For all you non-mask-wearing, don’t-tread-on-me, patriotism-not-tyranny Karens, Kens, Beckys, Chads, and maybe an occasional Tyrone or Tamika (although I haven’t seen a video of them yet), I have a news flash for you: Inconvenience is not oppression.
I get it, of course I do. I hate covering my face when I go out to church, walks, shopping or anywhere else not in the confines of my property or my car. It’s inconvenient. I see people heading into stores, only to head back to their cars, put a mask over their noses and mouths, and return to their errand. No tantrums required.
But if you spend any time on social media — and if you’re stuck at home for most of the week, it’s almost unavoidable — you will see multiple videos of #Karensgoingwild people, many of them white women and a fair number of white men, pulling absolute nutties about being asked to cover their noses and mouths before entering a business establishment, to help keep this insidious coronavirus from further spreading, and infecting our friends, family, and neighbors.
These people show their worst sides, even when they know they are being recorded and are already on their way to internet infamy.
I’m beyond baffled. I’m actually astounded at the number of what I would call “grown-ass” women and men, acting like in-need-of-a-nap toddlers, because they’re asked to cover their noses and mouths to help stem the spread of a too-often deadly virus.
Even though many people who are acting like this are around my age (which means way too old for this foolishness), apparently they didn’t grow up with parents like mine, or the people I grew up with. Now, I’m not an advocate of corporal punishment. I believe hitting children is assault. But everyone in my neighborhood had parents who didn’t put up with temper tantrums. You want to show out in public? If you were lucky, your folks waited until you got home to give you what-for. The unlucky ones got their little behinds torn up in public. One thing Black children were taught, you don’t embarrass your parents in public by showing out.
And though by the time we grew up and could choose how to act in public without threat of parental repercussions, many of us have learned to pick our battles. And being asked to cover our faces to keep from spreading a virus that disproportionately affects Black and other people of color isn’t a hill worth dying on. Because this isn’t oppression.
You know what oppression is?
It’s being separated from your children and not knowing if you’ll ever see them again when you leave your dangerous homeland to seek asylum. It’s being a child put in a cage with other children, given foil blankets, no soap or toothbrushes, and not knowing if you’ll ever see your parents again.
It’s being denied employment, and kept out of nice neighborhoods with good schools because of redlining. It’s not receiving the benefits of the GI Bill that was earned from fighting in a war for a country that didn’t respect you, and did all it could to keep you from exercising your rights as an American citizen. It’s being marched across hundreds of miles from your homeland because settlers wanted to farm where your people had lived for centuries, and then have companies come in and desecrate your new land because of oil. It’s being rounded up and put in internment camps, losing your homes and businesses because some people from your country of origin attacked a base on American soil.
It’s having your family banned from joining you in the United States for no other reason than your religion.
It’s being made to wear a yellow Star of David and forced into cattle cars and shipped off for mass slaughter. It’s hiding with your family in an attic for two years, in hopes of not being discovered by Nazis.
You know what wearing a face covering while you shop is? It’s an inconvenience, and a mild one at that. So grow the hell up Karen and Ken. Stop whining — or stay home.
