The Black Man and His Mask During Covid-19

In March of this year, my little sister India asked me if the world was ending. I slid her a smile and playfully said, “I don’t know. I think so.” That was during the red phase in my state. Everything was closed. There were few cars on the street and ordering takeout was as adventurous as riding a rollercoaster without being strapped in. My parents still made the trek to work each morning, but they’d shifted hours for employees. There weren’t more than ten people in the office at any given time. My dad would regularly come home early, often bringing something from the outside world that my fellow housemates and I would instantly pounce on. Sometimes it was donuts. Sometimes Chipotle. Once, it was a PlayStation. It did feel like the end of the world in many ways. But only if that ending was excruciatingly slow and involved me sitting under the covers reading memes and gorging on chocolate whilst I leisurely drifted into oblivion.

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My dad also often came home with new masks for us. We are a house full of girls (with the exception of my dad and our three male dogs), and he would attempt to humor us with the trendy, fashionable masks. They’d have hearts or dancing women or stars stitched across the fabric. There’d be different styles to try. I’d stand in front of a mirror in the kitchen and put all the options to the test. What screamed “edgy” but also that I was keen on protecting myself?

One afternoon, my dad brought home a handful of reversible sleek black face masks. My sisters and I thought they made us look like spies. We were ecstatic. An image of my dysfunctional family all donned in these elite black masks while on a walk flashed in my head. He’d brought back tons of these black masks, so I took two and said, “These are sick. You’ve been wearing one, right?”

“No. You won’t catch me in that.”

We were standing in the kitchen. I was holding up my new favorite mask, peering at my dad with a confused/ stunned look on my face. I knew that he was following the CDC guidelines. He barely let my sisters and me see any friends. Bottles of hand sanitizer sat in all of our rooms. And he put on one of those traditional medical blue face masks every time he left the house. So, of course, I didn’t understand his reluctance to strap this black mask around his face.

“Not for me,” he said.

I questioned him, and he fell into a story that’s echoed in the back of my head for months. My dad had met a black man outside a gas station a few days before bringing home the black masks. The man refused to wear a mask, explaining to my father that he had been stopped by police after going into a grocery store with a mask on. He’d rather get coronavirus than risk dying at the hands of the police. I felt a sharp pang in my chest. Quickly, I understood. My dad wouldn’t wear a mask that didn’t clearly, explicitly tell the world that this was just a harmless black man following safety guidelines. Protecting himself like any other American would. He could convince the public of that with a light blue medical mask. A large African-American man in a sleek black mask, however. Well, that could make him a target. 

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In the following weeks, I heard similar stories. Black men were cautious in donning their face masks. And at the same time, black and brown people were dying from the coronavirus at an unprecedented rate. But were the spikes in infections actually their fault? I kept thinking to myself: Inequality kills. It’s a disease just as potent as the coronavirus itself. Across America, there are massive populations of concentrated poverty and suffering. Too often, these are black and brown neighborhoods with lower life expectancies than the average American. Their health has never been a priority, and the coronavirus ravages through these communities the fastest, and usually, in the most lethal of fashions. Take preexisting poor health conditions and then add in a deadly fear of being racially profiled as a black person in a mask. The reality is terrifying. I couldn’t help but worry about my black male cousins miles away. They are spitting images of my dad with the same beautifully soft eyes and deep ebony complexions. Did they wear face coverings? Or did they take the risk, like the man at the gas station, who would rather die by pandemic than racism? Quite honestly, I was beginning to understand that the two evils worked in tandem. Racism only helped the coronavirus further its plague on the world.    

Then, on May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Immediately following Mr. Floyd’s death, the world exploded in response to the brutal killing of yet another black man at the hands of the police. As the world mourned, there were still some who continued to flame the fires of racism, white supremacy and bigotry across America. Black people felt both uplifted and more horrified than ever before. I remember reading the Will Smith quote: “Racism is not getting worse, it’s getting filmed.” I read those words and felt them deeply. My mom stopped letting my sisters and I leave the house at night as the riots and looting heightened in cities all over. I split my time between mulling both racism and the coronavirus over in my head. My thoughts always returning to the fact that my dark-skinned black father was hesitant to put on a mask that might make him look like a vigilante. Even scarier, a black vigilante during a time when our world seemed on fire.  

You know, I’ve never asked my dad what he’s afraid of. Why would I? As a little girl, you believe your dad to be a superhero. Unbreakable. Tall. Powerful. Strong in all the right ways. And you believe this because you know he will always protect you. It continually breaks my heart to know that my dad fears being a black man in a black mask. My heart breaks even more as I understand that he never wanted me to know or share in that fear.

I wanted to end this story on a positive, hopeful note. I wanted to write about the belief my family has in our neighborhood and city as a welcoming, diverse community. One that rejects prejudice in any shape or form and never falls prey to the toxins of racism. I wanted to state publicly that my father is no longer afraid to don a sleek black face mask on his way out the door every day. Of course, that wouldn’t be realistic. It’s not the story I am able to tell. And yes, that pains me greatly.

The wonderful thing about stories, though, is that they have the power to significantly affect change through the people who read them. And that’s what I’m hoping for. That’s what I choose to believe in. Someone somewhere is inspired towards anti-racism at this very moment. Inspired to wake up and realize that black and brown people will continue to disproportionately suffer, physically and mentally, without our help. And then those inspired readers will speak up. And tomorrow there will be a handful more of people working to change the reality that my father faces and fears. And I pray—I know that we’ll get there.