Diana Hammer, MSW, Community Development Educator
As has been widely reported,* COVID-19 illuminates racial injustices as Black and Latino Americans are more likely to get infected, get serious cases, and die from the disease. As a white person, it is terribly hard for me to process and understand this. It doesn’t feel like this could be my fault, but racism is clearly at work. How does this happen when I’m a good person? and when most other white people I know are also well-intentioned? Learning from Debbie Irving’s experiences in her book “Waking Up White,” and understanding more about what it means to be white has helped me wrestle with this constructively, as I figure out what I can do in response to racial injustice and in service to this community. This 15-minute TedX Talk by Debbie Irving is a good place to start.
- https://nonprofitquarterly.org/a-moment-of-choice-racial-equity-cdfis-and-the-ppp-lending-fiasco/
- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/25/us/coronavirus-chelsea-massachusetts.html
- https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/03/20/black-americans-were-forced-into-social-distancing-long-before-the-coronavirus/?preview_id=785811&fbclid=IwAR2rOsObOaQPRg7isg-dj7sO9Z2U7PU3J0kXyYC7Sz97VTy592UQWELp7mM
