Look at America today and you see a land defined by death. People are dying alone in hospital beds and bedrooms. They’re dying in the streets. They’re dying inside as the economy collapses around them and their hopes for tomorrow evaporate. They’re dying because they can’t breathe.
Try to explain it all – much less cope with it – and our powers fail us. The reasons are too numerous, the enemies too powerful. How does a nation deal, all at once, with a deadly pandemic which its government is incompetent to protect it from; with an economic collapse unlike anything in living memory – and perhaps anything in modern history; with an explosion of rage on the streets, the fire sparked by the murder of George Floyd and the kindling heaped generously on top by centuries – centuries – of white supremacy?
Each of these tragedies affects black Americans uniquely, disproportionately. Any explanation has to begin there, with the racial disparities and oppressions which divide the nation – not only because they illustrate the failure of America to deliver on its promise, not just because they fuel the unrest in the streets today, but most of all because they sustain in power the forces which are continuing to tear America further apart.
What many white Americans are experiencing as a moment of acute crisis is just a sampling of the chronic crisis of disease, economic hardship and state violence that shapes the black experience in America. Black Americans have higher rates of chronic illness, including shockingly high rates of infant mortality. The median wealth of a black household is just a tenth that of a white household. In Minneapolis, where the protests began, the median white family has double the income of the median black family. And statistics show that nationwide, one in every thousand black men can expect to be killed by police over the course of their lifetime – a rate 2.5 times that of white men.
Given this baseline, it is no surprise that today’s problems also have an outsize impact on black Americans. Black Americans are dying of coronavirus at nearly three times the rate of white Americans. Although the economic impact of coronavirus for the poorest Americans has been blunted for now, expanded unemployment checks will stop coming at the end of July. When that happens, black Americans will suffer disproportionately. Meanwhile, videos circulating on social media of America’s poorly trained and over-armed law enforcement agencies meting out violence show what happens whenever they attempt to protest their plight.
But to understand what has gone wrong with America, we have to widen the lens. It is fashionable to refer to racism as America’s “original sin”, a phrase which assigns culpability to previous generations while ignoring how decisions in the here and now perpetuate America’s failure to live up to the promise of the founding. But racism doesn’t just inflict specific blows, both physical and psychic, on black Americans and other Americans of color. It is used cynically as a means of maintaining power by the same leaders who are currently failing so disastrously to deal with economic and public health tragedies that are affecting all Americans, regardless of color.
Despite his deep culpability, Donald Trump is, in a sense, incidental to this story – a lucky opportunist who was in the right place at the right time. More significant are the forces which propelled him to power and stuck by him long past the time it became clear he had no business being there. Republicans have chosen to pin their own fate and that of the nation on a law-breaking, racist, corrupt ignoramus for so long as he embodies the white grievance which now defines their politics. Even with disease ravaging the land, public trust in the authorities collapsing and blood in the streets, what used to be called the conservative movement – but what we should now call the Trump movement – sticks by a president who has manifestly made each of these crises worse.
There is no way to escape the American carnage unfolding across the nation without tackling this truth head on. The last few years, then the last few days, have confirmed it. The forces of white rage and entitled grievance are willing to see America destroyed before they are willing to allow a dilution of their own power. America will still exist, of course, but only as a place rather than a promise. Every act of state violence, every deranged presidential tweet encouraging it, every act of disenfranchisement, every elected official who looks on and does nothing to stop it – they are all choking that promise away. One breath at a time.
America isn’t breaking. It was already broken, and these are just the symptoms
Andrew Gawthorpe
It’s not just the pandemic, or the killing of George Floyd, or Trump – it’s centuries of oppression, like kindling to a fire
Photograph: Mark Makela/Getty Images
Look at America today and you see a land defined by death. People are dying alone in hospital beds and bedrooms. They’re dying in the streets. They’re dying inside as the economy collapses around them and their hopes for tomorrow evaporate. They’re dying because they can’t breathe.
Try to explain it all – much less cope with it – and our powers fail us. The reasons are too numerous, the enemies too powerful. How does a nation deal, all at once, with a deadly pandemic which its government is incompetent to protect it from; with an economic collapse unlike anything in living memory – and perhaps anything in modern history; with an explosion of rage on the streets, the fire sparked by the murder of George Floyd and the kindling heaped generously on top by centuries – centuries – of white supremacy?
Each of these tragedies affects black Americans uniquely, disproportionately. Any explanation has to begin there, with the racial disparities and oppressions which divide the nation – not only because they illustrate the failure of America to deliver on its promise, not just because they fuel the unrest in the streets today, but most of all because they sustain in power the forces which are continuing to tear America further apart.
What many white Americans are experiencing as a moment of acute crisis is just a sampling of the chronic crisis of disease, economic hardship and state violence that shapes the black experience in America. Black Americans have higher rates of chronic illness, including shockingly high rates of infant mortality. The median wealth of a black household is just a tenth that of a white household. In Minneapolis, where the protests began, the median white family has double the income of the median black family. And statistics show that nationwide, one in every thousand black men can expect to be killed by police over the course of their lifetime – a rate 2.5 times that of white men.
Given this baseline, it is no surprise that today’s problems also have an outsize impact on black Americans. Black Americans are dying of coronavirus at nearly three times the rate of white Americans. Although the economic impact of coronavirus for the poorest Americans has been blunted for now, expanded unemployment checks will stop coming at the end of July. When that happens, black Americans will suffer disproportionately. Meanwhile, videos circulating on social media of America’s poorly trained and over-armed law enforcement agencies meting out violence show what happens whenever they attempt to protest their plight.
But to understand what has gone wrong with America, we have to widen the lens. It is fashionable to refer to racism as America’s “original sin”, a phrase which assigns culpability to previous generations while ignoring how decisions in the here and now perpetuate America’s failure to live up to the promise of the founding. But racism doesn’t just inflict specific blows, both physical and psychic, on black Americans and other Americans of color. It is used cynically as a means of maintaining power by the same leaders who are currently failing so disastrously to deal with economic and public health tragedies that are affecting all Americans, regardless of color.
Despite his deep culpability, Donald Trump is, in a sense, incidental to this story – a lucky opportunist who was in the right place at the right time. More significant are the forces which propelled him to power and stuck by him long past the time it became clear he had no business being there. Republicans have chosen to pin their own fate and that of the nation on a law-breaking, racist, corrupt ignoramus for so long as he embodies the white grievance which now defines their politics. Even with disease ravaging the land, public trust in the authorities collapsing and blood in the streets, what used to be called the conservative movement – but what we should now call the Trump movement – sticks by a president who has manifestly made each of these crises worse.
There is no way to escape the American carnage unfolding across the nation without tackling this truth head on. The last few years, then the last few days, have confirmed it. The forces of white rage and entitled grievance are willing to see America destroyed before they are willing to allow a dilution of their own power. America will still exist, of course, but only as a place rather than a promise. Every act of state violence, every deranged presidential tweet encouraging it, every act of disenfranchisement, every elected official who looks on and does nothing to stop it – they are all choking that promise away. One breath at a time.
Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University in the Netherlands