2020: The Year We Couldn’t Breathe

 2020 may well be remembered as the year we couldn’t breathe. The beginning of this year saw the world succumb to Covid-19, a novel virus that predominantly attacks the respiratory system. As we saw the numbers of infected climb, alarm bells started to ring about the sufficiency of respirators as hospitals began to be overrun with cases. Respirators are the lifeline for those no longer able to breathe on their own and it seemed we may not have enough of them.

2020 is also the year that a young black man George Floyd uttered the heartbreaking plea “please officer, I can’t breathe” as he lay face down on the pavement with a policeman’s knee ground into his neck. He died. There was no respirator.

After many weeks of isolation to slow the spread of the virus, people began to protest. They protested the masks that they were required to wear, complaining that they made it difficult to breathe. Crowds of predominantly white people armed with AK47s stormed state legislatures in places like Michigan, demanding an end to restrictive public health measures. The police largely did nothing.

After the death of George Floyd people also protested. They protested en masse. Hundreds of thousands of protesters flooded the streets in all 50 states and across the world. They chanted the haunting final words of George Floyd “I can’t breathe.” The police responded with tear gas, dogs, stun grenades and rifles. The president called in the National Guard and told them to “dominate.”

Dominate is certainly a good word. It has been used against people of colour for centuries. Dominate is what the slave traders did to those destined for slavery. Dominate is what the settlers did to the indigenous peoples across North America. The word comes from the Latin dominus which means to rule over, and is related to the word Domino which refers to God. And the name of God has frequently been invoked to justify the domination of people of colour, as people in positions of power play God with the lives of others. Meanwhile in pandemic stricken places like Italy and New York, doctors lamented their necessity to play God as they had to make heart wrenching choices about who should get a respirator and who should be left to die.

Unlike the doctors who lamented the power over life and death that they had been unwillingly handed, far too many people have illegitimately claimed this power for themselves in order to dominate. While those in power rule over (dominate) all people, it is only those of colour or otherwise on the margins that are truly dominated. They are dominated by our prison systems. They are dominated in our workplaces. They are dominated on the streets by those who also feel they have the right to dominate based on their social position and skin. It is this belief in the divine right to dominate that spreads unchecked like a virus throughout history.

The virus has always been there. Yet, there have always been people struggling against it, both black and white; people driven by an innate sense of justice. And there have also been people actively spreading the virus around, engaging in conspiracy theories or taking aim at people of Asian descent with racist attacks, blaming them for the virus. Then too there are those who simply refuse to believe it exists. Those are the people refusing to wear masks, simply carrying on with their daily business, ignoring public health warnings and choosing to live their lives as though nothing was happening, even as people all around them are struggling to breathe.

In the early days of mining, coal miners would bring canaries into the mines with them. Canaries, with a sensitive respiratory tract, were highly susceptible to the poisonous gases that could build up in a mine. When the canaries could no longer breathe, intelligent miners paid attention.

For the past several decades, people have been telling us many times in many ways that they cannot breathe. Yet we’ve just continued digging as the canaries gasp for breath. Not only those face down on the sidewalk with a knee in their neck, but also those face down mired in poverty as they struggle to survive on wages insufficient for the most basic necessities of life, even as the coal barons reap millions of dollars in salaries, bonuses and stock options. And those slaving under poverty wages are predominantly those also most likely to be profiled, targeted and arrested by the state for the colour of their skin, or denied jobs based on their name, followed in stores by security, or harassed in the streets or schools with all manner of slurs.

When the pandemic hit, it was the lowest paying jobs, typically part-time, insecure and without benefits that were hit the hardest. Those were the retail jobs, or those in restaurants and hotels. Jobs dominated by workers of colour, recent immigrants or temporary workers. While those with professional credentials got to work from the safety of their homes, those in precarious positions were sent home without pay. Or, they were forced to continue working in dangerous occupations like homecare where they risked both getting and spreading the virus to other vulnerable people, largely the elderly. In the United States, people of colour are significantly more likely to have contracted and died from Covid-19 than others. Once again they were the most unlikely to be able to breathe.

But the thing about breathing is that we all need to do it. They say a person can go three weeks without food, 3 days without water but, as we learned, only 8 minutes and 46 seconds without air. If we don’t pay attention to the air around us, eventually none of us will be able to breathe. The coal mine fills with invisible noxious gas and we succumb to it one by one. The noxious gases are all around us in the form of racism, poverty and power, converging now in a pandemic. The canaries are failing. They’re telling us that they can no longer breathe. Are we finally willing to listen?

Derek Cook,

Director, Canadian Poverty Institute