In his Oct. 4 column “Stop pretending COVID-19 isn’t your problem,” Eugene Robinson voices his frustration with the prolonging of the pandemic as a clash between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. “It is mystifying to me, and to many others, that such a divide could possibly exist,” he writes. He goes on to call out certain politicians as hypocritical, manipulative and narcissistic, if not sociopathic.
However, what comes across as loudly unspoken is one other explanation: racism. On almost all discussions of the unvaccinated, the loudest public microphones are given to the white population. They are not the only unvaccinated. And they are not alone in being ignorant, misinformed or intransigent. However, their faces are most often seen and their voices most often heard and quoted.
It is not unrealistic to surmise that some of the public political support of the unvaccinated is rooted in the idea of maintaining an America based on white racial superiority. This notion among some remains “the worm that does not die and the fire that is not quenched.” That this tactic may be an effective dog whistle might explain the persistence of this pandemic despite so much information and choices not present a year ago.
In their zeal to maintain a certain order, the unvaccinated don’t realize they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces. That said, the ongoing subtle and insidious racism that pervades this country, like the battle against the coronavirus, must be constantly fought in all its myriad mutations.