We Can't Breathe

Systemic racism and police brutality are hurting all of us.

Welcome to Not a Doctor. I’m Melody Schreiber, a journalist and the editor of What We Didn’t Expect.

There have been many times, in the past few weeks, when I have found myself at loss for words.

And that is a good thing.

Instead, I have been watching and reading and listening. I have been trying to stay quiet while others offer up their voices and share what it’s like to live (and die) in this country, where we exist side by side but in different worlds.

Too often, voices like mine direct the narrative — they judge what is newsworthy and what is not, they weigh which experiences are valuable and which may be cast aside — and that should not be.

I hope my silence isn’t mistaken for complacency or complicity. I know that Black lives matter. I believe that all lives should matter, but I know that they do not. People of color are targeted and harassed and killed at terrifyingly high rates. Systemic racism robs communities of their health and their wealth and their happiness — and not just communities of color. Racism hurts all of us. But of course it hurts its victims the most.

I hope that our country can reckon with the vast inequality upon which it was founded, although I know that process will be far from easy, and it certainly won’t be pretty. But it is no less necessary.

Photo: Fibonacci Blue/Flickr

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What does this have to do with health and science?

A lot.

Systemic racism actively harms people of color, through everything from police brutality to poorer health outcomes across the board. And this coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected these same people.

The protests against inequality and police brutality, at their core, have been about ensuring health and safety. Protestors are taking to the streets to demand better conditions, better outcomes, better lives for themselves and their loved ones, as well as for people they’ve never met and will never meet.

And it’s not that people don’t understand the risks, now, of protesting during a pandemic.

The protestors flooding hundreds of cities and towns over the past few days know about the coronavirus. In fact, because it’s hit certain communities so much harder than others, many of them know better than the rest of us what’s at stake.

Yet they still knowingly take on these dangers, because they also know the risk of inaction.

Once, in the early days of reading and watching and listening, I grew very anxious about the perils facing protestors.

“What if they get sick? What if they die?” I asked my husband, Jack.

“What if a bullet gets them first?” he said.

I am fairly confident that we’re going to see an uptick in coronavirus cases because of the protests. But this virus is not the only thing killing people.

I have to wonder how many lives the protests have saved, too.

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Breathing Free

For those of us who aren’t able to crowd the streets and demand action, I hear you and I feel you. There are other ways to press for change. Start with your local elected officials. What are they doing about ballooning police budgets and ongoing brutality? And look within yourself, too. What can you do to make others’ lives a little easier? A little safer?

These times have felt particularly tender. So many of us are mourning collectively yet disparately. I cannot imagine what it is like for the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and and and and... The losses keep mounting, and they are breathtaking.

I have been thinking about this line from “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus: "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

Yearning to breathe free. If ever there were a phrase for 2020, this is it.

Please do whatever you can in these times to breathe free — and to fight, as much and however you’re able, for others to breathe free as well. Stay safe, but know that there are many ways to feel safe, and many ways in which our safety depends upon our willingness to fight for that safety.

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As always, please leave a comment or email me with questions and feedback at melodyaschreiber@gmail.com. Stay safe, stay healthy, keep breathing.