What Black Women’s Histories Can Teach Us about Pandemics

By  JANELL HOBSON via https://msmagazine.com/

Given this historic moment of global pandemic, I am inclined to reflect on the importance of history.

Already, this history is gendered, raced and classed. The privileged comfort and status of Global North nations moved slowly to combat the spread of the coronavirus that caused the respiratory illness called COVID-19 since it originated from China.

Nonetheless, a virus that spreads easily from human to human knows no national or natural borders—given the global expanse of human travel, migration and distribution of goods in the present neoliberal global economy. 

What began as the epicenter of the pandemic in China in January of 2020 soon moved to European countries like Italy in February and Spain in March to the United States in April. And the most vulnerable—the elderly, the disabled, the poor and communities of color in the United States with high rates of people with preexisting health conditions—bore the brunt of this crisis.

Meanwhile, women in healthcare professions and at homes as caretakers, cleaners, parents and teachers, felt…

Read More: What Black Women’s Histories Can Teach Us about Pandemics