On 15 April, in my fifth post on (www.timesofcoronavirus.com), Forrest Gump said, “And just like that, all of a sudden, all of the news disappeared.” In April, that was what happened. All news seemed to dry up, and the only thing that remained in the newspapers was the coronavirus pandemic. There was nothing else.
Nevertheless, the pandemic had not brought the whole world to a halt. There were a lot of other things still going on. The wars in Yemen and Afghanistan were still being fought. There was no peace in Syria or Kurdistan. Nor had the boat people stopped trying to get to Italy and Spain on zodiac rafts. Refugees were still dying in overcrowded makeshift camps in countries throughout the world.
The difference was that these tragedies were no longer newsworthy because the Covid-19 media hog had shoved them out of the spotlight. Since reporters did not talk about other news items anymore, they simply ceased to exist.
People can only digest so much disaster. And we always are more aware of a catastrophic event when it hits closer to home and affects people that we know. For this reason, Spaniards and Italians have a different perception of the pandemic from Finns and Norwegians. Americans in New England view the coronavirus differently from those in Wyoming and Montana.
Now the news has suddenly come back. To our great surprise, we are discovering that international and domestic conflicts have not vanished while we have been confined. They have returned with a vengeance. We had hoped that during these months of news blackout, perhaps these problems had miraculously solved themselves. Unfortunately, this has not occurred.
Dust swept under the carpet does not disappear. It eventually emerges again and in exponentially larger quantities. This time, it has appeared in the form of a racial incident that has triggered protest demonstrations throughout the world.
Racial tension has always existed in the USA (and other countries). My parents were fervent racists and segregationists. They were horrified when public schools in Miami were finally integrated. It is one of the reasons why I always attended private schools until I went to college. At UNC, there were some black students (mostly on athletic scholarships), but it was rare for them to mix with white students. North Carolina was still ‘Klan country’.
When we were small, my brother, sister, and I were informed that “separate but equal” was the way to go and that “colored people” were inferior. Our mother even told us that blacks had been happier as slaves on plantations, where they were “taken care of” by their white owners. The American Civil War was a great tragedy because the Confederate Army had lost the conflict. “Gone with the Wind” was the greatest story ever told.
Even in the 1950s as small as we were, we realized that all of this was nonsensical rubbish and that our parents were biased. The two water fountains and four restrooms in public places were certainly separate, but anything but equal. Even an eight-year-old could see that. We did not understand why we were forbidden to play with black children.
Evidently, over the years, things seemed to improve, at least on the surface. There was at least a veneer of equality. Things got better because they could not get much worse. Laws were passed to give everyone equal opportunity and physical barriers were removed. However, this did not make racial inequality disappear. It did not change how people thought about others, spoke about others, and interacted with others. Based on recent events, it is evident that the world still has a long way to go.
It is a fact that social groups have the unfortunate tendency to look down on others who are different. This is reflected in the lexicon of a language. I used to give a course on taboo language, and one of the semantic categories was for verbal insults based on race or nationality. Each language has a wide variety of racial slurs that negatively denote those of a different nationality or ethnicity.
People like to feel that they are better than others. If they have no objective reason for feeling superior, it is sufficient to base their perceived superiority on their skin color and/or ethnic group. That is an effortless shortcut because the possession of white skin is not obtained through work expertise or an academic degree. It is only necessary to be born to Caucasian parents. Pejorative words are thus needed to denote others with a different skin color or nationality.
In Spain, there are derogatory terms for Arabs, gypsies, Africans, and South Americans, inter alia. Spaniards from Castilian provinces look down on those from Andalusian provinces, and vice versa. People from Cataluña more or less turn up their noses at everyone else. And so it goes.
This is all ridiculous because the concept of “pure” heritage no longer exists, if it ever existed at all. Most of us are a mix of many ethnic groups. Anyone who believes that their ethnic roots are “pure” should have a DNA test.
Last year when I visited the USA, I had my DNA analyzed at Ancestry.com. When the results came back a few months later, I had a good laugh. There was the usual mix of Northern and Southern European genes. However, part of my DNA also came from Senegal. This means that my family was also descended from slaves, who had been brought over to the New World, and had achieved upward mobility by mixing genes with their owners. I was also a member of an ‘inferior’ race, and I felt honored.
Now, in Times of Coronavirus, racism has once again raised its ugly head, and there are protests, not only in the USA, but also worldwide. There have even been demonstrations in Madrid and Barcelona because racism also exists in Europe.
This means that the coronavirus no longer occupies our attention. The lid of the pressure cooker has been suddenly removed, and the lentil stew has spattered the walls and ceiling of the kitchen (yes, I am speaking from personal experience).
Because of these protest marches, people have run out onto the streets and forgotten about Covid-19. In any case, everyone was tired of sitting at home on their sofas and bingeing on series. They were also fed up with social distancing, and were only too happy to answer the call to arms. Everybody was weary of so much discipline.
The Spanish Minister of Health, Mr. Deer-in-the-Headlights, has come on the television to remind the public that huge protests are dangerous. The protests in Madrid were only approved for 200 people, but thousands crashed the party. However, the government has shrugged its shoulders. So much enthusiasm is impossible to contain, and since the protest was in front of the American Embassy and not in front of the Moncloa, there was no need to disperse it.
However, we are still in Times of Coronavirus. People forget that the virus has not gone away and could even return with the same level of virulence. But now there are other issues vying for the headlines. So all we can do is hope that the virus has not realized that we are no longer interested in preventing it. We can only hope that it has forgotten about us and moved on to greener pastures far across the ocean.
