The Many Things 2020 Taught Us. Don’t leave this year without…
By: Elizabeth Wellington
Tags: Culture, Race, 2020, New Year, Racism

The Many Things 2020 Taught Us

Don’t leave this year without reflecting on it

A George Floyd mural in Houston, TX on September 5, 2020. Photo: The Washington Post/Getty Images

“There is no better teacher than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.” — Malcolm X

I wouldn’t repeat 2020 for all the tea in China.

It was a year of pain and heartache, loss and death, uncertainty and fear.

But for all the sadness and downright misery that defined these past 12 months — from the untimely deaths of basketball great Kobe Bryant and actor Chadwick Boseman through the endless months of coronavirus quarantine and the police violence that sparked America’s racial reckoning — it’s become clear the happenings of 2020 were, indeed, a necessary evil.

The country needed these swift kick-in-the-pants moments (I mean, really, was this 2020 or 1920?) to distance us from the false belief that this country’s race problem had been handled. The Donald Trumps, the Mitch McConnells, and the Proud Boys of America are not scepters of yesteryear. They are real, in-this-moment, flesh-and-blood threats.

The country needed these swift kick-in-the-pants moments to distance us from the false belief that this country’s race problem had been handled.

What came from all of 2020’s cold, hard truth? A new generation of freedom fighters fiercely dismantling systemic racism. Instead of relying on the politics of respectability as our weapon of truth, we lobbed social media hashtags like hand grenades, tapped into the fearless determination of Black women, and employed radical self-love in the war for our survival and our children’s future.

The impact of the coronavirus

The Covid-19 pandemic is the moment that just keeps on teaching. Within a few weeks after the March shutdown, it was obvious that Black and Brown people were being hospitalized and were dying from the virus at a much higher clip than White folk. Even today, according to the American Public Media Research Lab’s data released in early December, one in 800 Black Americans — or 124 out of every 100,0000 — have succumbed to the virus, compared to one out of 1,325 White Americans.

President Trump at the White House on September 23, 2020, fielding questions about a coronavirus vaccine and the latest developments in the Breonna Taylor case. Photo: Joshua Roberts/Getty Images

The reasons are threefold: We are more likely to have high blood pressure and diabetes. These underlying conditions make the virus more deadly. We are exposed to the virus more as essential workers in hospitals and grocery stores. And we are not being administered the life-saving experimental treatments that Trump’s homies like Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani received. I wonder if Trump crony Herman Cain did? But I digress. Ironically, these are the very people who denied the virus even existed and likely spread it at White House’s appalling superspreader events. The sad thing is that the people who served them were left to die.

Now, as we sit on the cusp of a new year, several vaccines are on the horizon, some of which have a more than 90% efficacy rate. The nation’s top infectious disease specialist, Anthony Fauci, MD, praised Black scientist Kizzmekia Corbett, PhD, for her work at the National Institute of Health approving vaccines. But Black folk, still fearful and angry from the unauthorized use of Black bodies during the Tuskegee experiment, are wary. Do we hold on to the past, or risk our future?

Deaths, protests, and apologies

From the moment America witnessed George Floyd’s callous murder filmed by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier and others, it was changed. Black people weren’t surprised that White police officer Derek Chauvin brazenly killed Floyd in broad daylight. It was White people who were appalled. How could this happen in a color-blind America, they asked over and over again. It happened because systemic racism is real. And many people believe that Black lives don’t matter. Black anger was palpable as there were protests in every major American city.

Protestors outside the Hennepin County Government Center on May 28, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Change was in the air. Authors Ibram X. Kendi, who wrote How to Be an Antiracist, and Robin DiAngelo of White Fragility saw their books reclaim top spots on the bestseller lists. To make amends for 400 years of mental abuse, Confederate statues were removed and marketing icons Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben lost their jobs. Washington, D.C., and Cleveland vowed to change the names of their city’s NFL teams. C-suites promised to bring in more Black executives and even Vogue editor Anna Wintour apologized for years of daftness when it comes to Black fashion designers and Black bodies. We celebrated Juneteenth with a vigor not since the last slaves were freed in Texas back on June 19, 1865.

It’s too early to tell if these moves are really going to effect change. What we do know is that despite everything that was promised to Black America this summer, Breonna Taylor’s killers — yes, those police officers who shot the young EMT while she slept in her own bed and in her own home — were exonerated.

Politics not as usual

When Joe Biden seized the Democratic nomination for president in August, he promised to choose a woman as his running mate. And as a nod to Black women who helped him win big in states like South Carolina, he selected Sen. Kamala Harris. And he made history. Black women — especially AKAs — rejoiced when Harris became the first woman and the first Black and Asian candidate to become vice-president elect.

Vice President- elect Kamala Harris speaks in Wilmington, DE on December 8, 2020. Photo: The Washington Post/Getty Images

And as expected in Trump’s America, as we got closer to the 2020 presidential election, the president’s followers revved up voter suppression and intimidation tactics. And while President Trump was busy giving his followers the thumbs up for suppressing the Black vote, Stacey Abrams was galvanizing the very voters who would ultimately turn Georgia blue.

We didn’t teach America how to be racist. It is not our responsibility to teach them how to be anti-racist. We see that now.

More than a month after Biden was elected 46th president of the United States, the Electoral College upheld the will of the voters, despite dozens of lawsuits brought by Trump to overturn the election. And now we wait with bated breath in the hopes that Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock will win U.S. Senate seats in January. Because just maybe, if Republicans are unable to block progressive legislation, perhaps our dream of finally living in a truly anti-racist America has a real shot.

Embracing Black joy

I would say the biggest gift of this year is that Black people realized that it is ultimately up to us to make ourselves a priority. We must celebrate our wins. We must tend to our souls. And we must focus on Black joy more than Black suffering. Ours is not a sad story. It’s a story of triumph and magic.

Julian and Fatimah Miller on their wedding day with a group of Biden supporters as they celebrate his election on November 7, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Anti-racism work doesn’t — and shouldn’t — include assuming the burden of teaching mainstream America that we, too, are human. We too deserve equal treatment and hell yes, our lives do matter. We didn’t teach America how to be racist. It is not our responsibility to teach them how to be anti-racist. We see that now.

It’s more important that we are grateful, that we live authentically from our hearts, and that we are unapologetic for doing all that we have to do to live the best lives that we can. Perseverance is not an option. If we treat it as such, all of the anti-racist work we did — and will still do — will have been done in vain.