My life became a thinkpiece earlier this year when my family was plunged into the Hellerian world of pandemic working parenthood. Like so many others, we were a family where both parents needed to work, not as a groovy personal fulfillment exercise, but because it kept the lights on. Doing that in parallel with caring for our four-year-old and one-year-old was a nonreality, yet somehow there were no shady local “wellness” startups offering to put all four of us into a medically-induced coma until mid-2021!! I know!! I was shocked.

For once in my largely frictionless life, I saw myself reflected everywhere in headlines. The primary response was anger at the level of political indifference to working families and to children in particular. But I was surprised to find, beneath the substrate of rage I felt at the cruelty of mismanagement, there was a deep well of boredom. I did not want to read about the risks of reopening schools, the impossibility of working with children underfoot, for the same reason I do not enjoy reading parenting books: I am immersed in that shit all day and now, with my vanishing crumbs of free time, I’m going to read about it too? That’s how they get you. Even for someone who watches her own Instagram Stories, this was a lot.

Lately, I’ve found my family in tweets again. We have a toddler whose daycare is reopening, and a kindergartener whose school is not.  If I had read that article I might know more about why that is, but I absolutely cannot express to you how tired and bored I am with my own life. Too tired to do anything but watch the survivalist reality show "Alone," which feels like the opposite of whatever this is. Do I wish I was in the Arctic eating worms to keep my body fat percentage at a safe enough level? Probably not, I don’t think. But I would like to be somewhere far beyond the reach of my Outlook notifications, where no matter what direction I’m facing, I can’t see myself reflected back at all.

-Evie Ebert

Amid global social distancing efforts sparked by the coronavirus outbreak, select businesses and services deemed essential have remained open to keep our society functioning. Many of these jobs are often low-paying with little-to-no benefits and mostly performed by Black and brown women. "Essential & Black" is an ongoing interview series that spotlights the Black essential workers risking their lives to protect ours and to support themselves and their loved ones during this pandemic.

Here is an excerpt from the series:

Illustration by Candii Kismet for Coronavirus News for Black Folks
 

Who: A 20-something-year-old Black American woman. She lives in New York, NY in a home with her mother and two adult brothers. When asked to disclose any preexisting medical conditions that might put her at a higher risk for more severe complications from COVID-19, she listed "obese, anemic, and have anxiety attacks."
 

Essential Job: Security guard at a homeless prevention center run by "a large NYC non profit." She’s had this job for two years and three months.

Location: Harlem, NY
 

Work schedule: Her work schedule was cut down to two days a week because of the pandemic. She leaves for work at 7:30AM and her workday ends at 5PM.

"Classism is real. Our white executive director has not been in the office for the past six weeks, has not asked how any of us are holding up, and has not emailed us to say thank you. Nothing! I feel betrayed. I used to love my position and the people I work with. Now I’m resentful of the protection some people are afforded while others, like myself, are sent out to the front lines. 

 

I remember how brokenhearted I felt when Hurricane Sandy hit New York and my employer at the time (different from my current job) demanded that I find a way to get to work or lose my position. I never thought I'd feel that low again, but here we are. 

 

I continue going to work because it's easier to bite my tongue while having a job than to speak my mind and risk losing my job during a pandemic. I know the slave conditioning has worked on me. I have fear in my heart and it has frozen my tongue and my feet."

- Patrice Peck, excerpted from the Essential and Black series in her newsletter Coronavirus News for Black Folks

I've been thinking a lot about voter suppression. It could make the difference between having a Trump second term or not, and god it really does expose how this country is not a functioning democracy. I drew this illustration in 2018 and it's based on 2012 data that probably won't have changed all that much. But I want to do some research on this: I'm wondering if it might have even gotten worse due to COVID-19 concerns about standing in lines?

If I were to draw this today, I think I'd change a few things. Firstly, as speedy as it is to just draw one character and then duplicate and recolor it in Photoshop, I wish that these people looked a little different from one another—including their hair types and bodies. And I also think that the way that the lines slope around might be confusing (you have to do a bit of maths here! Black wait times are 15 minutes, plus—oop, turn the corner, an extra 8, so that's 23 minutes). Often, for labels, I will copy whatever was used in the source because it's more accurate. For example, I've written "Asian American" because this data is for everyone that checked a box next to those words. But! I also think that's kind of problematic! What you're left with are three categories that say "American" after them—why not say "White American" too? Or "Latino American"? 

As ever, the numbers matter even more than the visual you're left with. This comes from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a 50,000+ person national sample survey administered by YouGov which is analyzed by Harvard University. The numbers are as reliable as they are depressingly unsurprising. 

-Mona Chalabi

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The unmitigated joy that the great Aretha Franklin took in documenting life events with her camcorder never fails to delight. Google "Aretha camcorder" or something like that and you'll see this part of an informal collection, each one of them a perfect reaction image and a tiny moment of "Stars: they're just like us/our favorite aunt at our graduation.

-R. Eric Thomas

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Rescuing yourself in real time. "I don’t think it’s enough to save our lives in the present; I think we need to reach ourselves in the past, even if it’s only to make amends or pass on an idea we’ve come to understand years later. Who would we be now if we could connect with ourselves back then, just in the nick of time? And because, as far as I know, we cannot actually go back in time, what are we doing to rescue ourselves now, in real time? That the question is a paradox is, perhaps, why it continues to generate so much energy for me as a writer. After all, each of us will probably spend the rest of our lives working to save our lives."

 

-Saeed Jones, excerpted from A Proven Method of Time Travel.