No, We Are Not All In This Together

The universal mantra of this pandemic is that, “We Are All In This Together.” It’s a nice slogan. But, no, we are not all in this together.

There are two separate Americas enduring this crisis, and they are suffering completely separate fates. More than 100,000 Americans have now died of Covid-19, and around 60% of them are black or other people of color. In New Mexico, for instance, Navajo Indians, who constitute 11% of the state’s population, account for a majority of the state’s virus fatalities.

Likewise, 25% of Americans have lost their jobs and over 40 million Americans have applied for unemployment. Again, black and brown Americans constitute a disproportionate number of the unemployed. Professionals in higher paid occupations, disproportionately white, continue working via computer from home. Service workers, those who work at jobs where they must provide a physical service, and who are disproportionately people of color, do not have the luxury of continuing to work from their homes. They are the majority of those 40 million applying for unemployment benefits. They are the majority of those now facing eviction because they cannot pay their rent or their mortgages. They are the majority of those lining up for miles at food banks for the free food they can no longer afford.

The pandemic has ripped the veil from America’s vastly unequal economy. It has not only revealed the vast rift between the rich and the comfortable and the poor and near-poor who have always struggled from weekly paycheck to weekly paycheck, it has widened that rift. An unequal America will be even more unequal once this pandemic has passed into history. It will be more evident than ever before that we live in two separate and unequal Americas: The comfortable and mostly white America, and the other America, the struggling and drowning America, mostly comprised of people of color.

So, despite the Pollyanna tone of the pandemic’s universal mantra that, “We Are All In This Together,” the reality is that, no, we are not all in this together.