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I was listening to the Wind of Change podcast today—I know I'm late, but it's awesome—and there was a quote from Nina Simone that unlocked something for me. She said, "freedom is no fear." And I understood instantly what's behind the resistance to wearing masks.
Because I've been wondering: How could so many people, some dumb as stumps, sure, but many sharp as tacks be pushing for something as insane as going back to "normal" when, clearly, the #COVID19 world is fundamentally abnormal?
(Yes, the majority of those people are white. Black people didn't show up with guns to occupy government buildings protesting stay-at-home orders and PPE regulations. Hell, Black people didn't show up with guns to protest police murder. We know better.)
And I think the crux of it is that, for the first time in their lives, those people are existentially afraid of something they can't control. Those people have never really experienced fear as a persistent condition.
Oh, sure, I bet they've seen a spider. Or a horror movie. Or been in a car accident. Or lost a kid in a mall. Or been afflicted by any number of medical ailments. But in the majority of those cases, the fear is temporary and resolved in relatively short order.
But #COVID19 is a condition. Not just persistent but pervasive. It has disrupted life—for everyone—in vast and incalculable ways. It's always there, fucking with them. And the average white person has no idea what to do with that feeling. They've never experienced it before.
If the past month/four centuries have taught us anything it's that people of color—especially Black Americans—have been living with that kind of fear since forever. We understand it. How to navigate it.
Sure, the stress of doing so will kill us before our time, but we manage it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henryism
No so for white folks. They've been taught to believe—with ample evidence to back it up—that this is the land of the free, the home of the brave. And if they are free, they can't be afraid. They won't be afraid. Even of something that absolutely deserves being afraid of.
So they're simply rejecting fear, even though fear is a legitimate, appropriate, and biologically sound impulse to have. It's become an act of will for them. "I won't wear a mask because I refuse to be afraid because I'm free. Because I'm an American."
(None of this is helped by us having an incompetent coward as a President who transformed that cowardice, who politicized medicine and converted anti-science into an anti-mask movement. Who once again said that the liberals are taking something from you, regular white person.)
The irony of Black Americans and their allies standing firm to suggest that, perhaps, Black people shouldn't have to live in fear of those paid to protect and serve them—while some White Americans are stomping their feet protesting the existence of fear itself isn't lost on me.
