A White Friend Said Something About “Not Genocide”

My sister-in-law and her mother died this weekend from complications related to Covid-19. This virus is coming or not coming. Unless you are a total prepper, one grocery trip at the wrong time can get you. It’s a game of Russian roulette. Nothing made this more clear than losing them.

My sister-in-law was one of those Black women we stereotype. A strong, solid, capable, loving, no nonsense, Christian woman. When everything fell apart, she was the one who was the family first responder. While I am not Christian, I respect faithful people of any religion. She was one of those faithful people — what I call a real Christian. When my daughter was in a coma a few years ago, Linda was one of the faithful people who prayed her right and whole. She made sure that she was there for her in ways I, as her mother, could not be. I was grateful for that gift. It’s not so much who does it, so much that it gets done.

But, this is not really a eulogy. This is my way of grieving. My way of grieving is to say again, we’ve been talking about the impact of White Supremacy on the health of BIPOC for a really long time now. This is a refresher course. We need to be centering BIPOC in any further discussions of Covid 19, because this administration has made it abundantly clear we are not even an afterthought to them. But that, is business as usual for…