102. Clarifications

After my last pandemic post, called “Sores,” two readers close to me wrote to say that women have known all along that there are huge pay disparities between men and women performing the same or similar work—and that women have for decades reminded men of that. I casually replied that I should have said “white men” became more aware of the differences during the pandemic.

 

But that’s wrong. The point is that the pandemic has given the entire population pause, and has resulted in widespread general awareness of gender pay disparities; and of the water situation on the Navajo Reservation, the conditions of health and wealth on other reservations; and of the overwhelming numbers of black and brown Americans working in low-wage service jobs. We now collectively realize that the entire population depends on these workers for food, health, transportation, garbage removal, and any number of activities now seen as “essential” to the functioning of the body politic. 

 

I was also called out for not explicitly naming Latinos. I plead guilty, having allowed the “people of color” words to stand for many. In fact, one of my current curiosities is trying to understand who the Genizaros were and are. But I blithely skipped over Latinos on my way to discussing the pandemic’s laser lens on white racism aimed at Blacks, Asians, and Indians. 

 

My first ten years were lived minutes away from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, where we knew nothing of treaties, allotments, and boarding schools; most of us were Lutherans, “we” all were white, and we knew no Indians… And then we moved to California.

 

In California we lived with and went to school with Catholics and Mormons, Negroes—the word at the time Clarifications—and Mexicans. The Pala Indian Reservation was close-by, but we knew no Indians. Now, sixty years on, I know that there were Indians among the Mexicans we went to school with, know that those we called Mexicans and those who called themselves Mexican had diverse family genealogies, reaching not only to Spain and modern Mexico, but to an old Mexico that is now California, to Indian tribes across the Southwest, and to globetrotters from everywhere who chased one boom or the other to California. 

 

And most recently I’ve learned about Genizaros, “detribalized Native Americans” who had been enslaved and/or indentured by other tribes and Euro-American settlers through war or payment of ransom, who melded into and comprised “up to a third of the population of New Mexico and southern Colorado.” This particular kind of slavery persisted well past the 13^th amendment, and now some Mexican-Americans are reclaiming this part of their—often hidden—past. 

 

Much that has been hidden is coming to light.

 

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16.The Navajo Nation’s Coronavirus March

Officer Michael Lee of the Navajo Nation police department died of the coronavirus this week. He was 50 years old, not the first Navajo officer to be ill with it—there have been at least a dozen—but the first to die. The news appeared in two small Southwest papers when I Googled “Navajo and coronavirus.”

The BBC was there a week ago to chronicle the death of a 29 year-old Navajo woman who had once been a beauty pageant winner. I see by Google that CBS broadcast from Navajo in mid-June, and I know that the New York Times had a couple of stories from the Navajo Reservation before that. That’s when I started paying attention to it—and as far as I can tell, when the NYT stopped.

In a weird kind of addiction, I check the stats on US States daily, and Navajo Nation, which is, population wise, smaller than any state, gets its own line. They are at 350 deaths now, ticking away, 2-3-4 a day, climbing the ladder past the states, a week ago with 11 states below them in number of deaths, today 15. They are well past Oregon (202), Nebraska (267), and Kansas (270), and will undoubtedly soon pass New Hampshire and Oklahoma. Oregon is still up on Navajo with 8,094 total cases to 7,320—but the Navajo Nation’s total population is only 175,000!

Covid news has its own trajectory—Seattle started it; New York soon dominated with high numbers and astounding death tolls; Dr. Fauci, with Trump tagging along, caught our daily attention for a time. And then George Floyd and an almost simultaneous release of statistics about Covid Black deaths and Brown deaths  turned White America’s attention to Black Lives Matter. Latinos caught a bit of it, but now it’s Florida and Texas with the big numbers.

A few Indian tribes have had local attention; the Navajo had their day with the national news. The Navajo—and other tribes—will survive. They’ve been down this road many times.

# # #

6. The Covid Lens

The coronavirus pandemic is a health and financial crisis, but it’s also a lens shining light on much more:

The gaps between rich and poor—We watched and listened as the rich fled New York and Los Angeles for homes in the Hamptons and Sun Valley, leaving the crowded cities to the disease and health workers. We’ve been introduced to harsh low-end emergency and home care workers. Unemployment rates have soared while the stock market danced off its immediate drop and continues to dance, as the wealthy play their games.

The Color gaps—Everyone who reads or listens knows that the disease is hitting hardest among African Americans, Latinx, and American Indians. We get daily percentages comparing the black population of Georgia or Louisiana or Michigan with the always higher percentages of sick and dying.

American Indians—Who knew that the Navajo lack good water? (and that it might have something to do with fifty year-old power plant deals and coal slurries). And how many had forgotten that Indians still exist? We now get—although only occasionally—national reporters talking to us from New Mexico and Dakota reservations.

The costs of education—students, especially poorer students, on work-study are struggling, sometimes staying in dorms while attending classes online. Internships on the way to jobs are scarce. Private universities are dipping into endowments and public ones pleading for more government help. The lack of full-tuition paying foreign students hurts. The real crux of it, the decades-long disengagement of government from funding college education, shines a harsh light on current costs—and benefits—of education.

The meatpacking industry—Working conditions, and the reliance on immigrant labor—sometimes undocumented—are exposed.

Nursing Homes—Regulations; worker and patient conditions; importance of.

Child Care—Ditto.