I’ve been noticing a trend among people lucky enough to frequent our local public green space. More people are wearing masks lately. The holdouts, however, seem to be mostly young to middle-aged white people.
People of color understand how vulnerable they are to random, undeserved misfortune. Ahmaud Arbery was only the most recent victim of homicidal racism to get the nation’s attention. No one knows the true count of unarmed people killed for doing normal things while black.
My city is fortunate enough to contain immigrants from many parts of the world. They wear masks. Like native-born people of color, they know that life can be cruel and unfair. They take what precautions they can.
A couple of months ago, when I first started nagging store clerks to insist their employers give them masks, they looked at me like I was crazy. Now they’re wearing masks. But these people are not rich. They know life is full of inconvenient and uncomfortable requirements.
Women should know how fragile our bodies are, and how subject to change. But our culture has taught women that how we look is the most important thing about us. So a pretty face is too powerful to cover up, and some young women will be pretty if it kills them — which, these days, it might.
Young white people with money have led protected, easy lives until now. They have little experience with real danger, much less with danger in public places. They feel invulnerable. What is far worse for the rest of us is that many seem to believe they have a right to do whatever they want, no matter how it affects other people. That’s what privilege is all about.
When a young person without a mask bikes past you, or brushes by you running on the path, or just saunters along as though “social distance” referred to the difference in your class status rather than a life-saving space, you are seeing the literal face of privilege.
In a democracy, privilege is a long-term threat to the idea that we are all equal before the law. During this pandemic, privilege can be deadly.
Alice T4 