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i hear people talking about it every day, a), but those who aren't already knew this—it's upper middle class white people who are discovering this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/business/covid-economy-parents-kids-career-homeschooling.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/business/covid-economy-parents-kids-career-homeschooling.html
remember that rash of high-profile episodes a few years ago when low-income workers, mostly Black women, had their children taken away from them, like a woman who had her kids hang out at a park for an hour while she went to a job interview up the street?
i remember the first time my mom had to leave me alone by myself because i was too sick to go to school. i was ten, maybe? she was so scared.
this isn't "the COVID-19 economy." this is how it works for many people all the time. i can see how you might be fooled into thinking otherwise when it mostly works out for you personally, but it's always been broken.
if you're figuring it out for the first time, maybe you're not the best person to write the opinion piece about it.
Here's a story about Shanesha Taylor, sentenced to 18 years supervised probation. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/business/a-job-seekers-desperate-choice.html
This is why education and work around white privilege & institutional racism are so key—if we attend to the needs of the most vulnerable people, which we won't see unless we purposefully look, everyone has what they need. If Shanesha Taylor has childcare, so does Deb Perelman.
It isn't the hair shirt performative self-flagellation that so many people want to dismiss. It's work that makes everyone's lives better.
a more just world is in almost everyone's self-interest, does that help
and/but/also, if we don't make these connections explicitly and in public, the kinds of experiences folks like Deb are suddenly having won't fundamentally how the world works for people who have less.
if this is all a surprise to you, it means you don't know any poor people!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
