Dying to Live During Covid-19
Years ago, I had abdominal surgery. After the surgery, the nurse told me that I needed to cough to get the anesthesia out of my lungs or else I’d risk getting pneumonia. I coughed a couple of times because who the fuck wants pneumonia, but the pain from coughing right after surgery was shocking. I continued trying to cough and it hurt so badly that eventually, I said, “Fuck it. We’ll just hope I don’t get pneumonia.” The nurse chastised me for this decision, told me if I got sick it was my fault. Not once did we discuss possible pain management options. I didn’t know better and I guess she didn’t feel it was necessary. So, I sat there, in pain, risking pneumonia because it hurt too much to cough the residual fluid out of my lungs. In retrospect, I wonder if the fear was that I wanted drugs, but I’ll never know because the people who enforce their anti-Blackness rarely admit what they’re doing, especially as everything encourages this type of abuse.
When my dad was being treated for cancer, the treatment caused him to develop diabetes. He was in the hospital receiving treatment when he started experiencing diabetic shock. My mom, who’d gone for lunch, returned to his room to find him delirious. When she demanded help, she was turned away until she raised hell. At the time, I was embarrassed by her behavior, but she saved his life because, without immediate treatment, he would have gone into a diabetic coma as he’d never had issues controlling his blood sugar. Anybody who has been hospitalized knows that unless you are in critical condition or loud as fuck, you are invisible. And even then, you may be labeled as a troublemaker and still ignored.
Anti-Blackness is ingrained in U.S. healthcare; nobody questions it. Nobody questions why Black people are denied pain medication. Nobody questions why Black womxn’s health concerns are ignored. As a society, we pay the barest of lip service to the many preventable deaths of Black people — just enough to somehow make our deaths our fault, rather than the rampant abuse inflicted on us by anti-Black attitudes, unspoken beliefs, and policies. Policies that affect every aspect of our lives. The myths about pain, the ignoring of how living in this racist ass country is stressful as hell — stress that affects us physically and psychologically. It is well-documented that stress causes a multitude of issues, but somehow Black people do not get the same grace and considerations when it impacts our health. Instead, we’re told to reduce our stress but keep surviving. We can’t change shit about what causes it, but somehow we’re responsible for mitigating its impact on our lives. GTFOH.
This pandemic is exposing truths that have always existed — the racial disparities in who is dying are things we’ve known. It’s always been this way because we do not receive equal treatment. Our humanity is ignored, our needs are dismissed, and our autonomy is a threat. Additionally, for many white people, our pain and our deaths are acceptable, especially in the quest to save their lives and improve their quality of life. The entire dialogue around testing drugs in Detroit and Africa reeks of the constant racism that defines Black people’s lives. They are using sick, isolated, unprotected people who can not give consent because they are emotionally compromised as test subjects. There are ethical rules prohibiting this, but we all know that rules are only as good as their enforcement. We also know that white people have a long history of experimenting on the people society considers disposable — Black people, Indigenous people, homeless people, disabled people, fat people, poor people, womxn,…we are expendable. The acceptable losses. Our lives do not matter except for what can be gained and learned throughout deaths in the name of the white supremacist patriarchal capitalism.
It fucks with you, knowing that care is incredibly unequal and that hospitals are understaffed. It fucks with you knowing that the staff that is there are usually underpaid, overworked, and will most likely be Black people. It fucks with you knowing that they will most likely get sick. It fucks with you knowing that should they get sick, they won’t get the care they need. It fucks with you knowing that there are not enough resources to go around and that Black womxn’s lives will be a low priority — a priority that will lower should they have any other identity markers such as being fat or trans or disabled or poor. It fucks with you, knowing that should they get sick, they won’t have support because they aren’t allowed visitors. It fucks with you knowing that people who already don’t value their lives will be making life or death decisions for them.
This is why we die. We have shitty choices, constantly and these systems are built on our bones. We die to preserve whiteness and it is all under extreme duress. None of us choose this, yet this is what we have to survive. Risk it all so that you can eat or protect yourself from Covid-19 and risk homelessness and starvation. Risk it all to go get food or protect yourself by staying home without food. Our lives are a daily bartering routine of what is going to hurt us the least and during a pandemic like this, there is no hierarchy of needs — there is survival and every choice is a bad one…just as it was designed to be.
None of this is news. It’s what we’ve talked about for centuries. It’s what’s been ignored for centuries and continues to be ignored because to break this, white people gotta sacrifice themselves and their well-being en masse. These are people who are claiming “Karen” is a slur because somehow racism and discrimination only exist when they happen to white people. Somehow they are always the only victims of the systems that prioritize and benefit them, and somehow Black people speaking about it makes it worse. Needless to say, that change ain’t coming.
I know I am speaking about this from a place of privilege. I live in a house with a garage. I live within walking distance of several grocery stores. I can drive to the store alone, wear a mask, stay 6-feet away, and then hop back in my car, alone, with my groceries. I couldn’t imagine having to take the bus to buy groceries or have to pay for an Uber. Despite all those privileges, getting groceries is so stressful right now that I become physically ill on the days I have to do it. And when you say “just use Instacart,” all you are doing is offloading the burden of surviving this fuckshit on someone who is less able to protect themselves from it by saying no.
This is a hellscape of the white supremacist patriarchal capitalist elites’ making and Black people are forced to be both hosts and parasites within their machinations.
Stay as safe as you are able and ask for help if you can.
I am a fan of direct giving during these times. When I can, I donate money directly into the hands of people who need it. There are also organizations that do the same. One such organization is Vox Noire, founded by Creighton Leigh. She sends groceries and money to Black people in need and helps them retain housing, flee dangerous situations, and survive in the fuckery that is white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
At this time, Vox Noire is hosting a GoFundMe for Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color families impacted by this virus. Please donate if you can.
Thank you.
If you appreciate or learned from this essay, please feel free to compensate me by contributing to my Paypal or CashApp. You can contribute any amount you want at any time:
Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/TaLynnKel
Cash App: $TalynnKel
OR
Originally published at https://talynnkel.com on April 8, 2020.
