Sanitizing Racism In The Age of Corona

Sanitizing Racism In The Age of Corona 

by Desiree Fernandez 

Before you step outside, if you dare, to get some fresh air, to hear the sounds of birds, hums of cars and whispers of your neighbors, you arm yourself with a mask. Now this mask is different than putting on a face of makeup or codeswitching. It’s a literal mask—a medical or cloth mask. You wear it to protect yourself, to protect others, and to protect against. But what are you protecting yourself from? The obvious answer, is Covid-19. Another answer is perhaps by wearing the mask, you are protecting yourself from everyone, from the past, from the judgement. 

Whenever someone wore a mask, there was always an underlying judgement that followed. If you wore a mask, especially if you were Asian which is ironic given this pandemic, then you were assumed to be sick, to be avoided. If you wore a mask or any facial covering as a person of color, you were a criminal, which is interesting because isn’t being sick now criminalized if not sympathized? If you are sick, a slight clearing of the throat, running of the nose, sweat dripping down your head, people avoid you like the plague, because you are a walking plague. Perhaps that’s a little dramatic, but this is a similar reaction to racism. We distance ourselves from the people we fear, the people that might make us sick, that might kill us. Six feet apart—this protocol doesn’t seem foreign to me, a woman of color who has been raised in predominately white neighborhoods. 

Coronavirus has possibly created an even playing field. We are all vulnerable, susceptible to this virus. No one is better than or better immune to it. Wearing this mask is not only an attempt to protect oneself from the virus, but it’s also decriminalizing the recognition of one’s face. Our face is what identifies us. It’s what’s on our ID, our passport, our social media. It’s what people look at and create from. It has been months since many of us has seen a whole persons face in public. We are only exposed to it in the private, whether at home or Zoom/Facetime. So how does this distort how we portray bodies, flesh? Does the covering of the mouth, only to see the eyes, dehumanize us or make us more relatable to each other? 

This virus perhaps is a double edge sword to the sanitization of racism. Sanitization has always been a violent process, tend to make bodies more white and pure. This act of sanitization is what my ancestors trembled against. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons we are all afraid. We are fighting a disease, fighting to stay clean, but what will we be after we have washed our hands of mistake and ignorance? The armor we wear, the mask across our mouths, momentarily silences the violence on bodies while this virus continues to affect so many minoritarian subjects.

Since the earliest days of Covid-19 in the US, the Chinese community has been targeted and accused as the cause for this pandemic, terrorizing them. Media and POTUS Donald Trump has taken the Chinese body as the mascot for this deadly virus, labeling it the “Chinese virus” and later accusing China as the reason the economy is failing. A group of people, outcasted and accused, for the death of hundreds of thousands of peoples and the economy? Are we really surprised? Other minoritarian bodies, specifically the black body, has been hailed for wearing or not wearing a mask and then further harassed by police. This virus is acting as a catalyst to further accuse and other marked bodies that have been deemed “dangerous”. Police are more suspicious because all bodies “look suspicious” even though wearing a mask is not only a safety precaution, but also the law. 

Can a body ever be undifferentiated, unable to be marked or perceived as different than other human beings? Not only are the flowers blossoming, but Xenophobia is also flourishing. Bodies marking bodies, flesh covered yet seen as dangerous, borders closing, “crime” increasing. So what is going to be the aftermath? While the number of new cases in New York City is decreasing, I am thinking of how we will remember this time. Will we shutter at the sight of a mask or latex gloves on the ground? Will we still distance ourselves when someone sneezes? Will we become use to the isolation and crave the silence? Will 6 feet just be another meme or a similar effect of 9/11’s “Never Forget”? 

When we think of performing or replaying memory, we often think that it’s similar to dipping a brush into paint, our brush acting as our consciousness and the paint as the memories, the archive. But what if instead, we think of remembering like a fountain pen. There is a labor of dipping the pen into a pot of ink, or changing out the ink with risk of it leaking on your fingers. There is a technique that is involved when writing with a fountain pen; you must hold the pen a certain way and press down with specific force. Sometimes the ink (memory) just floods out or rather splatters across the page. Sometimes, the ink doesn’t come out at all and you must shake or dip again. How will the your ink of corona move across the page?

There is pre-memory, a memory that came before. Then there is post and prosthetic memory. The pre-memory of body politics carries and becomes exaggerated as this virus hits lower income and minority communities the hardest due to the socio economics of “essential workers.” Moving forward, what will the mask mark for the future? What is the trauma after this is all over, if it ever ends? This is when post-memory, the trauma, comes in. Prosthetic memory is the “truth”/memory that the media creates that is not one’s own. Will we remember coronavirus from what the media has created, as a xenophobic inducing pandemic that resulted in thousands of deaths or would we remember it through our post-memory, the days of isolation and mask wearing? Regardless, this pandemic will be remembered even if there is no witness. It will be remembered from the walls of our home and/or consuming the news. 

During the spring months, percepticide does not exist. We can’t turn a blind eye, we can’t turn off this distortion of time. It’s all over the news, our social media. The current status of the virus is all around us, from the masks that we wear to the ghost town that was once the hustling bustling city that never slept. And it seems that we still can’t sleep through the terror, through the grief and the trauma. We are just waiting. We are waiting in the quiet for something to change, to one day walk outside and see everyone’s full faces.