“This week, we turn our discussion to unpacking the ways that an ideology of whiteness has become central to the American response to COVID-19. In cities across the country, we’ve witnessed small but telling protests that deploy the debased frameworks of freedom, liberty, and patriotism to advocate for a return to an unjust status quo. This destructive push to “re-open” tracks the history of how whiteness has made impossible the very notion of public institutions and the public good. The pandemic has shown, with vivid and horrifying severity, that the social infrastructure necessary to protect people from disaster is entirely inadequate. But the individualism-thumping authoritarianism helping define this moment is quite intentional, and the political acceptance of mass death is already upon us. It’s no wonder, then, that right-wing protestors are irate not about the scale of death and destruction, but about the inability to act as consumers, producers, and crucially, oppressors.”  Click here to register.