Our race is “human”

What is it like, this time we are spending distancing ourselves from others and trying to avoid falling victim to Covid-19? I wrote this piece last Thursday, but it still applies:

I’m finding it peaceful and even quietly enjoyable. Johns Hopkins/SAIS was already scheduled to be on Spring Break, so I wasn’t expecting to be working as usual. I had planned to spend most of the 10 days in San Antonio and Atlanta enjoying my children, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren. Canceling that trip was a big disappointment.

But staying at home, trying to catch up on both professional and personal business, getting ready to teach via Zoom and talk to students on Skype, ordering supplies to be delivered, occasionally puttering in the garden, listening to music, and watching a bit more TV than usual is not a bad way to wait out an epidemic. Our long walks in the neighborhood are particularly enjoyable.

Yesterday it was a mid-afternoon 4.5 miles. The weather was sunny and warm, so lots of people were out in this suburban-seeming part of the District of Columbia. Parents and children, many on bikes and scooters. There was little traffic. Rush hour was noticeably less frenetic than usual. People are saying hello as they pass, but they don’t tarry, and some go out of their way to maintain that six feet of separation.

It is all deceptively non-threatening. You wouldn’t know what we are all doing is trying to avoid a virus that could threaten our lives, especially but not exclusively in my age group. I imagine sooner or later most of us will get it, but it would be better not to get sick at the peak of the epidemic, when hospital beds will be full and personnel scarce.

Meanwhile our various governments–Federal, state and local–are trying hard to recover from a late start caused by the lack of testing capability and the associated contact tracing. Even now, tests are few compared to countries that have been successful in responding effectively, like South Korea and Hong Kong. Hospitals are approaching capacity in some urban centers, but there is still a long way to go and the system isn’t likely to be able to meet the demand.

For months President Trump tried to talk down the risk, in an apparent effort to calm the stock market and limit the economic damage. But the virus wasn’t listening. His failure to properly prepare and react is now costing trillions as the economy slows markedly, people lose their jobs, and businesses start to go under. He wants checks sent to big US companies and American taxpayers, hoping that $1200 or so will assuage their anger before the November election. He is far less concerned with those who have no health insurance (he is still trying to undo Obamacare in the courts), without having even hinted at what would replace it), those who can’t live on unemployment insurance, and those who don’t get sick or family leave.

Yesterday I received our census questionnaire, which I happily filled out on line. But I was not happy with the choices for defining my race and national origins. I grew up in an America where white Anglo-Saxon protestants (WASPs) were the majority. Jews and even Catholics did not fit there. We were minorities. Now I am expected to check that I am “white.” How did that happen? There just weren’t enough Anglo-Saxon protestants, so the majority expanded itself by accepting non-Anglo-Saxons, Catholics, and anyone else who would accept the label “white.”

That label however doesn’t just refer to the color of my skin, which admittedly is whiter and pinker than my wife’s or my children’s, who are all “black.” “White” is increasingly an ethnic identity, one that has taken on a political significance in Trump’s America. He has declared himself a “nationalist,” by which he meant to convey to his supporters “white” nationalist, or in the terminology of my youth a white supremacist or racist. I don’t care to be associated, however remotely, with that ethnic identity. So I checked “other” on the census form and wrote in for race “human.” I hope many others will do likewise.

In my America, I’m pleased to say, there are many who might. The folks I see walking in this quiet neighborhood are a rainbow of colors and faiths. Their yard signs proclaim welcome to others, no matter where they come from or what language they speak. I’m pleased to live among such people. We believed Covid-19 was real from the first. We also think global warming is real and caused in large part to human activity. We are appalled at the disinformation our President is spreading in an effort to coverup his own culpability for a disastrous epidemic.

Human is our “race.”