It was author and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston who wrote in the book Their Eyes Were Watching God, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” The year 2020 may actually be both. When we were asked to step up and make a concerted change toward protecting the lives of those least among us, the answer was a resounding no.
This year, we were confronted with a global health crisis that spanned the entire globe and deeply shifted our connectedness to one another and the world. Globally, the coronavirus has infected more than 73 million people, resulting in at least 1.6 million deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. In the United States alone, 16.5 million people have been infected with the coronavirus, resulting in more than 300,000 deaths. Those deaths, we’ve seen from early on, are disproportionately represented among Black people in the United States.
The political landscape has also given us answers to the questions of racial, gender, and health justice. After Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd were killed this year, mass protests erupted. And while he was defeated in November, 74 million people still wanted to reelect the man who embraced racist violence and stoked doubtsabout the reality of COVID-19.
There is no doubt that the emotional, physical, and mental toll of this year is immeasurable. In moments like these, teachings from Black feminist thinkers remind us of the ways we can use our experiences to move us closer to justice.
Lesson 1: Capitalism will never save us.
Capitalism and our societal dependence on consumer culture fundamentally shapes our daily lives thanks to the idea that businesses should have primary power over the country’s economic system instead of the people. Black feminist thought offers insights into capitalism that we can apply to its colossal failures in 2020.In her essay “Black Women and Feminism,” Black feminist bell hooks wrote, “Implicit in the assertion that work was the key to women’s liberation was a refusal to acknowledge the reality that, for masses of American working-class women, working for pay neither liberated them from sexist oppression nor allowed them to gain any measure of economic independence.” In 2020, the virus taking away people’s work underscored how ill-prepared our economy was to offer economic independence in any other form than a meager paycheck.
This year, the risks of placing business growth and profit over the preservation of human life and dignity became crystal clear. Decisions sometimes driven by finances placed many Black, poor, and working-class people in “essential” categories, making them most vulnerable to contracting the virus. These uncertain and precarious conditions have contributed to employment losses and mental stress among many Black women, especially those who are pregnant. Capitalism still uses Black people as units of labor, demonstrating an often willful disregard for any dignity inherent in the human condition.
In her work, hooks teaches that participation in capitalism is not a route to freedom because it is rooted in racism. She writes, “Class structure in American society has been shaped by a racial politic of white supremacy; it is only by analyzing racism and its function in capitalist society that a thorough understanding of class relationships can emerge.” Because capitalism structures society, it also shapes the political possibilities and barriers for vulnerable people. Therefore, it is only by denouncing the underlying premises of capitalism that we can move toward political liberation.
Lesson 2: Eat the rich.
This year, rather than a global shift toward solidarity, the rich have relied on their wealth and capital to leave poorer people and nations struggling to respond to COVID-19. The rich have reportedly hoarded life-saving and -sustaining medical supplies, and now, richer countries are stockpiling vaccines as it appears lower-income countries could have to wait. The financial and wellness disparities between the rich and poorhave only widened during the greatest health emergency since the 1918 flu pandemic.Rather than use their money to ensure equal access to medical care and protection for all people, rich people have done precisely what rich people do: save themselves. The American principles of individualism and liberty encouraged them to do it.
In 1994, rapper Tupac Shakur offered up a fantastical vision of the ground opening up to swallow the rich — the ground being a metaphor, he said, for the poor. Shakur offered that poor people “might eat the rich,” echoing the words of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the French philosopher who is credited with saying, “When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.” That warning has turned into a rallying cryover the years.
The work of freedom fighter and abolitionist Angela Davis helps us to consider the practical application of freedom with another powerful passage about what to eat. Davis once said, “The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what’s that? The freedom to starve?” Davis pushes us to think beyond what it means to have civil or symbolic freedom if there are no processes in place to ensure that we also have safety and care.
If nothing else, 2020 has reminded us that, when the rich hoard resources, they also change the meaning of freedom for everyone else.
Lesson 3: None of us are free until all of us are free.
Like Mississippi social movement organizer Fannie Lou Hamer, many Black feminists have taught us lessons learned through immense personal and private pain. Hamer was a loud and active defender of those most vulnerable — even combative in her public speaking. In the book Fannie Lou Hamer: The Life of a Civil Rights Icon, Earnest N. Bracey writes that, as a speaker, Hamer “often scolded her audiences outright; the fact that they accepted this, and even applauded, is a remarkable testimony to her legacy.”It’s Hamer who is credited with the famous expression “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”
This year has shown us much about how the restriction of freedom for certain classes of people puts them at risk for harm. In U.S. prisons, incarcerated folks remain at high risk of contracting COVID-19, disproportionately Black and Latinx folks, but only correctional officers have been deemed “priority” in receiving a vaccine. The Marshall Project, in partnership with the Associated Press, has tracked the rates of contraction in U.S. prisons, showing that the current figures for total infections mean that, in some prison systems, as many as one in five or even almost half of incarcerated people have been infected — way higher than national case ratesthat have only broken one in 10 in the Dakotas. New cases and new deaths have surged in prison in December. Yet few American people focus on the conditions facing incarcerated people because they are deemed noncitizens and mostly “invisible” to the public.
Likewise, the fight to end policing and prisons is not a new fight. But this year, the fight erupted as people took to the streets in perhaps greater numbers than any other movement in U.S. history. Responses to Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police rocked the country and the globe as a wave of protests honored him and other victims of police brutality while demanding change.
That message resonated. In the U.S., we saw majorities of all adults expressing support for the Black Lives Matter Movement in June, according to Pew Research. But by September, support dropped drastically from all groups except Black Americans. Hamer was talking about Black lives when she offered her wisdom on freedom, and 2020 offered a chance to see exactly what she meant. Hamer’s famous quote reminds us that struggles for racial, gender, and class justice are only effective when they center the needs and lives of those considered unimportant, forgotten, and disposable. In a system where only a few are free, many are still in bondage whether we can see it or not.
Hooks, Davis, and Hamer all remind us that this moment requires so much truth telling, no matter how it’s received. It challenges us to take full stock of our history and the tools we have to show us a way through a time that seems impossible to escape. Black feminist teachings give us one way forward.
