Consider This from NPR - Americans Want To Go Back To Normal, But 'Normal' Is What Got Us Here

Episode Date: August 4, 2020

After rising for weeks, the rate of daily COVID-19 cases in the U.S. has started to level off. But now, just as we saw in the spring, the country is facing a spike in deaths. In the new issue of The Atlantic, two stories share the cover. One, by Ed Yong, is about the pandemic. The other, by Ibram Kendi, is about racism in America. Both ask the same question: how did it come to this? Email the show at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. It looks like new cases of the coronavirus in the U.S. are starting to level off. For now. The reason for this is that big southern states and California started closing things up again after cases spiked in June and July. But now we're seeing how those case spikes mean a rise in the number of people dying.

On average, for the last week, more than 1,000 Americans have died every day. It's giving them a false sense of security. I think it's under control. I'll tell you what. How? 1,000 Americans are dying a day. It's giving them a false sense of security. I think it's under control. I'll tell you what. How? A thousand Americans are dying a day. They are dying. That's true. And it is what it is. But that doesn't mean we aren't doing everything we can. It's under control as much as you can control it.

This is a horrible plague. The president said in an interview with Axios that aired on Monday, a thousand Americans dead. Every day, it is what it is. Coming up, how we ended up in this new normal that should not feel normal at all. This is Consider This from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers. It's Tuesday, August 4th. So the two biggest stories of the summer have been the pandemic and the protest movement that started after George Floyd was killed by police at the end of May. Both of these stories are about how people of color live and die in America.

You know, I would say if you look at who's hardest hit in L.A. County, and I don't think we're unique, you're going to find our Latinx, Latino population is the hardest hit, followed closely by Blacks and African-Americans, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islanders. That's Barbara Ferrer, director of the L.A. County Department of Public Health. L.A. County has had more cases than anywhere else in America, almost 200,000 of them. But it's true what she said. L.A. is not unique.

All over the country, more people of color are getting sick. I think it is driven by workplace exposures, and then people go back to their homes with multigenerational family members living together. It's the perfect storm for a lot of spread. It's also the perfect storm for more people of color dying. In Washington, D.C., for example, Black people make up 47 percent of confirmed cases in the city, but 80 percent of the people who have died from the virus.

It's the same in a lot of cities. And that's because the virus, in so many ways, makes racial inequities that were already there even worse. And I think the question has been sort of growing in intensity and importance of how we got to this point. Ibram Kendi is a professor and director of the Boston University Center for Anti-Racist Research. How did we get to the point when so many Americans have died of COVID-19 and so many Americans are demonstrating against police violence or racism? Ibram Kendi tried to answer those questions in a cover story for The Atlantic. It was actually one of two cover stories.

Many of the racial inequalities that Abrams describes have all been found, exploited, and worsened by the pandemic. That's Ed Yong, science writer for The Atlantic, who wrote the other cover story. And their two stories, about the pandemic and about racism, both ask the same question. How did it get to this? I talked to my colleague Ari Shapiro. To start, what do you think these two struggles that we're in right now have in common? Ed? I think that underlying both of these pieces is this idea that America is riddled with systemic problems that have really come to light in a very dramatic way this year. The pandemic, for example, much of what has happened with the

pandemic and America's failure to control it certainly is due to short-term problems like the failure of leadership from the Trump administration. But the virus has also torn apart so many existing vulnerabilities, weaknesses in our healthcare system, our chronic underfunding of public health. So while, yes, so many people are thinking about going back to normal and wondering how that could happen, we have to understand that normal led to this, that normal created a situation where the world was ever more prone to a pandemic, but ever less ready for it. And so we have to craft something better. And that begins with understanding the full extent of all the systemic problems that have led to this moment.

Ibram? have led to this moment. Ibrahim? Yeah, and I think our stories together really chart a path forward that allows us to never have to reach this point again. Because, you know, this is not a place we should be, and it's not a place we had to be, you know, if we would have made different choices. You've each read each other's pieces, and I think taking them together really underscores the amount of overlap between these two issues of the pandemic and systemic racism. Is there a detail that each of you could identify in the other story that you think helps inform the article you yourself wrote? Oh, well, for me, I write about the way in which Donald Trump and not only his support of racist policies and not only his expressions of racist ideas, but even his consistent denial that those policies and ideas are racist held up a mirror to American society in which they saw themselves. They saw themselves

sort of trafficking in racist ideas and policies and then consistently saying, I'm not racist. And Americans didn't like what they saw. Through reading Ed's piece, it seems to me that in many ways, the COVID-19 pandemic held up a mirror to America. And Americans did not like what they saw. And Americans are coming to grips with the way in which we've under sort of resourced our public health systems, the way in which we have allowed for a healthcare system that's based in greed. You know, that mirror, I think, is being held up, you know, in two sides, both by this current administration and even the coronavirus pandemic. Interesting.

Ed? I think one of the bits in Ibram's piece that really resonated with me was his personal story. There's a point when Ibram talks about a cancer diagnosis, and he writes beautifully, I had two choices, denial in death or recognition in life. America now has two choices. And I think there's something beautiful there about the need to confront brutal reality, whether you are an individual or whether you are a society. And I think that

his story reveals that these issues of health and of race cannot be differentiated, cannot be separated. You both point to President Trump as a source of harm, but also as somebody who helped America see the deep-seated problems in this country. And so what impact do you think the outcome of the election is going to have on this question of whether the U.S. confronts these deep-seated problems after the immediate crisis has subsided? Well, for me, it really depends on whether people view Donald Trump as the personification of racism, such that if he, let's say, loses the election and departs the White House, racism is departing America, or whether they see him as a racist, as someone who has instituted racist policies and expressed racist ideas, and that there are others within our policymaking bodies, within our institutions.

And there are policies that we need to get rid of too, not just one person. And so if they believe that it's essentially one person, when that one person leaves, they'll imagine America yet again is post-racial, and they will then imagine that there's no more work to be done. And then this racial pandemic, that is, the disparities will only continue. Americans won't even know that it's still harming so many people. Ed? I think Ibram is completely right. Racism wasn't founded in America in November 2016, and it's not going to go away in November 2020 if Biden wins. Same with many of the problems that the pandemic exposed and exploited. Yes, Trump's lack of leadership and all his numerous personal failings were huge central problems in this pandemic. But they were not the only ones that mattered.

And part of the point of my piece is to say that there were a lot of pre-existing faults. If we go back to a place where hospitals are still overstretched, where public health is still underfunded, where inequities are still unaddressed, and social media is still completely unregulated and allowed to provide misinformation at a greater pace than information, we'll still be weak. We will still be vulnerable to the next pandemic. And so the November 2020 election is absolutely pivotal. But given that Biden is sort of running on a campaign of going back to the good old days, he needs to be confronted throughout this campaigning process, and should he win throughout his presidency, about remaking those good old days, because those good old days led to where we are now. We really do need to think about and push for a much better, more resilient, more equitable world.

Ed Yong and Ibram Kendi, talking to my colleague Ari Shapiro. Additional reporting in this episode from our colleagues at All Things Considered and Morning Edition. For more news, download the NPR One app or listen to your local public radio station. Supporting that station makes this podcast possible. I'm Kelly McEvers. We'll be back with more tomorrow. Until recently, Edmund Hong says he didn't speak out against racism because he was scared. My parents told me not to speak up because they were scared. But I'm tired of this.

Listen now on the Code Switch podcast from NPR.