One of the worst failures of our public schools is having people think racism is about saying the n word with a hard r and not a system of policies/actions that perpetually disadvantages black people

Maybe this crisis will introduce people to the work we’ve been doing all along

I highly recommended the @PBS doc East Lake Meadows. It shows how governments & businesses literally created many of the urban racial disparities we see today through racist housing policy/practices

( @nhannahjones & other twitter faves make cameos) https://to.pbs.org/2JSKSBS 

And while we often think of the 2008 crash as a radicalizing moment for Millennials, Hurricane Katrina was really affirmative for many black Millennials in seeing what govt malpractice looks like

There, too, the effects of housing policy was compounded by a disaster

Fast forward, I may never forget one exchange at the beginning of NYC’s response to coronavirus that crystallized the racial disparities we’re seeing now.

I’m at the edge of a Brooklyn neighborhood where just a few blocks separate the projects from multi million dollar homes

And just a few stops can give you an entirely different commuting experience

I came to work around the time we were told not to mass gather, and working from home was becoming an option. My white co-worker (who lives closer to Manhattan) lauded the empty trains. I was shocked.

Nothing about my commute changed. It was packed as ever.

That’s bc I enter at a point where Brooklyn becomes less gentrified and people are coming deep from predominantly black hoods like East NY to go to work.

This heat map shows more diverse outer boroughs are precisly where cases are highest. My train line is comprised almost entirely of the darkest purple, from the Rockways to the East River...til you get to Manhattan.

My train car was full of black riders. We were all making ourselves more at risk.

Many of them don’t have options to work from home. Others don’t have the type of jobs that give much paid time off. Others are in “essential” jobs that will cut off their only source of income.

New Deal era housing policy factors here, too, bc of the type of jobs many lower income Black New Yorkers must take bc housing policy also literally extracted wealth and created wealth gaps that turn into education gaps that become opportunity/income gaps

We’re dealing with a whole ecosystem of problems that have calcified for generations in mutliple major cities through a petri dish of govt antipathy, apathy, explicit racism and private sector practices and greed.

These are the results of an America more inclined to declare itself post-racial than address racism. Like waving the Mission Accomplished banner while a war was still waging in our communities.

Now it’s in our hospitals. And for the world to see.