8 minutes and 46 seconds of ‘I Can’t Breathe’: A call for anti-racist feminist solidarity amid COVID-19

Introduction

I write this article from an international perspective (non-White, non-privileged, non-upper class, non-national, non-male’s expression) as I witness the inequalities and injustices across the world. I am instigated to think whether these injustices are the product of COVID-19 reality or whether COVID-19 has exposed the iteration of systemic racism rooted in patterns, behaviors, attitudes, discourses, and institutions. I have been constantly active on mass media outlets for COVID-19-related information, and as I observed the pandemic-related incidents, I came across 25 May 2020 ‘incident’.

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak echoed the privileges and discriminated identities of the triumvirate of gender, race and class in building a more stable ontology of intersectional socio-political balanced society which influences beyond pandemic reality. This represents a foundational blueprint of society’s feminist reflective praxis. This paradigm of feminism enabled ensembles of affectual voices and texts by constructing space and place to capture and convey diverse forms of expression from marginalized and diasporic society across national and other borders. This article recognizes and draws attention to feminism as a magnifying glass to explore and re-operationalize the multiplicity of livelihood and lives of marginalized and oppressed individuals’ suppressed thoughts, voices, realities and lives during the lockdown. I call for further exploration on feminism approach for those struggling with overlooked and overloaded inequalities intensified during the pandemic from a non-White, non-male’s expression (Pullen and Rhodes, 2015).

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has exposed the discrepancy of equities and exacerbated social inequalities in our communities. It has disproportionally impacted low- and middle-income countries’ (LMICs) indigenous and developed countries’ visible minorities and community of color and refugee population. This further has uncovered the disparities among social classes, race, ethnicity, immigrants, and minorities. The COVID-19 pandemic reality has exposed the structural injustice and laid bare the forms of violence and trauma (embedded in psychosocial, cultural, and political discourses). When policies, discourses, and regimes of balance attempt to enact forms of violence and inequality, they reinforce the world without peace. In doing so, we all become critical witness-bystanders and potential agents of inequality actors. Feminism seeks to interpret our subjective lens of liberation and choice and speaks the truth of equality. By instigating the resistance, freedom, social change, and liberation from dominion, Foucault-influenced feminism (speaking truth when doing so is precarious for speaker) concentrates on the eschewed political agenda which aims for total emancipation from power and establishes the importance of new patterns of attitudes, social behaviors, and cultural forms (Yu, 2020) to empower the vulnerable (whoever that may be). Inequalities and injustices of today witness our deafening silences and shushed truth speaking, for instance sectarian violence and assassinations in the name of religious dimensions (Sharization and Islamization) motivated by antagonism toward the target’s sect, usually a religious extremist group has been prevalent. The lynching of Mashal Khan on the premises of a university over allegations of blasphemy and the assassination of Salman Taseer, 26th Governor of Punjab, over his opposition of Pakistan’s blasphemy law witnessed the upsurge of intolerance, policing of freedom of speech and expression, and a true example of Foucault-influenced feminism. And for that, feminism seeks to confront, dismantle, and disregard imbalanced power systems because it acknowledges that all people, irrespective of their identification, deserves equal access to justice, equality, respect, dignity, and above all the right to live.

I wish that people would have more nuanced understanding that feminism is not about the anti-men women – feminism is about choice, equality, diversity, and inclusion. After the established feminist theories and approaches across disciplines in many publications, feminism could be more widely understood, acknowledged, and embraced with less complexity. Feminism is about diversely lingual, pluri-perspective conservation which offers all people – every individual – equal opportunities, regardless of their age, sex, gender, race, ability, class, and other factors that constitute identity. The feminist frame of mind requires valuing differences, and an understanding of structures of assumptions, dynamics of power, privilege, injustice, oppression, violence, sectarian violence, racism, sexism, xenophobia, bigotry, and discrimination at individual, group, and societal levels. Systemic racism against those of Asian descent and Black descent during COVID-19 can only be managed by un-transpiring xenophobia, prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, infra-humanization, labeling, and targeted stigmatizing (e.g. the president of the United States calling COVID-19 the ‘Chinese Virus’ over and over; Kandil, 2020).

Feminism aims to end oppression through equality for all. Feminism includes voices, experiences, and knowledge of every person in every conversation, in advocacy for equality, decision-making processes for challenging the status quo, and community development for promoting values rooted in humanity, fairness, agency, altruistic empathy, and interdependence. Feminism includes those who feel invisible and marginalized – it ensures that their stories, ideas, experiences, vision, and lives matter. Feminism offers an act of engagement, implication, exercise, realization, and pragmatic praxis of ideas which challenges the normative responses to critically view the world from an existential-humanistic school of thought – and invite others to do the same (Mukhtar, 2020a).

As mental health practitioners, writers, rights’ and change advocates, we share a sense of responsibility for reflecting upon our lives and our experiences in the world we live in. With our living here comes the responsibility of making it a better place – a world free of inequalities and inequities, equal distribution of resources, tolerance of race/ethnicity, empathy toward all forms of identities, and socially and ecologically balanced. Our lived experience as a product of enactment, embodiment, and realization of reflection and action with the motivation to transform the world is a nexus of our humanity and the environmental justice (Mukhtar, 2020b).

People are tired of inequality and injustice. People are individually and collectively, physically and psychologically exhausted. Exhaustion in this case has become praxis and parrhesia – stemmed in a theory and practice of protest and activism. This collective public exhaustion is directed toward the profound anti-racist realization and a monumental movement to forge solidarity – a deeply emotional sense of unity. If our fears and psychological defense mechanisms threaten, expos, or un-protect our existential anxiety, just worldview, nationalism, religious beliefs, meaning-imbuing worldviews, and our perceived mortality – we attempt to connect to a broader collective social entity to pursue meaning (integrated with ‘terror management theory’).

A long protracted struggle for civil and social rights for Black Americans is embedded within the White supremacism, slavery, segregation, racial inequalities, and resistance against these. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, perspectives on George Floyd’s death combined with the history of systemic racism, social injustice, and police violence toward people of color have birthed the current solidarity.

This anti-racist feminist solidarity fortified individuals with meaning-making, resilience, and purpose. Fear of pandemic of racism has surpassed/minimized the fear of pandemic of COVID-19; the sense of justice, belongingness, collective well-being, and sympathetic synergy has mobilized people from all walks of life (Mukhtar and Mukhtar, 2020; Mukhtar and Rana, 2020). Individual and collective meaning-making and meaning-finding operate when people desire to experience a sense of clarity about worldviews, values, meaning, purpose, and sense-making in a society (integrated with ‘mortality salience’; Mukhtar, 2020c; Rana et al., 2020).

BLM has calculated in shock the tragic symmetry of the killings of Eric Garner in 2014 in Staten Island and George Floyd in 2020 in Minneapolis. In cities across the United States and Europe, the killing of George Floyd has spontaneously put other Black victims of state violence in conversation: Atatiana Jefferson in Texas, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky, Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, Adama Traore in France, Sarah Reed in England, and Oury Jalloh in Germany (Emejulu, 2020). The BLM movement, a notification and sign of race-based inequality and violence, has crossed the national boundary from the United States and appealed the iteration of systemic racism realities across the globe. This movement has also mobilized synergies toward the disproportionately long, persistent, and repulsive history of police violence and tragic losses of Black Americans (Nellis, 2016), and the latest episode of unarmed Black American’s death makes me think of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and now George Floyd. Martin Luther King stated that the riots were the language of the unheard (CBS, 2013).

‘I can’t breathe’, muffled by Floyd as he was strangulated under the ‘knee-on-neck’ of a police officer for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, has initiated widespread momentum to integrate the world. The phrase ‘I can’t breathe’ embodies a discursive emblem of inequalities that embraces racial and other intersectional magnitudes and also sadly, in this case, articulated the vulnerabilities of people of color.

I am a person of color, I have struggled for feminism and women rights’ movements, and I aim for solidarity through a feminist lens in supporting the anti-Black racism movement. I am voicing for a solidarity and anti-racism feminism approach toward the discourses that betray racial tropes and stereotypes, discrimination, and visible minorities’ lived realities. Persistent and disproportionate inequalities founded and fueled in race and color represent racial prejudice, endanger the vulnerable and marginalized, the ‘weak’ in society, and disregard the social movement mobilization. BLM is one of the tools to exemplify the plethora of avenues and numerous approaches of struggles in response to the racism legacy, race-based inequalities, and oppression. We can embody an anti-racist feminist approach to express the stories, perspectives, voices, and support of people of color in communities to entail a solidarity initiative.

As world organizations and governmental actions prepare to address the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the exacerbated racism and elements of equity during COVID-19 should be considered as well. Inclusive public communication for a diverse public to curtail race-based prejudice and acts of violence amid the crisis should be one of the priorities across all countries and states. Global anti-racist feminist campaigns are the need of the moment. In essence, combating hatred is as equally relevant as combating COVID-19. Individuals can make significant differences – 2019 Nobel Peace Laureate Abiy Ahmend, quoted a call for humanity and compassion for each other: ‘as a global community, we are each other’s keepers. Let us not fear rob us of our humanity’ (Jalloh, 2020). Policies and practices regarding coronavirus-related social distancing and self-isolation have demonstrated the lack of cultural sensitivity which needs to be reconsidered by policy developers and decision makers. As community demographics shift, public officials could call for creating inclusive practices in social issues and managing respecting others’ values and differences in policies. Globalization, collaboration, communication, cultural competence, cultural intelligence, and education highlighting the need of diverse populations, promoting social equity, incorporating conversations on stigmatization and stereotyping as a point of differentiation all assist in responding to protect and engage individuals and communities within society. Such examples are ‘United Against Hate’, ‘Black Lives Matter’, and ‘All Lives Matter’, which are acknowledging the minorities’ sentiments and racially motivated attacks amid the coronavirus pandemic outbreak (Yam, 2020). Policy developing, decision making, public communication, individual equality, community mitigation, cultural sensitivity, and social equity are some of the reconsiderations to view the anti-racist feminist frame of work, effective immediately.

Application of anti-racist feminist solidarity offers constructive ways of counteracting biases (gender/sex, race/ethnicity) and draws attention to the ways in which social work can shore up discriminatory social structures. Social workers could enhance flexibility and responsiveness by applying feminist theories in their facilitations. Feminist theories in social work explain the structure and dynamics of gender-diverse experiences within socio-political and interpersonal hierarchies (Carter et al., 1994). Most feminist theories suggest processes to help eliminate misconceptions, inequalities, restrictions, oppression, and racism faced by women, men, and gender-diverse people – a significantly central goal which is shared by the facilitators in social work. Social workers can choose freely within inclusive understanding of different situations and different approaches to problem solving among diverse populations.

Social workers could incorporate consciousness-raising and offer support and mutual aid to help communities to address diverse problems. Social workers and facilitators could use this connection to bridge internal processes of self-discovery and unfold the imbalanced structures of the group/culture/community/society. To ensure excellence in social work practice, social workers must facilitate anti-feminist material in an erudite way to avoid restricted conical trendiness in approaching the social problems. Without an understanding of the social fibers of inequality of power, social workers might be poorly equipped to function in the ever-changing world. Social workers could discuss the courage, fear, and stigma attached to racism and in-turn unfold the process of anti-racism narrative – by concentrating on transforming the world by changing the participants perception of it.

Social workers who believe in understanding people’s psychology, the drive for personal and group power, and the desire for privilege and supremacy can facilitate individuals and groups to unravel the patterns of racism (Mukhtar, 2019; Mukhtar and Mahmood, 2018). Social workers bi-directional skill development (social work service and anti-feminist solidarity) indicates that empowered individuals would be better equipped to undertake collective group action. Social workers’ facilitation is more about empowerment and social change – for people to be involved and actively participate for individual growth and community progress. Anti-feminist solidarity can guide the application of this knowledge to social work practice. Social work and anti-feminist solidarity practices promote both liberation and freedom of human endeavor in order to in turn promote multifaceted groups. Social work practitioners can succeed in changing communities’ consciousness (courage, understanding of power dynamic) and their surroundings (safety, equality, service availability for diverse groups). In conclusion, an anti-racist feminist solidarity frame of mind calls for equality, diversity, and inclusion in policy – as well as peace, compassion, and tolerance in persons.