In a recent statement made during a park birthday gathering, your friend who thought racism ended with the election of Barack Obama in 2008 confidently declared the COVID-19 pandemic over.
“Now that the pandemic is over, I’m just trying to get my life back on track,” says your friend Anna Patterson who lives in a city that currently averages over 2,000 new COVID cases per day, with global cases rising exponentially. “I’m like, I got my second dose, what’s next?”
Sources confirm Anna’s myopic understanding of “the whole world around her” is not a new phenomenon, as she also believed racism to no longer be a thing after 2008 until being briefly re-alerted to its existence in the summer of 2020.
“Of course I knew that this country was horribly racist in olden times,” Anna explains. “And then there was that episode of That So Raven where Raven doesn’t get hired at the mall just because she’s Black so I knew racism was still around then, but that was like 2005, and three years later we elected a Black president, so I felt like we had worked through all that.”
“Now I totally understand that I was wrong and that racism and ignorance can be way more subtle than I thought,” adds Anna. “Anyway, I’m glad that we all can have our lives back from COVID now after over a year of working from home, ordering takeout every day, and only being able to take vacations that are within driving distance.”
You weighed in with some analysis of Anna’s perspective.
“I guess that Anna thinks that COVID is over because it no longer affects her personally, and the same could be said of racism, not that she ever was affected beyond being the beneficiary of it,” you say.
When asked why you didn’t try to educate Anna on these issues, you clarified she is “more of an acquaintance.”
“Things were pretty touch and go there, with COVID and with racism,” Anna adds. “But now we have the vaccine, the pandemic is over, and Kamala Harris is VP, so I’d say things are finally looking up again!”
At press time, Anna was celebrating the end of COVID by enjoying her first indoor dining experience with a few “mostly vaccinated” friends.
