How to keep White People off the Street during the Corona Virus

It’s Spring Break at Rona’s, but only white people are dancing

There’s party at Rona’s, and nobody white is missing a beat.

“Crack open the corona Tanner! Wash down this semester's stress with some fun in the sun!”

It’s Spring break for white people. The rest of us are quarantined.

This year’s corona isn’t a thirst quencher, unless you count liquefied lungs. 2020’s corona sends you on a feverish booty-shaking romp to the emergency room, sometimes dancing all the way to the grave. But you can’t tell white kids that. Nope, can’t tell them anything.

“If I get corona, I get corona,” said one white guy in a recent CBS interview.

That’s right! Tanner will take his spring break the American way: hard and fast with complete selfish ignorance, the neoliberal attitude of every man for himself.

Ahh, white privilege.

Well, what’s new?

Staying safe at Rona’s

Access to healthcare lets whites forget about dying, letting them dance the night away at Rona’s. Per a recent New York Times newsletter article, the US has only 2.4 intensive care beds per 1000 people, one-third the number in Korea. Why? Beds are intended for those with health insurance, and who are they?

Rona’s white guest.

So how do people of color stay safe at Rona’s? We ration asthma medicine because no one is going to the doctor much less the emergency room. We arm ourselves with brooms, mops, dustpans, and buckets to clean up after you. We don uniforms as shields to protect us while working your local fast food joint.

You want fries with that?

Of course you do. Party on!

Welfare Party Favors?

Since our citizenship in 1868, Blacks haven’t caught up to the great white American Dream.

Under his New Deal, Roosevelt shared welfare as party favors for whites excluding Blacks. When Lyndon B. Johnson gave everybody a taste, whites said the party’s over. Blacks became “welfare queens,” scapegoats for the plight of poor whites, who’d rather have nothing — including Medicaid — than see Blacks have anything. Suddenly it was Just Say No to that welfare bugger-sugar, even if it meant death.

Coke anyone?

During Rona, Blacks are essential workers, you know, the people many believe shouldn’t make $15 an hour. In a month, Rona has choked white folks into giving up over $1 trillion for her party of opulence.

Medicine’s Guinea pigs

Once again, Medical colonialism wants to use Black bodies as guinea pigs to to fight Rona fever. French doctors wanted to test vaccines on Africans. Even if there was a vaccine, should we trust it? White doctors have always tortured Black bodies for white gain. We have reason to be wary of white medicine.

Injected with syphilis just for fun and given no vaccine? That’s us! The forced sterilization of Black wombs as part of the eugenics movement? A source of Nazi inspiration!

Had a pap smear? The speculum was invented by Dr. J. Marrion Sims on Black slaves. Having vaginal fistula surgery? Dr. Sims invented it on Anarcha the slave. Anesthesia wasn’t needed since Blacks don’t feel pain. Once perfected, it was performed on white women…with anesthesia of course.

We haven’t forgotten. We don’t trust healthcare because frankly, it hasn’t earned our trust.

Racism in medicine does have an upside. Doctors still believe we have a higher pain tolerance (like Anarcha) and prescribe us less pain medicine. We’ve faired safer during the opioid epidemic!

Wonder why crack was never an epidemic though.

Dancing to Death

Rona is an equal opportunity gal. All colors, races, classes and creeds are welcome to her party. White people attend by choice. Blacks and browns are forced. We can’t afford to stay home. Many are one check away from homelessness.

Only 16.2% of Hispanics and 19.7% of Blacks can Zoom in to work in from home while 30% of whites and 37% of Asians can stay in their pajama’s.

We risk our lives keeping you coked up on white entitlement while you rock out at Rona’s.

Rona is killing us softly with her song. Rona killed Black Detroit bus driver Jason Hargrove 11 days after he sobed on Facebook about a woman coughing on him. Blacks make up 29% of Chicago’s population, but 70% of those danced to death by Rona.

The term “essential worker” has become code for lowage people of color. Think about it. What color is José of Amazon delivery? Juan who cuts the grass and cleans the pool? Claudia the maid? Monique the grocery store cashier.

Paper or plastic ma’am?

Jamal the Door Dasher? Jesús the Uber driver? Lupita, Grandma’s healthcare aid who makes sure she takes her asthma meds? Tyrone the garbage man? What color is Rhonda the mail lady, Shante the Walmart greeter or DeShawn at the drive-thru?

You still want fries with that shake?

People of color endanger their lives everyday to keep the music of life playing.

How to keep white folks off the street

Want to keep white folks off the streets during Rona’s Spring Break party? Make these changes.

1. Only give face masks to Black people. 42% of Rona deaths are Blacks. We’re around 12% of the population. Enough said.
2. Free testing for Black folks first!
3. Provide ventilators only to county hospitals. They mainly serve Latinx and Black communities who don’t have equitable access to health care.
4. Threaten to integrate white neighborhoods. The party will soon be over! Sending Shaquan over for a cup of milk ensures Tanner and Heather stay put and barricaded. They’ll never leave their homes!
5. Lock them up! Start jailing every white person you see walking around with minimum 1 million dollar bail. Then saddle them with the debt of their prison say, just like whats done with countless young Black men.
6. Threaten to integrate schools for REAL this time. Threaten to bus a bunch Black kids into defiant white neighborhoods. White communities fear integration. The threat of plummeting property values and racial unrest will keep them safely in place. Yes, I’m talking about you Westchester NY, and Lake Forest, Kenilworth, and Winnetka Illinois.
7. Integrate churches. Hallelujah! Can I get a Amen? No? Okay. Then STAY HOME!
8. Only open grocery stores and restaurants in Black neighborhoods. White folks would rather stay in and starve then patronize the Black community. Plus, we need the business more than ever.
9. Stock toilet paper only in Black communities. See no. 7.

Hedonistic white privilege is making us sick for longer. In our darkest days, white entitlement is risking our health. Protesters in North Carolina, Kentucky, and Oklahoma and Michigan want quarantines lifted so they’re free to spread their Rona sweat everywhere.

What a privilege to charter a jet to France for vacation during a pandemic. I have “a lot of money” and want “to just pay a fine and go to Cannes,” a man told French officials before being turned back to London.

White entitlement is so fun it’s killing us. PoC dance our lives away keeping you fit to win toilet paper brawls. We’ve been careening full speed along a windy cliff at night with our headlights out. Everyone’s crashing.

With this behavior, there’s no end in sight.

Noted conductor, educator and activist Brandon Keith Brown engineers society from the podium by decreasing the racial stigmatization of underrepresented minority classical musicians. Brown is a prizewinner and the audience favorite of the 2012 International Sir Georg Solti Competition for Conductors, and guest conducts prominent European orchestras including the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester-Berlin, Badisches Staatskapelle, Staatskapelle Weimar, members of the Vienna Philharmonic, and the Jena Philharmonie among others. Upcoming debuts include the Konzerthaus Orchestra Berlin, WDR Funkhaus Orchestra Köln, and the Cape Town Philharmonic. Upcoming debuts include the Johannesburg Philharmonic, the Slovak State Philharmonic Košice and the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra. He is a student of David Zinman, Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, and Gustav Meier. graduating with a master’s from Johns Hopkins University. Initially trained as a violinist, he attended the Oberlin Conservatory of Music studying under Roland and Almita Vamos.

A noted social justice advocate, Brown’s writings on race have been featured on The Medium and in the Berlin Tagesspiegel. He is a frequent podcast guest and speaker on the intersection of race in music and education.

Email: info@brandonkeithbrown.com

Website: www.brandonkeithbrown.com

Instagram: @brandonkeithbrownconductor