The Captain Has Spoken
Listen to Your Elders, People
KaReEm
WiTh
HiS
A r M s
S p R e A d O u T…
Dear _______
This one is a no-brainer. Kareem Abdul Jabbar, one of the world’s best and brightest lights in so many ways, has weighed in on Covid-19. See his essay here in full if you are late to the discussion.
He has made it plain in regards to Covid-19, vaccine hesitancy, and the foolishness of misinformation about the disease and the vaccine. Get real is his short take but read all of it and learn.
Specifically, Jabbar says that Kyrie Irving (or any NBA player) rejecting “the expertise of prominent immunologists without reason” contributes “to vaccine hesitancy among people in the Black community, who are dying at twice the rate of white people.”
He says Irving’s “lack of regard for Black lives doesn’t deserve acceptance, nor does his lack of regard for the health and welfare of the NBA community.”
That’s as clear as it gets. It is like when you are on the highway and you see your exit, know it is your exit, and you know you should get off, and you don’t, and you drive on into oblivion.
Or you are not paying attention and miss your exit, and so you keep going down the road and get further and further off track. That is where we are now and where Kyrie and others are right now.
Just admit your mistake, go get your shots, and move on. Control the damage. Check this quote from Allison Gaines from her Medium article to put things in proper perspective:
“Black anti-vaxxers are not driven by the same narrative as White anti-vaxxers. Hoteps and Moors have used historical incidences of racism like the Tuskegee Experiments to spread rampant distrust amongst the Black community. Even though Black people are more than four times as likely to die from COVID-19, they keep trying to convince Black people not to get vaccinated. You cannot be pro-Black while leading our people off a perpetual cliff.”
There’s more too. Ever since coronavirus showed up, Black people have been in the crosshairs of the virus daily. We are the police. The first responders. The health care workers. Home health workers. Food delivery.
Here is an excerpt from an article I wrote for The Progressive:
While (Black people) makeup just 12 percent of the nation’s workforce, they account for 25 percent of all postal workers, 31 percent of all public and urban transportation workers, and 28 percent of all nursing facility workers. Black Americans are also heavily represented in health care, grocery stores, home health care, and as food delivery workers and couriers — all essential jobs that require interaction with the public.
Black people have been in the danger zone of this virus from the first day. But for the court system going to remote hearings, I would have been interacting daily with tenants, as I am a tenant lawyer, who helps tenants with their housing issues. I still had to interact in person on some occasions despite the remote hearings. It is dicey.
Your elder, Kareem Abdul Jabbar has spoken. He has spread his arms to you. There are reasons why African people have a rich elder tradition. They have lived. They have struggled. They have endured. They have wisdom.
The time now is to listen to your elders.
https://briangilmore.medium.com/membership
Related Stories
Cultured Editors LEVEL Editors Jacobin Black Enterprise Writers of Color #TheGoldenAgeOfStupidity
