A passenger's body temperature is being tested at the gate of entry upon arrival at the Murtala International Airport in Lagos, on March 2, 2020. - Nigeria is monitoring 58 people who had contact with an Italian man infected with the new coronavirus, the health minister said Monday, as officials scrambled to stop the disease spreading. Africa's most populous country on Friday confirmed the first case of the virus in sub-Saharan Africa after the patient was diagnosed in the economic hub Lagos. (Photo by BENSON IBEABUCHI / AFP) (Photo by BENSON IBEABUCHI/AFP via Getty Images)

Bogus: Black People Don’t Think They Are Immune from the Wuhan Virus (the corona virus).

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, USA—Propublica reports that as of Friday, April 3, African Americans made up about 50 percent of Milwaukee’s one thousand cases. More, 81 percent of its 27 deaths were Blacks, in a county whose population is just 26 percent Black. This story is not much different from the narratives fetched from Detroit (Michigan), Louisiana (New Orleans) and more generally in states like Illinois and North Carolina.

According to Propublica:

“Milwaukee is one of the few places in the United States that is tracking the racial breakdown of people who have been infected by the novel coronavirus, offering a glimpse at the disproportionate destruction it is inflicting on black communities nationwide.”

Why are Black people in Milwaukee, Detroit, Louisiana and in states like Illinois and North Carolina dying at a disproportionate rate than whites?

This is where the white supremacist explanations jump to obfuscate the issues.

For a long time Propublica has branded itself as a pure public scientific journal reporting exactly what they claim they saw. Yet, in recent months, after having acquired some modicum of street credibility among Black readers, the journal has begun to panda to white supremacists. What better way to panda and plead the fifth than to elect Black writers to do the pandering?

While the writers admitted that the Wuhan virus was spread by the white people living in the wealthy parts of Milwaukee, for example, to the Black Neighborhoods in Milwaukee, they quickly turned the blame on the victims of that spread. Apparently the reason why the virus “erupted” in the black community is because Black people have pushed on social media “the bogus idea that black people are somehow immune to the disease. And much of the initial focus was on international travel, so those who knew no one returning from Asia or Europe were quick to dismiss the risk.”

In essence, Propublica wants us to believe that although white people spread the disease to the Black communities of Milwaukee, it was certainly the Black people there in Milwaukee who, due to their (irresponsible) behavior on social media, allowed the disease to spread in their communities to the point of killing them disproportionately. Nothing is said about the irresponsible act of the white people who spread the disease to the Black communities. Is that the white-explaining we need to engage in the turn of a single paragraph in the same article—you would ask?

The article does not end there with its blame-game against the Black people of Milwaukee and beyond. The writers continued that “when the shelter-in-place order came, there was a natural pushback among those [Black people] who recalled other painful government restrictions — including segregation and mass incarceration — on where black people could walk and gather.”

All of which goes to show the emphasis that Propublica places on Black irresponsibility first, in spreading the Wuhan virus, while shirking the mirror-duty as an unbiased journal would, to question white irresponsibility in spreading the disease to the Black communities around the country.

What is fascinating is the double-standard of questioning “those [Black people]” who supposedly—although without proof—refused the shelter-in-place order while keeping mum over the obvious disobedience of the same shelter-in-place order by white people in the same county, which in the first place, led to the spread of the Wuhan virus in the Black community, and subsequently the disproportionate deaths of Blacks in Milwaukee.

Still more fascinating are the ensuing paragraphs which attempt to paint American health care in the proper context. Propublica alerts—in many paragraphs down below in the article—that the Wuhan virus “is just unmasking the deep disinvestment in our communities, the historical injustices and the impact of residential segregation.”

The article continues to unearth the real crises at stake, quoting Dr. Camara Jones, a family physician, epidemiologist and visiting fellow at Harvard University: “This is the time to name racism as the cause of all of those things. The overrepresentation of people of color in poverty and white people in wealth is not just a happenstance. … It’s because we’re not valued.”

But by this time it is late and unfortunate. The agenda of Black irresponsibility about the spread of the virus in their own communities has been carefully and solidly laid by Propublica in the first few paragraphs as the raison d’être for the disproportionate Black deaths throughout America as a result of the spreading of the Wuhan virus.

Of course this strategy of whitesplaining—the journalistic style of not pointing any fingers at white society, and thereby letting white supremacism off the hook—is as old as America itself. Start an essay with what you really want white people to take from it and then proceed to fluff the rest of the article, way down below, in some irredeemable paragraphs, with some scattered misapplication of the correct information, in a way that seeks to plead for the sympathy of white people for Black people. This way you allow white people to feel no responsibility, yet, you plead for their sympathy and responsibility towards helping the victims of their violence.  

How can an irresponsible group of people become responsible when they clearly do not suffer the direct consequences of their irresponsibility? How can you ask white people, who clearly in this instance as in many others, have no skin in the game of dying at the same rate as Black people, to suddenly transmogrify with some sympathy, into responsible and civilized adults with skin in the game?

Truth is that you don’t ask white people to do anything. You do nothing. You beat about the bush in such articles as these. So that the status quo of white irresponsibility without consequences continues unabated within the white supremacist territories of America. This is the stagecraft of white supremacism. Here is your patent example of the reason why the death of expertise and ingenuity in the US has become ever so pervasive.

Before I conclude this essay, let me correct the bogus and prevailing nonsense that Black people think that they are “somehow immune to the disease.” There’s no such Black community, let alone the thought that they are immune to the Wuhan virus. To accomplish this—i.e. to show you that no such Black community exist with such beliefs—it would be appropriate for me to pose a counter interpretation of why more Black people are dying of the Wuhan virus in Milwaukee and throughout the United States of America at an alarming rate.

In fact, the theory in many Black communities I have visited is a simple one: White people—really white supremacists in Milwaukee and beyond—believe that they are invincible and they believe that this Wuhan is only for the poor Blacks. This is why white people go around disrespecting the Presidential and Health Advisories and the Shelter-in-place ordinances. By this disobedience, whites are spreading the Wuhan everywhere, even into the Black neighborhoods.

Why is it that the Wuhan has spread from wealthy white neighborhoods in Milwaukee, owned and controlled by whites, into Black neighborhoods in Milwaukee? The theory continues that the white supremacists know, and believe, that even if they contracted the disease, their health care systems would cater for them at the expense of the Black people who contract the disease. White people have no skin in the game of curbing the spread of this Wuhan virus. If white people are sick, they believe (and these beliefs are well-founded) that have the money and the care (multiple times more than Black people have) to survive the disease, especially in a place like Milwaukee, where Black people die out of sheer poverty than would ever die of the Wuhan virus!

Why aren’t we speaking of the callousness of white people’s behavior in a country in which we know that health care is racially administered and controlled? Why don’t we question the conspiracy theories of the white people that this Wuhan virus is the method to wipe out Black people, which in fact, by that conspiracy they (white people) as a government, and as owners of all the major health care facilities in the United States have the power to act upon their beliefs and entrench the prevalence of Black death?

Understanding this theory in the Black community does not go without the observation in the media that this idea of accountability about the spread of the Wuhan virus has not been thrown both ways—to both Blacks and whites? Even the Governor of the State of Florida went as far pushing the preposterous claim in the media that Black people in New Orleans are the ones spreading the Wuhan virus in Florida. Why is accountability in the media only spreading one way? Because, it is far easier to point the finger at those who are poor, segregated by whites, incarcerated by whites and indebted by, and to whites—Black people. The violence that Black people suffer at the hands of white people in Milwaukee and across the entire country should rather, if not all of it, explain why Blacks are dying at an alarming rate. Not because of some weird echo of an idea in a supposed Black community. Lie!

If anything, Black people have become aware that the Wuhan is one of the equal opportunity killers that America has had for a very long time: That despite white people’s lack of skin in every game until now, despite white people’s irresponsibility, their access to money, unlimited insurance and the best health care that white America can offer them, they too will die like Black people if they do not heed any advice at all. This is one of the few times that white America must face the direct consequences of their own actions. That white America is only used to exploiting Black people and violating Blacks without suffering any of the direct consequences of their actions. That the spread of the Wuhan is actually one of the only equal opportunity killers, no matter the availability of wealth and the best health care to white people!

Now tell me, when has anything in America been that equally consequential? When have white America truly suffered the direct consequences of their own actions? You see how this obvious idea can be misrepresented in the bogus echo by Propublica and such?

Instead of tackle the ensuing racial disparities in access to quality medical care in the United States, especially during the Wuhan virus pandemic, which is the underlying reason for the disproportionate death of Blacks to whites in America, we would rather point to a bogus claim, however fringe, to dissuade attention from the real issue at stake. Again, this is the American Racial Stagecraft: let white people of the hook, blame Black people for their own suffering and then beg the violent white exploiters of Black people (whites) to come to the aid of Black people. It is as twisted as it is savage. But, this is in sum, the true character of the United States of America. Adversity does not build character after all, it exposes it!

Previous articleWhy America Is Struggling with Wuhan (Corona virus).
Next articleJurgen Klopp and His Bad Judgment: Racism without Racists.
~ Success is a horrible teacher. It seduces the ignorant into thinking that he can’t lose. It seduces the intellectual into thinking that he must win. Success corrupts; Only usefulness exalts. ~ WP. Narmer Amenuti (which names translate: Dances With Lions), was born by The River, deep within the heartlands of Ghana, in Ntoaboma. He is a public intellectual from the Sankoré School of Critical Theory, where he trained and was awarded the highest degree of Warrior Philosopher at the Temple of Narmer. As a Culture Critic and a Guan Rhythmmaker, he is a dilettante, a dissident and a gadfly, and he eschews promotional intellectualism. He maintains strict anonymity and invites intellectuals and lay people alike to honest debate. He reads every comment. If you enjoyed this essay and would like to support more content like this one, please pour the Ancestors some Libation in support of my next essay, or you can go bold, very bold and invoke them. Here's my CashApp: $TheRealNarmer

1 COMMENT

  1. Yep nonsense. As if all African nations have not closed their borders and are not taking seriously the screening and quarantine of people with and without symptoms. The testing is even more widespread in African nations, and many are seeking out contacts of people who tested positive for wuhan, to prevent the spread before it starts. I’m sure the same would be done in African American communities if only they had the resources and were not being forcibly held back by white Americans.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.