1/9. I’ve gone back-and-forth on whether and how to say this on here, so bear with me; my thoughts on this aren’t fully “polished” yet (you’ll see why). I’ve spent a lot of time over the past two weeks talking to reporters about racial and economic health disparities in the US.

2/9. Due to the pandemic’s disparate impacts, my research on this topic- which some used to discourage (they thought my “basic social cognition” research was more important)– has suddenly become “relevant”…as if there was a time when race and class weren’t relevant in the US.

3/9. It’s been a really weird experience, to sit at home on Zoom and walk people through some of these statistics. I’m always a little shocked when people are surprised by these patterns. As one reporter put it “it’s like [policy-maker] woke up this morning and learned about…

4/9. health disparities for the first time.” It’s difficult to understand some people’s ignorance about these things when they are some of the most persistent patterns in the nation’s history. To go from those calls to calls with my family members, many of whom are front-line

5/9. essential workers, is like bouncing between two different universes. One in which people are surprised by the abstract statistics, another in which I mention those statistics and the people living them are surprised that anyone is surprised– they see it everyday…or saw it.

6/9. Yea…some of my own relatives have gotten covid-19, and some (I’ve learned within the past 24 hours) have died from it. The thing that gets me (I’m oscillating between anger and sadness) is just how predictable this was/is; not covid-19 per se, but that the burden of so many

7/9. diseases is borne disproportionately by those on the margins of our society. Scholars have been writing about this for decades. People in these communities- in my community- have been crying out for centuries. How many more studies do we have to do?

8/9. How many more papers do we have to write? How many more interviews do we have to do? How many more people have to die before we, as a nation, do something? I’ve spent a quarter of my life now doing the studies, writing the papers, doing the interviews, hoping that…

9/9. SOMETHING would happen. But it seems like, to many, these are just “troubling” statistics; but not troubling enough to warrant action. That, I don’t know what to do about. So I guess I’ll get back on the academic hamster wheel. At least that helps to pay for medical expenses