The U.S. has two approved vaccines and people are starting to feel excited about normal life again. As we head down our path "back to normal," we need to decide what we want that normal to be.
The events of 2020 have resulted in a number of phrases becoming extremely overused–some already on the verge of being considered corny. Phrases like "unprecedented." "Trying" or "uncertain times." "Six feet apart." "Now more than ever." "We remain cautious." "Zoom meeting." Even the once hopeful term "reopening" has become overused thanks to the bungling of–well–reopening plans that were insufficient and rushed, leading to people going back into quarantine.
Another example of a now-irritating term popularized by the COVID pandemic is the phrase "the new normal." Grammar enthusiasts may dislike it for being an oxymoron, but for others, these words are particularly unbearable because it offers very little consistency. That is to say, the term "normal" suggests uniformity across people's lives, but if covid did anything, it pointed out the drastically different ways Americans will experience disasters such as a pandemic. For some, the new normal meant being relegated to home offices and attending meetings on their laptops. Meanwhile, an entire population experienced a new normal of raging customers upset about mask policies, or having to wait in lines at overstretched food banks, or working long hours in crowded hospitals with makeshift PPE.
And of course, there's the phrase "going back to normal." Again, these once harmless words carry new baggage thanks to the events of 2020.
As the vaccine continues on its track and we move one step further away from the worst of the pandemic, it's important to consider what it will mean to go "back to normal."
Many people have called our current situation "The Apocalypse." It turns out, the word "apocalypse" stems from the greek word “apokalupsis” which means “to uncover” or “to reveal.” By this definition, the COVID pandemic is certainly the apocalypse, seeing as it has revealed–painstakingly clearly–the flaws in our society. Our minimal protection of and appreciation for workers that we deem essential, our stagnant government, our cruel capitalist system that values billionaires over workers, our dangerously racist system of policing, our public school system that values the wrong skills – these are all problems that received newfound focus thanks to our apocalypse otherwise known as the coronavirus pandemic.
And if we are to go "back to normal" we cannot forget these lessons that were uncovered for us. Here is an extensive–but not exhaustive–list of what we need to remember as the pandemic ends.
"While the poor are left with the scraps that our system has to offer, the rich get fast-tracked medical treatment.
Possibly the most glaring lesson from the COVID pandemic started to reveal itself in the very beginning in March: despite what politicians claim, the healthcare system in the United States is designed to benefit the elite. While America has many advanced medical facilities, most of them are inaccessible to a substantial number of citizens due to the high cost of insurance in this country.
While the poor are left with the scraps that our system has to offer, the rich get fast-tracked medical treatment. In an interview with the Atlantic, NYU professor of medical ethics Arthur Caplan explained that the wealthy donors receive preferential treatment at hospitals. "They're not going to sit in the ER waiting of isolation room," Caplan said. "You get to go quickly."
Caplan also points out that "we have a broken healthcare system, and the virus delights in that." Not only are the wealthy going to receive higher quality treatment, they are also less likely to contract COVID. When the pandemic hit, wealthier people had second homes to retreat to in order to wait out the virus. They had more income that allowed them to stop working in person, and they could front the fees of having groceries, take out, and other necessities come right to their doorstep.
All the while, the lower-income Americans were left to face the brute of the virus. Many frontline workers–the people that we labeled "essential"–don't have enough money to simply stop going to their jobs.
And like Michigan's Governor Gretchen Whitmer said in an explanation of the COVID Task Force on Racial Disparities, this is especially true for people of color. "This virus is holding up a mirror to our society and reminding us of the deep inequities in our country," Whitmer explains. "From basic lack of access to health care, transportation, and protections in the workplace, these inequities hit people of color and vulnerable communities the hardest."
Whitmer governs over the state that is the home to Detroit, the city with the highest Black population in the United States. And Detroit quickly became a COVID hot spot for a number of reasons, most of which trace back to rampant racism and poverty that disadvantaged their citizens.
Remember how I said that "apocalypse" means "revealing?" Well, make no mistake, Black people in America did not need a pandemic to reveal the inequalities that they face every day. Back in March, before the pandemic looked as bleak as it does now, the Pew Research Center conducted a study which found that nearly half of the Black respondents saw COVID as a major threat to their health, as opposed to the fifth of White people who felt the same.
Unfortunately, their concerns were completely founded. Another study from July conducted by the NYU Grossman School of Medicine found that within the poorer counties throughout the US, those that had a substantial nonwhite population had 8x the number of COVID infections and 9x the number of deaths than the counties with a substantial White population. With all the talk of preexisting conditions, it's important to remember that the most lethal preexisting condition for coronavirus are racism and economic inequality, both of which Black workers face more than other populations.
In short, the COVID pandemic revealed just how far these inequalities reach. BIPOC are more likely to work frontline jobs, less likely to have access to resources, and therefore those communities have experienced and will continue to experience the worst of the COVID pandemic.
When we go "back to normal," we have to decide whether or not this is a reality we want normalized. It should not be "normal" to have your experience in a pandemic dictated by where you live, how much money you have, or the color of your skin.
Panem et circenses. Bread and Circus.
In Suzanne Collins' dystopian novel The Hunger Games, Katniss lives in a country called Panem. Eventually in the series, she learns that the country got its name from the latin phrase "panem et circenses" which translates to "bread and circus." The saying is a criticism meant to point out that the government uses food and entertainment to keep the masses distracted. In other words, public approval does not mean that things within our system are working, but that if our system provides the populace (or enough of the populace) with our most basic needs, then we won't question the validity of the system that is barely holding up society.
The COVID pandemic took away our bread and circus. In November, unemployment claims rose to 778,000, almost 100,000 more than the pre-pandemic peak in 1982. With Americans unable to leave their homes to go to bars, movies, or other social spaces, and with a number of Americans unable to afford the most basic necessities, the conversation regarding what the government should do for us has completely transformed.
Since the outbreak started, some claimed that we could not simply pay people to stay home, and others saw it as the only way for them to stay alive. While our stagnant government negotiated stimulus bills, the rich added billions to their net worth, accumulating more wealth when they already had more money than they could spend in one lifetime. In our path "back to normal," we have to decide if we're okay with allowing unchecked billionaires to hoard wealth while the majority suffers.
Our lack of bread and circus likely contributed to the–forgive me for this–unprecedented racial justice movement of 2020 which reached every. single. state. in America.
In 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement launched in order to fight the system that murdered Trayvon Martin. Since then, they have no doubt made waves. But the nation was absolutely shaken when a viral video showed a police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
All death is tragic, and all death at the hands of those who are supposed to protect us is unacceptable. But George Floyd's death sparked an even larger Black Lives Matter movement. Daily protests went on for months to follow. Each gathering signaled a hopeful increase in the size of the movement. Every state saw people come out in massive numbers to insist that America do the bare minimum and state that Black lives do, in fact, matter.
Without our bread and circus, Americans decided to finally pay attention and lead the strongest fight against racial injustice yet. So does going "back to normal" mean non-BIPOC go back to ignoring what was uncovered? Or can we instead normalize the sustained fight for long-overdue racial equality.
"Our ancestors looked up at the night sky and created a story out of the shapes that the stars made."
Speaking broadly, Americans have little interest in funding the arts, yet when something like a pandemic pushes us into quarantine, they expect the arts to carry us through. People binge watched TV shows and had movie marathons. They finally turned to the book they kept putting off or reread one of their old favorites. Because stories fill the time–and because some of them give you the fuzzy feelings that can seem oh so distant when trapped by the shackles of quarantine.
On top of that, a ton of people got the chance to flex their creative muscles, some for the first time. Addison Rae was able to cultivate her talents on TikTok and now she’s starring in a blockbuster movie. Others started selling their homemade clothing, jewelry, or paintings online, both as a way to earn more income and indulge in their favorite hobbies. And many had the chance to take on a new skill they have always wanted to learn, including (but certainly not limited to) knitting, crocheting, making embroidery, painting, sketching, web designing, producing videos, baking, or cooking without a recipe.
All of this goes to show that human beings have a penchant for creating. We insist on doing so. Even our ancestors looked up at the night sky and created a story out of the shapes that the stars made.
So why doesn't our education system reflect this fundamental aspect of human nature? Why are we constantly defunding the arts?
One study from the National Endowment For The Arts puts the blame on a 1983 report titled A Nation At Risk: The Imperative For Educational Reform, in which the authors debased American children for being mediocre compared to the international arena. These claims lead to significant school reform that continues to this day. The report barely mentions the arts, but argued that the "mediocrity" seen in American education stems from a lack of focus on the "basics"–math, history, and science. It also labeled the arts an "elective." In other words, secondary to the core subjects. This information coupled with the multiple financial crises that affected the American public school system meant that the arts programs were offered little money in the past few decades. "Given this subordinate role," the study reads, "the arts remain vulnerable to cuts whenever school budgets are tight."
The same study found that Hispanic and Black children receive less arts education compared to their White peers. This is likely due to a number of factors, most significantly that schools in majority BIPOC neighborhoods tend to receive less funding due to lower property taxes. But more than that, a number of BIPOC parents don't want to see their chil-
dren pursuing an arts career. Given that, statistically, more BIPOC live below the poverty line, it is understandable that they would want their children to pursue careers that are guaranteed to be more lucrative since they don't have the fiscal safety net necessary to support them. That's not to say that White people have all the money in the world to "blow" on the arts, but there is a clear trend showing that White people are either more willing or more able to fund and pursue creative programs.
These findings from the study can be seen even on the micro level within my own family. I am a child of Vietnamese immigrants–my parents' generation came over as refugees and had to start from scratch in American society. All of my aunts and uncles married other Vietnamese or Asian immigrants–except for one of my uncles who married a white woman. Flash forward to my generation, we are all adults pursuing different careers and out of my 26 cousins (I know, huge family), only one of them is pursuing the arts–and that is my cousin born to a White parent. This is certainly not me saying that I think she should stop working towards a PhD in art history, nor is it me accusing the rest of my aunts and uncles of hating the arts. It's just to point out the privileges that different people have which allow them to lend focus on something that is deemed "non-lucrative" by our society.
Circling back to the arts and its role in our education system, what are we losing as a community by underfunding the creative programs in our public schools? Most notably, our society as a whole now widely assumes that the arts are expressive and optional, rather than cognitive or academic. But there are an increasing number of academic studies that prove that many mental faculties are activated in art-making, and that the creation of art is profoundly cognitive–in other words, the arts contribute to and reinforce the "building blocks of all thought."
When we go "back to normal," we need to remember these facts and start investing in the arts. If it carries us through the pandemic, and if it is proven to help foster and maintain our cognitive abilities, then we need to normalize the arts in our schools and as possible careers.
There is going to be lots of trauma that our population has to deal with. By its most basic definition, trauma is a deeply distressing experience. And I'd say the collective anxieties we felt from fighting an invisible virus, the relentless pain of excessive Black death, and the hardship of having to endure the most frustrating and absurd election cycle yet–I'd say all of that counts as distressing.
And while it will be hard to get through, it's important to acknowledge that there will likely be a spike in people with symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But luckily, psychologists have identified another phenomenon called Post Traumatic Growth, which notes that there can be significant–and effectively positive–changes in character after going through traumatic times. Richard Tedeschi, one of the psychologists who developed this finding, described it as a chance to "develop new understandings of themselves, the world they live in, how to relate to other people, the kind of future they might have and a better understanding of how to live life."
2020 has proven time and again the ways in which our society needs to be fixed. And there is certainly a long fight ahead of us, but we should feel empowered by the knowledge that we also have the capacities to fix ourselves. People today have the chance to choose what the actual definition of normal will be–what an incredibly rare opportunity! And given it is such a rarity, we should use the opportunity to affect tangible, and–I'm going to say the word again I'm so sorry–unprecedented change to a system that has proven time and again that it doesn't work for all of its citizens. It's time demand for more than just bread and circus.