The Unrelenting Anti-Blackness of 2020
As the coronavirus and police brutality endanger Black bodies and minds, where do we find solace?
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
As if to resist the way Black skin drinks and dazzles in the sunlight, those invested in White supremacy have long redefined the hot months as a killing season. The Red Summer. The Tulsa massacre. And in 2020, despite the monotony of these endless ’rona days, that cycle seems be grinding into sickening motion once again. As shelter-in-place orders are lifted and folks trickle out into the world again, police and some unofficially deputized White citizens have been invigorated to get their summertime fun poppin’ early.
Bounties of ink will be spilled in the coming weeks about the lives of regular Black people doing regular things and somehow turning up dead. Poems and tomes will be conjured in the names of Black runners and bird watchers who are harassed (sometimes to death) simply for being outdoors; of lovers being riddled with bullets while in bed; of Black park-goers arrested and brutalized in the name of social distancing enforcement.
Just watch as 911 enthusiast Amy Cooper becomes a second-wave White feminist avatar who gets…
