. “This is going to be our
Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment. Only, it’s not going to be
localized, it’s going to be happening all over the country. And I want
America to understand that.” But who exactly will be dispensed with? It
certainly won’t be all of us. Collective pronouns—the “we” and “our” and
“us” of public discourse—are dangerously comforting. They give the
impression of equal susceptibility, while celebrities and other
prominent figures gain access to testing and <a href="https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/03/19/nelson-schwartz-coronavirus-inequality">top-flight</a>
health care. COVID-19 is not discriminatory as a biological matter, but
history and available accounts indicate that the epidemiological
fallout will be weighty and uneven.</p>
<p>During the debates about the Affordable Care Act, hysteria emerged
around government-run “death panels”: committees of doctors who would
ration care and decide who would receive treatment. This alarm ignored
the long history of rationing and unequal access to health care—the
subject of Beatrix Hoffman’s book <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo12234049.html"><em>Rights and Rationing in the United States Since 1930</em></a>
(2012)—but it echoes legitimate dismay about bureaucrats making
decisions about who lives and who dies. People with disabilities, racial
minorities, undocumented immigrants, prisoners, and the poor did not
figure prominently into the frenzy around death panels, but they have
reason to be worried now. The uninsured, elderly, and an ever-growing
portion of the middle class should be added to that list.</p>
<p>When the dust settles, as in all U.S. disasters, there will be at a tale to tell of who mattered and who was sacrificed.</p>
<p>Social science data has already shown that African Americans are
often denigrated, disregarded, and disbelieved by medical professionals
when they claim they are in <a href="https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/how-we-fail-black-patients-pain">pain</a>. Where will they fit in the treatment queues? Can we rest assured that American doctors will not take a cue from those in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/15/coronavirus-rationing-us/">Italy</a>,
who deprioritized the lives of coronavirus patients who are chronically
ill, disabled, or elderly? What about the Latinx folk who <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2018/09/who-are-the-uninsured.html">constitute</a>
a third of uninsured people in the country? Bioethical scenarios
usually reserved for grad school seminars are likely to be actualized.</p>
<p>Rural whites have been relatively safe from the virus for now (but not its <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-hits-already-frail-u-s-farm-economy-11584783001">economic</a> impact). Most live in the approximately <a href="https://www.modernhealthcare.com/providers/counties-without-coronavirus-are-mostly-rural-poor">1,300 counties</a>
that have no confirmed cases and where social distancing is ordinary.
But many of these counties are also medical deserts unequipped to handle
this virus. If COVID-19 creeps into these locales, as it has in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-hotspot-albany-georgia-funderals-covid-19-cases-per-capita-2020-4">Albany</a>, Georgia, will this group of people—many of whom <a href="https://thenewpress.com/books/strangers-their-own-land">perceive</a>
themselves to be “strangers in their own land,” as the title of the
sociologist Arlie Hochshild’s 2018 book put it—be disregarded, too? And
if the virus does not make its way to rural America, what does that say
about the disposability of everyone else?</p>
<p>Bell’s “Space Traders” struck a nerve because it highlighted the
vulnerability of an entire class of people. The difference now is that
the people being sacrificed extends beyond African Americans, and
responsibility can be tethered not only to government but to the private
sector, the media, and the parts of the general public. The outcome of
this story is uncertain. But when the dust settles, as in all U.S.
disasters, there will be a tale to tell of who mattered and who was
sacrificed.</p>
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