The dual identity of COVID-19
For those who are able to, staying home has become a luxury. Photo by Alexis Fauvet (external link) on Unsplash (external link) .
If there’s one thing COVID-19 is bringing to light, it’s that everyone is experiencing the pandemic differently.
We’ve seen the power of music and how it’s uplifted people in their isolation (external link) . The neighbours, friends and community organizers who have banded together (external link) to buy groceries for their older friends and family or donated personal protective equipment to health-care workers, something Ryerson has been involved in. And the nightly neighbourhood ritual that has popped up in cities everywhere (external link) of people raucously thanking their essential service workers.
There’s also the environmental gains we’ve seen in the news recently (external link) , something politics and public administration professor Chris Gore talked about in a previous Ryerson Today story.
But in addition to these good news stories, we’re witnessing another side of COVID-19 – the imbalance and racism it’s amplified in society. Once thought of as some great equalizer to tip the scales of power and class, the pandemic is now revealing more clearly what many already know - that Black, Indigenous and racialized people, women especially, are in more precarious situations and suffer the most from COVID. In fact, what we’re seeing are the two faces of the pandemic – the collective desire to help in people and a system that fails the most vulnerable (external link) .
As Denise O'Neil Green, vice-president, equity and community inclusion, shared, "While the virus itself does not discriminate, the reality is that institutions, systems and processes do discriminate and have since their very inception. In fact, this current crisis has intensified the impacts of these barriers."
‘Inequities aren’t natural’
Sociology professor Jacqui Gingras’ research area includes social health movements and health activism. Gingras is quick to acknowledge how her privilege positions her in relation to the pandemic, but at the same time how she wishes to also interrogate those differences to instigate positive social change.
“Ultimately, how we respond to COVID comes down to how many material resources we can access. For instance, some people have the luxury of standing on their balconies to bang pots and pans (external link) but others are deemed essential workers and are on the frontlines not necessarily by choice,” Gingras said. “Inequities aren’t natural. They’ve been created through policy and law by institutions and governments. And what happens when you create inequities? You create a society where differences between groups cause significant health challenges. Systemic discrimination causes us to feel chronic stress, higher blood pressure, increased insulin resistance, increased risk of heart disease. And these conditions are observed predominantly among oppressed and marginalized groups.
“Poor health occurs not because certain groups of people can't eat well or exercise. It's because they're oppressed and stigmatized. We need to examine our implicit biases that suggest otherwise. Often groups of people who are struggling most with chronic illness are those under threat of income inequality, discrimination, and other under socially manufactured risks. And I hope that reality is dawning on more and more people now in a very visceral way. I hope that gets under our skin so that we're able to see how our political and economic choices affect people's lives.”
Gingras brings up a fundamental notion that has become apparent in dealing with the pandemic. Neoliberalism, the 20th century ideology that favours globalization, commodification and market-driven reforms, is being disrupted by COVID-19. Provincial and federal levels of Canadian government have announced stimulus packages and funding for people and businesses in need.
“After decades of powerful colonial, structural domination over our lives, which insists you're an individual, a consumer, who's responsible for your own choices, and they must be the right choice so you don't burden the state and you can rely on private enterprise to take care of your needs,” explains Gingras, “now we're hearing the government say, ‘we're going to take care of you. We're going to provide you with things, we have the resources.’ Of course, these resources have been available all along and they have been withheld, but it has taken COVID to shift things – at least partially and temporarily.”
We need to take care of each other
In this wave of “caremongering” that we’re seeing, there’s a revolution brewing (external link) that is calling on those who can to do more, to wake up to the inequities that have been there all along. Gingras says from a place of privilege, we have an obligation to reach out to others in ways we hadn’t before and to demand more socially democratic policies.
“Oppression, whether it be economic, racial, or gender-based is what is worth acknowledging,” she said. “How are people thinking differently about community solidarity because of the pandemic and what changes will actually remain? Who will benefit most from these changes? We clearly need something radical and transformative to begin asking ourselves hard questions about how society is structured. A redistribution of wealth is one such consideration. For example, the ShareMyCheque.org campaign (external link) is organizing to ensure we're taking better care of those who are most vulnerable. But it won’t happen without speaking up for brave new policies that are anti-capitalist, anti-racist, anti-gender-biased.
“Our collective health depends on learning from the inequities and impact of stigma revealed by COVID-19.”
This is one in a series of Ryerson Today stories focused on how COVID-19 is affecting equity-seeking groups.
Related stories: