Whiteness As A Covenant

By John Kamaal Sunjata

White supremacy, whatever its latest evolution, whatever its latest iteration, ensures that one man’s apocalypse is always another man’s paradise. The blessings and promises that whiteness bestows upon its “chosen people” are inextricably linked to absolute, total, and seamless damnation of generations and generations of racialized people. Whiteness has fabricated itself in its own image; therefore, in its own eyes, whiteness is divinity. Whiteness is perfect, without spot, wrinkle, or blemish—whiteness is god. White people are thus imbued with power and dominion over the Earth and all its living creatures, especially inferior “species” of humanity that the racialized descend from. The mandate by which white people are empowered is the Covenant of Whiteness.

This Covenant is more than a simple social contract, as “contracts” always have a definite end, covenants are forever. It is not reducible to a ritualistic prostration of individual whites or even mere flagellation of racial capitalism, but it is a totalizing affair. It has created a planet hostile to racialized people, it has encircled not only our tangible realities but captured our imaginations. For us, salvation comes through death because only by reaching Heaven can we live a life comparable to what white people presently live on Earth. We live in a world of their creation and our souls are damned from birth—we are permanently forsaken, and we have inherited the original sin of darkness. Covenants are always solemnized through blood and every white person is covered in the blood—of Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. The racialized have a permanent spiritual connection to the Earth because so much of our own blood cries out from the ground. The brutality of whiteness guarantees our mourning is ceaseless, it guarantees that our graveyards are evergreen from our tears. Our cries have no resting place because we never get a rest. Under whiteness, many are culled, but few are chosen.

When you are truly a god, you can never lose your anointing. When you are truly a god, your authority and capacity may never be extinguished by lesser “species” of being. The problem posed by whiteness is that white people—the instruments by which the racial-colonial project is maintained—are semipotent, not omnipotent. The prospect of lost “anointing” is a terrifying prospect for white people as it strikes at the heart of the Covenant they are conscripted under. It reveals that their blessings are not the result of good works; therefore, their overflow is not predestined. Their divinity is not destiny, but the latest destination of productive forces in the historical thrust of the racial capitalist political economy. It is only through the consistent deployment of violence and terror that whiteness has given its covenant form and substance. 

Whenever the racialized ingratiate ourselves to the production of whiteness, we uphold the moral superiority of a system premised on our enslavement and our genocide. We do the unthinkable by deifying a death-dealing regime that masquerades as a moral authority on “justice” and “righteousness.” No respect should be extended to any system of racial othering that instills fear and deploys wanton destruction. Whenever we worship whiteness, we declare fealty to its false gods: racism, consumerism, and militarism. The racialized are regularly sacrificed at the altar of white supremacy, our bodies and spirits are ritualistically broken to fortify the auspices of this racial-colonial project. The racialized may be “converted” to this tyrannical religion, but no amount of repentance will make our sins—our skins—“as white as snow.”

Whiteness does not require zealots for its expansion, but stable systems only. It is fortified by the ideological and repressive apparatuses of the state formation. So long as white supremacist institutions and technologies are not critically challenged or assailed by the racialized, whiteness will continue into perpetuity. Challenges from the racialized invokes revanchism disguised as righteous indignation because nothing is more threatening to the edifice—the fragile façade—of whiteness than decolonization. For a political economy structured and articulated by whiteness, decolonization feels like the Book of Revelation coming to life and the Chosen People know their actions are desperately wicked. Whiteness forestalls insurrection by reforming the presentation of its doctrine to deceive the racialized into being congregants, true believers in whiteness. Despite its attempts at reinventing itself, whiteness has at least one defining characteristic, an immutable property: a limitless capacity to inflict infinite harms with finite resources. It maximizes cruelty at every juncture: it is as arbitrary as it is petty and as petty as it is brutal. It is premised on a dehumanizing lie that keeps the racialized in constant search of the truth: the reality of our dignity and self-worth. 

We are a disillusioned people in constant search of new life-affirming consciousness to combat the death-dealing regime of whiteness. As whiteness was bought and ratified through the blood of racialized people, our freedom will also be bought with blood. The conditions of white supremacy produces its own antagonisms, generates its own resistance; therefore, mapping out the path to its own destruction. Whiteness has prefigured its own end: it may be the alpha, but the racialized are the omega. The racialized have no path to political salvation except by decolonization, it is the way, the truth, and the life for all racialized people. Decolonization is the process by which inferior “species” of humans are elevated, the process by which “the last shall be first.” Whiteness produces false gods, decolonization produces faithful servants. The racialized must shed the blood of our oppressors, overthrow the systems of our oppression and bring truth to the well-known phrase: “the meek shall inherit the Earth.” It is through decolonization that the Covenant of Whiteness is superseded and a new Covenant takes its place. Under this new Covenant, the racialized shall sign and seal our freedom and redemption once and for all, for all at once.

Understanding the Role of Police Towards Abolitionism: On Black Death as an American Necessity, Abolition, Non-Violence, and Whiteness

{Photo credit: Ashley Landis/AP}

By Joshua Briond

In Blood In My Eye, the late great George Jackson writes: “the purpose of the chief repressive institutions within the totalitarian capitalist state is clearly to discourage and prohibit certain activity, and the prohibitions are aimed at very distinctly defined sectors of the class—and race— sensitized society. The ultimate expression of law is not order—it’s prison. There are hundreds upon thousands of laws, yet there is no social order, no social peace. Anglo-Saxon bourgeois law is tied firmly into economics[...]Bourgeois law protects property relations and not social relationships.”  And while thousands across the country take to the streets to protest state violence, in the aftermath of the public lynching of George Floyd, we have been seeing the structural reality the likes of George Jackson (amongst other Black political prisoners and revolutionaries) brilliantly and elegantly theorized on and experienced, once again holds true. 

In this moment, it is crucial to understand the role of the police at their core, as merely a hyper-militarized bottom of the barrel armed force of the ruling class. Our ruling class owned media tries to portray both state and federal level police as neutral actors enforcing public safety—when in fact their role has always served to disrupt (radical) political activity by any means necessary. The past few days have sprung speculation regarding the police and media conspiring and exporting counterinsurgency—which is clearly happening. But what if, instead, we saw policing under white supremacist capitalism as inherently and in a constant state of counterinsurgency—because such an act is how empire sustains itself—especially if we know that, historically, police have surveilled, repressed and infiltrated individuals, organizations, and political parties that they have deemed ideological enemies because their interests represent a legitimate threat to the capitalist white supremacist status quo. 

“Power responds to all threats. The response is repression. If the threat is a small one, the fascist tactic is to laugh it off, ignore it, isolate it with greater the corresponding violence from power. The only effective challenge to power is one that is broad enough to make isolation impossible, and intensive enough to cause repression to affect the normal lifestyle of as many members of the society as possible[...] Nothing can bend consciousness more effectively than a false arrest, a no-knock invasion, careless, panic-stricken gunfire.”

—George Jackson (Blood In My Eye)

The issue is not simply “police brutality.” But, the mere existence and functionality of the inherently anti-black, subservient to capital institution of polic[e/ing]. “Police brutality” like many liberalized frameworks, individualizes structural oppression and power. Such framing leaves space for reformism, as if there’s only certain aspects of policing that needs to be readdressed. It’s an undeniable fact that technically “not all cops kill” but instead of moral posturing, we can focus on the political and ideological functioning of policing in service of whiteness, capital(ism), and settler-colonialism, as being in direct contradiction of the lives and well-being of racialized, colonized, and working-class people. Focusing the problem on the mere existence of polic[e/ing], as an institutionalized direct descendant of chattel slavery previously branded ‘slave patrolling,’ we’re able to discuss the inherent (racialized & class-based) violences within the institution at-large. And it allows us to reckon with the entire institution instead of individual actors, their political or moral standing, as well as individualized notions of “justice” in the face of terror, violence, and death at the hands of the police. “Justice” under this racial capitalism, is an impossibility—an ideological liberal mystification. The scarcity in the realm of political imagination that [neo]liberalism champions leads to a reality in which many people’s analysis and understanding of “justice” is merely individualized imprisonment and tepid-at-best liberal reforms. Advancing our collective understanding beyond the individual “bad” or killer cop toward an understanding of structural violence, is crucial to building an abolitionist politic grounded in empathy and community.

We have been bombarded with dozens of videos and photos of cops kneeling, crying, giving impassioned speeches, and public displays of some of the most shallowest forms of performative solidarity—an age-old tactic wielded to “humanize” officers and neutralize the perceived threat in the protesters, while also attempting to control the media narrative —only for these same cops to turn around and within minutes unleash terror on the self-proclaimed “peaceful” protesters as they chant and march in-advocacy for the ending of Black terror and death at the hands of the police. If the mere pleading for the ruling class and its on-the-ground agents to stop massacring Black people with impunity is enough of a crime to be met with chemical warfare, “rubber” bullets, harassment, beatings, and mass imprisonment—what does that say about the functionality of these institutions? 

When we see agents of the ruling class in militarized “riot” gear, oftentimes comment sections filled with disapproval, American liberals claiming “they look like they’re in war,” and viral tweets from imperialist veterans not-so-subtly declaring that type of militancy should be preserved for Black and brown people and countries abroad—and not home. We must counter these liberal narratives by highlighting that there is no significant political, ideological, or moral difference between domestic police and the military. Both serve the same class and ideological apparatus and represent an occupying force wherever they’re stationed. The military predominantly operates as the global police of the world, or as George Jackson would call it the “international wing of repressive institutions.” But, when the domestic police are overwhelmed, they call in their big brother (US military) to help fight their battle—hand-and-hand as enemies of the people—in a mission to terrorize and politically repress racialized, colonized, and working class people. So when Trump says “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” and grants the military immunity to terrorize and shoot protesters that is nothing more than the head of empire simply carrying on the legacy of terrorists-in-chief before him, reaffirming the purpose of the mere existence of the military, as fascist enforcers of capitalist, colonial, and imperialist violence and their right to do what they already do to colonized and oppressed people in third world and global south countries. 

We must realize that we mustn’t give cops, in all forms, the benefit of the doubt or go out of our way to plead to their conscience—in which most, if not all of them lack—because their articulation of the situation at hand, as evidenced by their preparedness and tactics, is that of war. And in all of its possibly well-meaning glory, going into battle with the mindset of pleading to their (lack of) conscience or going out of your way to prove you’re one of the “good” and “peaceful” protesters—through chants and other means—won’t stop the terror of chemical warfare that will transpire when the political performance ends. The police are uncompromising in their belief in the current oppressive social order, they have legally, morally, and politically pledged their lives to it, and we must be uncompromising in our fight towards tearing it down and building anew. There’s a reason cops show up to even the most “peaceful” of protests with militarized riot gear prepared at any moment to immobilize activists, organizers, and journalists while conspiring with the media apparatus to demonize protests and all of its participants.

 “The political act is defined as criminal in order to discredit radical and revolutionary movements. A political event is reduced to a criminal event in order to affirm the absolute invulnerability of the existing order.”

 —Angela Davis (If They Come in the Morning)

The nearly non-materially existing dichotomy between “good protester” and “bad protester” or “non-violent” and “violent” are not only useless identifiers, but an unfortunate fundamental misunderstanding of the structural powers that be, at-large. The ideology of Black liberation is inherently violent to the forces of capital and white supremacy. We must move beyond the media fueled tropes rooted in colonial moral posturing, that serves no one but our ruling elites. History has shown us, it does not matter whether or not you’re a “good protester” or “bad protester,” “non-violent” or “violent,” and/or “innocent” or “guilty.” If you are for liberation for Black people, you are a threat to the interests of capitalism and white supremacy, and must be systemically repressed, by any means. To fight for the liberation of Black people, especially but not limited to the skin that has historically marked criminality, makes you an enemy of said nation who’s global economy is predicated on the terror and death of the colonial, namely Black, subject. Liberation, and the pursuit of it becomes a racialized affair under a system of colonial and imperialist domination in-which whiteness—a system of racial othering—is exclusively depicted as proximity to power and capital, which Black and other subjects of said domination have neither. It is crucial for the sustainment of this moment that we, first of all, not allow media political discourse to divide and conquer the wide variety of effective tactics that have been wielded by activists and organizers since the beginning of time; while also collectively understand the functionality of police and prisons as they are: inherently anti-Black politicized tools of the ruling elite to maintain their hegemony.

“The legal apparatus designates the Black liberation fighter a criminal, prompting Nixon, Agnew, Reagan et al. to proceed to mystify with their demagogy millions of Americans whose senses have been dulled and whose critical powers have been eroded by the continual onslaught of racist ideology. As the Black Liberation Movement and other progressive struggles increase in magnitude and intensity, the judicial system and its extension, the penal system, consequently become key weapons in the state’s fight to preserve the existing conditions of class domination, therefore racism, poverty and war.”

—Angela Davis (If They Come in the Morning)

Our understanding of non-violence should be that of an organized and meticulous tactical approach exercised by the oppressed, as opposed to a moral philosophy, endorsed and preferred by the ruling class and its agents. We never hear the ruling class, advocate for non-violence with their singular approach when they are hegemonizing and tyrannizing oppressed peoples across the globe, while being cheered on and thanked by many of its citizens. Non-violence, as a moral philosophy, in a society where violence against the marginalized is the norm—where millions are incarcerated, houseless, subjected to state sanctioned violence, and live in poverty—is, in and of itself just another form of colonial physical and ideological subjugation and therefore, violence. But, so much of non-violence is predicated on the premise of legality—despite its social and political limitations. Laws are only laws because we, whether knowingly or not, coercively consent to them. At any given time our government can utilize and maneuver the boundaries of legality and illegality as applicable to the material interests of the ruling class. What we’re seeing on live display is the state and all of its willing agents and participants are very much willing to terrorize and self-detonate than grant Black people even the slightest bit of freedom; and history has shown us it is not only appropriate but necessary to meet them with the only language that they understand. 

As Kwame Ture has noted, public pleas and non-violence only works when your opponent has a conscience, and the United States of America has none. Therefore, we must move beyond public outcries for vague calls for “love,” “unity,” and “peace,” waxing poetic, and pleading for our oppressors to somehow manage to adopt a conscience and do what goes against the very ideological and economic foundation of all their colonial institutions: stop terrorizing and killing us. We must move beyond the cycle of inaction and emotional appeals, through stagnantly and continuously debating the semantics of ‘Black Lives Matter’ and other moral and political posturing, when the reality of our situation is clear: Black lives can never truly matter under captivity of white supremacist capitalism and colonial patriarchy that directly and consequently begets Black oppression. How can it, when Black death is a necessity of racial capitalism and the institutions (such as policing and prisons) that exist to uphold it? So instead of public appeals to the ruling class and its agents to recognize the “humanity” in those relegated to slave; we recognized the reality in which racialized terror and violence is quite literally the point—as the mere existence of Black lives are in direct and inherent contradiction with the forces of capital—and a necessity for the continued maintenance of the current white supremacist capitalist, imperialist, (settler-)colonial order. It is crucial for us to remember that these institutions, namely policing and prisons, that continue to so violently persist, are merely an extension of European colonialism and slavery. 

“...with each reform, revolution became more remote[...]But if one were forced for the sake of clarity to define [fascism] in a word simple enough for all to understand, that word would be ‘reform.’” 

—George Jackson (Blood In My Eye)

The only realistic solution to a reality in which anti-Black terror, violence, and death is an inevitability to the functionality of a system, is abolition. Yet, ironically enough, the lack of political imagination, beyond the electoral strategy and reformism, and the inability to envision a world, or even country, devoid of police and prisons is rooted in (anti-Black), racialized colonial logics of the biologically determined criminal, slave, and savage. The notion that an (uncivilized) people must to be, at all times, patrolled and policed, or else chaos and violence would reign, has been used as a justification for countless structural violences on the part of European peoples since the origins of colonialism. If we know criminality is inherently racialized, one must ask themselves: when you envision the criminal and/or “evildoer,” what do you see? What do they look like? More than likely it is someone who is non-white and/or poor. This is something we have to seriously grapple with, even amongst abolitionist circles. The vast majority of people who, for whatever reason, are incapable of envisioning a world without police and prisons, are simply unwilling to interrogate the dominant ideological apparatus that we have all, in one way or another, internalized. 

Emphasizing the largely classed and gendered based nature of crime, is of the utmost importance. Crime is not an “inevitable” aspect of society, but an inevitable reaction to socio-economic and political structural forces at-large; specifically poverty being an inevitability of capitalism while sexual, gendered, and domestic violences are an inevitability of colonial patriarchy. If we combat the systems, we combat the social reactions. 

Another thing we’re witnessing is white people moralizing the looting, destruction of, and “violence” towards inanimate objects (despite the fact that white history is that of constant looting, destruction, and violence) as result of their moral, spiritual, and political ties to land, property, monuments, and capital built on genocide and slavery. Whiteness being so inextricable to the foundations of capital(ism) and ultimately property, inhibits white people’s ability to extend such an empathy to the lives of Black people. Property and capital, being so inextricable to the foundations of whiteness and the construction of race, as a whole, ushers in the reality in which they become God-like figures. White people’s existence on this planet and their understanding of the world makes so much more sense once you realize that, white people, globally, are the police. Whiteness allows and entails them the “monopoly on morality” to be such a thing. Whether it’s with foreign affairs, and their paternalistic analysis of non-white countries, which ultimately leads to the justifying the actions of their imperialist government—even from “socially conscious” white folks. Or, in the case of how they overwhelmingly believe they maintain the prerogative to dictate the ways subjects of white oppression retaliate against said oppression (though, to be fair, they technically do). But, the point is: the entire logic of whiteness, as a deliberately political and social invention, makes it such a construct that’s—under white supremacy—inseparable from the role of the state. therefore, white people assume these roles as agents of the state globally—whether subconsciously or not.

And, of course, this is why we have been subjected to countless imagery on social media of white people (and those aspiring to be white by-way-of proximity to capital, power, and “respectability”) putting their bodies and lives on the line to protect capital (and physical embodiments of it) and private property—in a way that they would never sacrifice their bodies or even time for Black lives and liberation. Such an imagery should serve as a spit in the face to not just Black people, but all persons concerned with our liberation from the chains of capital. If persons of the white race are willing to put their lives on the line for their god: property and capital, but wouldn’t bother doing such a thing for Black people: what does that say about how they see us? We’re beneath inanimate objects on the hierarchy of things worthy of protection. But, it also just goes to show that as much as the white American is willing to die for property relations and capital—by any means necessary—we must be willing to live and die for our collective liberation. Let this be a moment in which we’re reminded that if there’s ever scenario in which our ruling elites are ever in-need of more armed protectors of the white supremacist status quo there will be countless ordinary white people, at the front of the line, fully prepared to live out their white vigilante idealizations and sacrifice their lives and bodies to save settler capitalism.

COVID-19 and the Global Pandemic of Anti-Blackness

By Ewuare X. Osayande

Originally published at the author’s website.

The initial word was that Black folks couldn’t catch it. Rumors began spreading that Black people were immune to the virus. But what we have learned and continue to learn with each passing day as the global death toll rises is that Black life is quite susceptible to this virus. But not in a way that makes sense biologically. Black people are not genetically predisposed to this novel coronavirus. What we are is generationally predisposed to an anti-Black discrimination that has weakened our communal immune system leaving each of us vulnerable to this virus in ways people in other communities are not.

Wherever Black people are in this world, we exist mostly on the social margins, isolated and disproportionately impacted by policies and social practices rooted in notions of white supremacy that undermine our collective capacity for health, wealth and safety. Whether on the continent of Africa or throughout the Black Diaspora, our health and safety have been severely hampered by a global social order that has rested upon a racialized ranking that necessitates Black existence be fixed at its bottom to enable and justify whiteness to exist at its apex. Since the 1500s, this arrangement has had deadly implications for Black people. As the bodies pile in over-crowded morgues, hospital rooms and rented trailers in the US and in all the places where Black people live, this virus is exposing the pillars of that structure in ways that are as horrific as when European slave ships set sail from Africa to the Americas.

For the first month or so most of the news coverage in the United States addressed the issue without consideration of race. This was touted as a virus that was wreaking havoc on all segments of the population equally. Then Milwaukee happened. The first casualties in that predominantly white working-class city were all Black men. And when more Black people continued to die, the community there began to ask questions that forced a narrative change. Initial reports claimed that the upsurge in the Black community was due to Black people not heeding the warnings and precautions. Then as activists began to call out the contradictions in the news coverage, more honest reports emerged identifying racial disparities in all areas of life as the true underlying conditions that account for the sky rocketing rates of infection and death in Black communities.

Yet, scant attention had been paid to the impact that generations of discrimination in health care, housing, education, employment — the fundamental pillars of the society — has had on Black people’s overall health. Even less attention has been given to the need for strategies to redress the underlying social and economic constraints that continue to suffocate the life of Black possibilities and opportunity. That Black people in Flint are forced to tackle this pandemic without clean water is a telling indictment. Black communities have already been dealing with pandemic-like concerns for decades in the US. And as much as we would want to believe that money solves all problems, this virus is showing us that wealth or its lack is not much of a deciding factor.

Less than a week after Milwaukee, officials in the wealthiest predominantly Black county in the country, Prince George’s County in Maryland, were rushing to meet the surge in expected hospitalizations as a result of the virus spread. A few days later, the county had amassed the largest concentration of positive cases in the state.

These disparate conditions facing African Americans are further compounded by the everyday racism that puts Black life at risk. Despite the directives from all levels of government for every person to cover their nose and mouth when in public, video footage of Black people being accosted and harassed by police are seen with a regularity that is beyond baffling. Some show Black persons escorted out of grocery stores under claims of looking suspicious. In the videos we see them being followed by police as they exit stores as white customers enter wearing the exact same masks on their faces. The very racism that is responsible for the weakened immune systems of Black people due to stress and anxiety have not shown any signs of reprieve in this time of extreme grieving.

For most Black people, there is no sanctuary. There is no salvage from the turmoil of being turned away at the very places established to provide care. Each week new stories emerge on social media and national news outlets of Black people dying just days after being denied admission at hospitals despite showing symptoms of the virus.

At the time of this writing, the Black mortality rate from this Corona-virus is more than twice that of Latinos and Asians and almost three times the rate of white mortality in the US. According to the APM Research Lab, “in some places, the multiple between Black and White mortality rates greatly exceeds the 2.6 overall figure that we’ve constructed from all available data for the nation. In Kansas and Wisconsin, Black residents are 7 times more likely to die than White residents. In Washington D.C., the rate among Blacks is 6 times higher than Whites, while in Michigan and Missouri, it is 5 times greater. In Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, New York State, Oregon and South Carolina, Blacks are 3–4 times more likely to die of the virus than Whites.” This is incomprehensible.

African-Americans represent approximately 13 percent of the US population. In the UK, the Black population is less than 5 percent, yet the Black mortality rate from the coronavirus is running at more than three times the rate of whites there, far outdistancing other minority and immigrant groups in the process. The London-based Institute of Fiscal Studies has released a study that attempts to get at an explanation for these stark disparities. What the researchers are clear on is that Black workers in Britain are over-represented in “key worker roles,” what here in the US would be considered essential and front-line workers. What these studies have yet to get clear on is how anti-black racism, itself, is a key factor.

Britain’s own prime minister, Boris Johnson, whom many consider a Trump knock-off, recently recovered from a COVID-19 infection that had him on life-support. Yet, even his near-death experience has not led to the creation of a plan for the most impacted communities. In the land that not too long ago tried to remove its Black citizens, British leaders are lax in their concern for Black life.

Back here in the states, all concern for Black life has been overlooked as attention has been focused on the spectacle of armed white militias and white evangelicals storming Democratically-run state capitols demanding that their governors reopen the economy. Trump, for his part, calls these noose-wielding, swastika wearing, confederate flag waving Americans “very good people” and encourages governors to “give a little.” Yet Trump has not given much of any support to communities ransacked by this virus. In fact, the governor of Maryland has reportedly put the national guard on watch of essential PPE stockpiles to block Trump’s efforts at intercepting state supply. Re-opening state economies and public facilities en masse right now would amount to a national death sentence for Black America.

That death sentence has already been enacted unofficially in Brazil. In the country with the highest population of Black people in the diaspora, Black people are dying at rates that dwarf all other communities there. First brought to the country by the wealthy returning to major cities where Black people work in menial jobs and as house servants, the virus has now spread into the over-crowded favelas where residents live without running water and proper sanitation.

In many ways, the Brazilian government mirrors that of the US response. Both nations are led by capitalists who came to power with claims to clean up government corruption with campaigns mired in rightwing conservative rhetoric with winks to white nationalists and militia groups. Both nations have class-based economies that keep Black and Brown workers locked in poverty, discrimination, intimidation and violence, where police regularly engage in flagrant acts of brutality, assault and abuse. None of this coincidence. Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro flaunt their friendship before the world. Their strategic alliance as political leaders are linked in a whiteness that revels in anti-black violence that is both rhetorical and real. Both men have dismissed the guidance of medical experts on how to reduce the spread in their respective countries. Touting a tough-guy image reminiscent of Mussolini, Bolsonaro has gone as far as making impromptu appearances in densely populated areas as public acts of disregard of the pandemic. But this is not about lack of understanding or ignorance. Both leaders were receiving briefs months before the virus’ arrival on their respective shores. These are malicious acts representative of a political class that seeks to coddle a Christian evangelical base that has long kept social distance from science as they await the return of their white savior. For them, this pandemic is prophecy fulfilled.

Yet, even science has not been the friend of Black people during this pandemic. At the height of the crisis, when governments were desperate to find potential cures, two French “medical experts” went on live TV with one, Dr. Jean-Paul Mira (who heads up an intensive care unit in a Paris hospital), saying, “If I can be provocative, shouldn’t we be doing this study in Africa, where there are no masks, no treatments, no resuscitation?” Although this was met with some criticism from various sectors, the fact that two esteemed doctors would casually call for experimenting on a population of people is more than revolting. It speaks to the kind of anti-blackness that has plagued African populations since France colonized most of the continent. It speaks to a world that is willing to promote experts and leaders willing to push the envelope of acceptable parameters of denigration of Black lives. It shows us how little progress has been made since the 1921 publication of René Maran’s classic anti-colonial novel, Batouala, in which the lead character says, “We are nothing but flesh out of which taxes may be ground. … The white men are killing us slowly.”

But perhaps nothing shows the inhumane levels of anti-blackness in this time of COVID-19 than the experiences of Africans in China.

Despite being the target of Trump’s racist campaigns that seek to deflect blame for his abysmal failures to curtail this virus’ impact onto the Chinese government, China has concocted its own racist narrative which has targeted Africans throughout China. Video footage of Africans kicked out of their places of residence onto the streets without any means of support from local or national agencies sent shock-waves of anger throughout Africa. In Guangzhou there have been cases of Africans having their passports taken by police further jeopardizing their safety. Conditions deteriorated so terribly that rumors began to spread of African officials planning to send planes to return their countrymen and women back home.

The African presence in China is a direct result of the strategic inroads the Chinese government has made with African countries such as Kenya and Nigeria. Since becoming Africa’s largest trade partner more than a decade ago, China has invested billions in infrastructure development with an emphasis on port and railroad construction. Yet, what is clear is that these investments will do little to change the excessive class-stratification and extreme levels of income disparity that exist throughout Africa.

These recent events suggest a pattern of abuse all too familiar to African workers and migrants in search of a financial foothold in a global economy predicated on an exploitation that disregards their humanity to the point of death. The world may have shuttered when Trump compared countries in African to excrement, but shitty is a most accurate term to describe the response around the world to the Black COVID-19 mortality rate.

At the time of this writing, more Black people have now died in the US from this coronavirus than were lynched during segregation. Never in a white supremacist’s wildest dreams could they have imagined a plague that would wipe out thousands of Black lives in a matter of a couple of months. When the germs clear and the air is breathable again without fear, this moment in human history will be marked by the toll it has taken on Black life. It will reveal a turbulent world economic order crumbling on the backs of an essential Black labor pool kept at subsistence levels of health with no sufficient safeguards in place. Will all that may be uncertain and unknowable about our world right now, one thing is for sure — the pandemic of anti-blackness, its symptoms and effects, will remain long after the coronavirus COVID-19 has come and gone.

Ewuare X. Osayande is a writer and activist. The author of several books, his latest is a collection of poetry entitled Black Phoenix Uprising. Learn more about his work at Osayande.org.