Rethinking Appreciation
This past Sunday, I started reading bell hooks’ Ain’t I a Woman and came across a passage in the introduction. In it, hooks is speaking about the glamorization of the black female experience in social movements, saying the following:
“When feminists acknowledge in one breath that black women are victimized and in the same breath emphasize their strength, they imply that though black women are oppressed they manage to circumvent the damaging impact of oppression by being strong- and that is simply not the case. Usually, when people talk about the “strength” of black women they are referring to how they perceive black women coping with oppression. They ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.”
This past Monday, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver released a piece on Emergency Medical Services. Early in the video, he shows a clip of an emergency medical technician named Adam Bliden, who reveals that while being on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19, the average salary of an EMT in New York is $37,000. Not only this, but he is risking his life every day with no health insurance. He also remarked on how people show their gratitude for his service that has stuck with me since I heard it, which will be bolded below:
“If I get sick and, OK, I go get tested positive, I can't go to the hospital. Literally, life or death is what's going to put me in the hospital. It's scary. And, you know, people come out, and they show us their support. And I love it. I love — I have eaten so much pizza in the last two weeks. It's been great. I don't need pizza. I need to be able to pay my bills. I need to be able to work a 40-hour workweek and live like a normal human being.”
I’m tying these quotes from two different people, circumstances, and contexts together because the underlying premise behind them is the same. Appreciation in this country for those that go through adversity is misunderstood, and the symbolic nature behind appreciative gestures continually overshadows any possible tangible actions. The symbolism alone is so inadequate, and I'm going to show why.
When it comes to Black Americans, we have received many things supposed restitution for the oppression that hooks references. We have multiple streets named after our civil rights leaders…even though those same leaders were murdered by the country now trying to act like it always viewed those people as heroes. We have our history month…that will be meaningless if the people who oppose CRT get their way. Meanwhile, the families who live on these streets are often dealing with housing inequalities, and the schools that are teaching the aforementioned sanitized history are often underfunded. Real issues have gone unaddressed in the name of expressions that have no tangible positive impact.
These inequalities can and will be addressed, however, with things like reparations. There are many economic figures for what this would look like, with numbers ranging anywhere from around $5 trillion to upwards to $10 trillion. The goal is to “restore the black community to the economic position it would have if it had not been subjected to slavery and discrimination,” according to economist Robert Browne. Using the lowball figure of around $5 trillion, reparations would give every Black American living today around $155,000. I want you to imagine the bills you would pay if you were given that much money. Imagine the debt you would get rid of, the financial burden that would be eased.
Now imagine that money is owed to you already.
When it comes to EMS workers and the coronavirus, all the pizza and homemade signs in the world shouldn’t overshadow the fact that they are exhausted and have often been pushed past their limits. New variants of the disease are popping up rapidly, with easier transmissibility and possible resistance to vaccines. These new strains have already led to spikes in cases and hospitalizations…hospitalizations in hospitals that have already been filled to the brim with people. With all of these factors, it’s no wonder that many nurses are suffering from emotional distress, with some even developing compassion fatigue to the point where they simply can’t care like they used to. They’re spent, and they didn’t sign up to be bombarded in this way. Addressing these issues will need to come in the form of mask mandates and campaigns to get Americans vaccinated, but it will also require a push against the massive amount of misinformation being spread about the disease. Social media has allowed lies and falsehoods about the disease to run rampant since the beginning of the pandemic, and the effects of that can be seen today in the number of people that believe myths over science.
The thing about both these examples is that you might already know these things. Black Americans have had our issues broadcast worldwide in the past year in a way never seen before, and COVID dominates the news cycle with daily developments. The questions I’m posing to you are… how much do you truly appreciate these groups of people? How much do you take them for granted? Most importantly, are you willing to help do the work so that they don’t have to struggle? Because what you view as strength is not strength.
It’s survival, and it doesn’t need to be that way.
On Tuesday of this week, I was reminded of another quote from another article, one that I hadn’t thought about in a while. It was talking about the black experience in a broad sense, but the quote in question applies to what I’ve discussed today as well. When talking about how Black pride comes from Black endurance of pain, the writer of that article said the following:
“Instead of marveling at our ability to weather every storm thrown at us, use that energy to stop creating conditions for those storms, whether physical, mental, emotional, or legislative. Stop forming clouds of oppression that get so large and so massive that it rains hell down on us. Because I can’t remember the last time I truly saw the sun.”
That writer was me, and a year later I can’t say the clouds have moved.
There’s plenty more to talk about, plenty more dots to connect, plenty more context to give. We’ll continue doing so next week at 2 PM.
