Morning statistics – The African nations amid the virus – Racial relations, then and now – Are our legal advances illusory? – Rioting in the cities – A day in spring – Evening statistics
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 AM — # of cases worldwide: 6,188,881; # of deaths worldwide: 371,442; # of cases U.S.: 1,817,409; # of deaths U.S.: 105,575. Brazil’s case count has now surpassed the half-million mark and Russia’s case count is over 400,000. For that matter, we are approaching an undesirable milestone of our own; in a couple of weeks our case count will probably surpass two million. China’s case count is just over 83,000 but at this point it claims to have only 63 cases still active and only 3 of these are serious. New Zealand at this point has one active case only.
The African nations have been doing comparatively well, even though most of them have a higher level of poverty than in other regions. A number of explanations have been suggested for this apparent paradox: warmer weather (the greater part of the continent is in the equatorial region), a relatively young population, lower rates of obesity, familiarity in handling infectious diseases, etc. The fact remains is that the hospital systems in African nations have not been overwhelmed the way that other countries have been in every other continent except Antarctica. This is not to say that they have gone unscathed. The resources diverted for the purpose of containing the virus put a strain on the capacity to combat other diseases. Because of the disruption of the routine immunizations, as many as 80 million children are now at risk from diseases that could have been prevented by vaccines. The lockdown restrictions have already taken their toll, and it is possible that over 60 million people will be driven into extreme poverty as a result. So far, however, they have fared well in this crisis and most of the national leaders deserve credit for responding to threat of the virus effectively.
There are many riots going on all over the country on account of the murder of George Floyd – there is no other way to describe his death at the hands of the police. I have alluded earlier to the unsatisfactory of racial relations in our country. In expanding on the subject now, I do so by way of an episode that happened during my childhood; but in order to explain why it had the impact that it did I have to mention something of my background first.
I grew up in one of the numerous new suburbs being built in the Greater DC Metropolitan area during the late 50s and early 60s. The houses that we and other moved into had just been built and everyone in the community was by definition a new inhabitant. A few of the families in the area were black – not a great many, but there was a sufficient number to test the dispositions of everyone involved. No one seemed to care very much. Segregation was a meaningless word as far as my brother and I were concerned. The children of all of the families went to the same schools. An observer who saw children of different races at these schools playing together and, more importantly, studying together in communities such as ours might reasonably conclude that there was every hope for more harmonious racial relations in the rising generation.
Children, of course, do not often realize that their circumstances are not universal and in some cases may not even be particularly usual. At one point my parents took my brother and I on a road trip to visit our relatives in Miami Beach, FL. As we traveled we stopped at a gas station to refuel and also to use the restrooms. We went to the area indicated and there we were confronted by three doors with the following labels:
MEN WOMEN COLORED
My brother and I couldn’t believe it. We stared at the labels in mingled horror and fascination. I was nine at the time and my brother was six, but we knew – instinctively, without prompting – that we were gazing upon a great evil. But how was this possible, we asked, turning anxiously to our parents. Surely there was a mistake somewhere. And our parents had to tell us, sadly, that it was not only possible but quite a frequent occurrence in our country. So we had to turn away, sad, frustrated, repelled, thoroughly infused with a sense of hopelessness.
Even more depressing was the realization that was thrust upon me some twenty years later: that you soon get used to it. When I began work as a technical writer for an engineering project I fell into conversation with one of the engineers, who was about my age and who had grown up in South Carolina. I’m not sure how the subject came up, but in the course of our conversation I mentioned this episode and I was quite unprepared for the nonchalance of her reply. “Oh, yes,” she said. “That’s how things were. I just made up my mind that whenever I left the house I would always use the bathroom first, so that I’d never have to use the public restrooms.”
It is not too much to say that I simply gaped at her. And the reaction came: of course, she did the right thing; how else do you deal with a situation like that? It’s so difficult to imagine such a scenario: knowing that every time you ventured out of doors you could be brought up against such a blatant reminder that there were people – and one’s own countrymen! – who looked upon you as sub-human.
Eventually, of course, the Jim Crow laws were overturned, the segregation in federal offices introduced by Woodrow Wilson (may his bones rot!) has been eliminated, and the justices of the Supreme Court actually managed to come to the astonishing conclusion, in the Loving vs. Virginia case, that the state has no business in interfering with two people who wish to marry. Nowadays inter-racial marriage carries no particular stigma; on the contrary, mixed-race unions account for about 15% of marriages in the U.S. Theoretically, at least, the difficulties that confronted black men and women in earlier generations have been smoothed away. And yet . . .
Various accounts have surfaced after the Amaury case and Floyd’s murder, discussing the difficulties undergone in the course of daily living as a black man or woman in the United States. For example, one man, a university professor, was held by the police because someone had reported an assault and had given a rather unspecific description of the assailant’s physical characteristics. Such scanty details that were given could have applied to him. All very well so far; the police were bound to follow up any leads they had. But they immediately set traps for him in the course of their interrogation. At one point he was requested to produce identification. Now if I had been in such a situation, I would automatically have reached into my pocket to produce the wallet containing my identification cards. He, however, found it necessary to tell them, as a preliminary, “I will be obliged to reach into my pocket in order to produce what you need,” and only after he had received explicit permission to put his hand in his pocket to draw out the wallet did he feel it safe to do so. Had he not taken this precaution, he could readily have been accused of threatening the police – they might have claimed that they thought he was reaching for a weapon and thereby would have justified any amount of violence in continuing their interrogation.
There is also the account of a white woman with a black husband who, like me, was reared to be perfectly unsuspicious and had to undergo a painful learning process of behaving in such a way as to give the police no excuse to pull them over while driving – making certain, for instance, that the license tags were up-to-date, whereas before her marriage she would not have been overly concerned if they had expired for a day or so. But after her marriage she became very punctilious in such matters to ensure that the police would not be able to use a trivial traffic violation as an excuse to subject her husband to a cross-examination.
If accounts like these are to be believed, and they certainly seem plausible, black men and women must daily employ various defensive stratagems to prevent awkward confrontations with the police from arising, maneuvers that would never occur to me to use. My black friends have not complained of such casual discrimination to me, but of course these issues are not likely to come up in casual conversation. Probably, like my engineer acquaintance during the days of the Jim Crow laws, they regard such matters as the natural state of things and have gotten used to it. I hesitate to ask them about it directly, for what is the use of making them uncomfortable? Almost certainly they would shift about uneasily in response and ask me to change the subject.
It would appear that, despite the legal changes, attitudes in the U.S. are not greatly in advance of what I witnessed in childhood. Those labels that relegate black men and women to a separate bathroom may no longer exist, but there are only too many people who would be happy to restore them. And their number seems to be growing daily.
The rioting will make matters still worse. Whatever the root cause, the protests have become an excuse for unbridled looting. Store owners have lost their entire stock in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, Seattle, Indianapolis, and Atlanta. Violent encounters between the protestors and the police have become commonplace, and the National Guard has been called in to restore order in numerous neighborhoods. Most of the cities are employing curfews.
It seems so strange to read and hear reports about these things in an area where there is no hint of violence of any kind. The weather was lovely today, in the mid-70s, not at all humid, with clear skies and sunlight shining through the chinks between the leaves of the trees. It was a beautiful day in late spring, to all appearances peaceful and serene, without a suggestion of the violence just a few miles away or of the virus that it still ravaging the country.
Today’s statistics as of 9:00 PM — # of cases worldwide: 6,262,422; # of deaths worldwide: 373,848; # of cases U.S.: 1,837,170; # of deaths U.S.: 106,195. Peru has just surpassed Turkey in its case count and is now tenth on the list of nations with the highest counts. Chile’s incidence rate is now over 0.5% (more than one in two hundred). Mexico’s case count is also increasing exponentially; it is now fifteenth on the list.