When Race and Politics Divide and Isolate

Some musings on Musk and Empathy

Before Musk took a central role in the government, I didn’t think much about him. However, over the past several months those of us who were largely unfazed by this egotistical billionaire have had to pay attention. I was first struck by his erratic behavior and opulence. Then, I watched him methodically fire my friends who were federal workers, and dismantle institutions that so many Americans rely on. It has made me more curious about him as a person and his unusual family arrangements began to make sense. Possibly learning that Musk wants to save Western civilization from empathy was the most vivid message of how he thinks about others.

The narratives Musk promotes are explicitly anti-black, anti-gay, anti-disabled, anti… anyone who doesn’t adhere to the white Christian heteronormative story Musk and this administration are trying to promote. The dangerously close relationship of Trump and Musk may be central to the recurrent rhetoric that harkens Apartheid-era South Africa. In fact, many people who benefited from Apartheid were much like Musk–who continue to emphasize the vulnerability of their families since Nelson Mandela’s founding of the rainbow nation. This was striking when Trump signed an executive order that promotes the relocation of white Afrikaner “refugees” to the United States. These actions can be categorized alongside the revocation of “woke” ideology and DEI programs are explicitly designed to promote white workers (particularly men). While the nuance of labor and race relations in the United States are much broader and more complicated than this, I cannot stop thinking about how Musk’s racist thinking has seeped into American policy.

Photo by Tobias Reich on Unsplash

I started to think about my own whiteness in a new way when I spent time in South Africa. I first moved to Johannesburg after spending a year working in Delhi, India, which transformed the way I thought about myself in the world in dramatic ways. Never had I felt so foreign. When I lived in Delhi, India, it was not only by my looks and tastes but also the entire way in which society moved around me that was different to other places I had lived, including my rural (mostly white) midwestern hometown. When I moved to Johannesburg, there was a familiarity that emerged. My husband Adam and I landed in a guest house of a warm and welcoming family, and we stayed there throughout my post-doc, as well as several following visits. I loved my work with a research group at the University of the Witwatersrand, where I was able to spend my days working with a research team from Soweto at Baragwanath Hospital. It was an immensely integrative experience. However, as much as I began to learn about others, I also continued learning a great deal about myself.

You see, people talk about race, ethnicity, and culture in profoundly different ways in South Africa and the United States. Even though my grandmother comes from London, rarely would I describe myself as “English-American” or “Irish-American” (where my grandmother’s mother comes from). I began to understand what this meant on a deeper level when I read Karen Brodkin’s How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says about Race in America. Brodkin argues that, because race is socially constructed, economic practices, political policies, and popular ways of thinking and talking can have transformative effects in how people think about race and therefore define, “Americans.” In this case, Brodkin argued that Jewish GIs (and others, like Irish) were assigned to the political category of whiteness by the US government in part to institutionalize segregation based on professions and housing. People who were deemed “white” were given preferences for where to learn, work, and live. In many cases, people assigned to the “white” political category were juxtaposed to blackness and others who were not perceived at the time worthy of full citizenship. By living as a white American, I was not accustomed to people asking so much about my ethnicity because my whiteness had been ingrained so deeply into my identity and so was the power and privilege I held because of it.

Yet, when I arrived in Johannesburg, white people were quick to ask me about my ethnic heritage and were quick to share their own. I was surprised by how quickly I would know a white colleague or running mate’s ethnic heritage, especially if their family was British or Afrikaans, or if their family settled for centuries in the eastern Cape or in Zimbabwe. These conversations reminded me of Brodkin’s book, and made me wonder how these political categories of privilege through race were meant to divide some people from others.

You see, it was during this time that I began to understand how the categorizing of people as white or black, abled or disabled, gay or straight, rich or poor, sick or healthy became a type of political weapon that could be used in strategic ways that I had not observed so clearly before. I found this troubling in part because we so often occupy grey areas and experience intersectional lives that are not so easily categorized or isolated. I began to understand that these categorizations are used to wield power. They are not meant to build a collective sense of identity. Instead, they are defined to ensure some people are your neighbors and friends while others are not. These categories are used to cultivate access to resources, knowledge, and political power.

Let me explain this in another way. I spent most of my time in South Africa in Soweto—a prominent township on the southwest side of Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa. Nested in the nutrient rich Witwatersrand hills, Johannesburg was founded in 1886 for its minerals, especially gold. Many Black farmers moved from rural areas to work the mines in the early 1900s, transforming the racial and political landscape of the city. These laborers journeyed to Johannesburg with different languages, cultures, and ways of being in the world—despite their shared African geographical history. By the early 1900s, many who worked in the gold mines were evicted from Johannesburg proper by the British and relocated to townships that were segregated based on their blackness (as opposed to ethnicity or culture). While new political and racial tensions emerged in urban areas, old dissonance between Afrikaners (originally Dutch migrants who arrived centuries before) and rural Black residents festered around the country—mostly over property rights to arable land. Who deserved what and why became critical conversations that were closely tied to race and often resulted in conflict.

These decades preceded Apartheid—the systematic take-over of South Africa's government that was anti-Black and, in many ways, resembled policies the Trump administration is introducing today (such as banishing people who are Black, poor, sick, disabled, gay, or any other ism from holding political or social power). The uneven development of housing, water access, electricity, education, and other core state amenities in Soweto and other townships, particularly when compared to other whiter parts of the city, created very different opportunities for people living there. Then and now, the majority of today’s nearly 1.2 million residents are identified by the “Black” political category but represent various linguistic and ethnic heritage; in fact, today many people speak multiple African languages (along with English and Afrikaans) and a unique way of communicating has emerged in Soweto due to this unique and shared discourse. Nevertheless, it's important to recognize how the “Black” identity is a political category that was constructed during apartheid with the purposes of segregation. For instance, many people couldn’t move around the city without identity cards. In this way, the political category of “Black” is used to segregate, identify other-ness, and subjugate.

What does this have to do with Long Covid? We navigate the world through many social identities that shape who we are in the world. Race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, class, living with a disability. The administration is not only wielding power through constructs of whiteness but also eugenics rhetoric. It’s hard to delineate the stories of ICE raids, purging of DEI, and pro-natalist talk for white Christian families from a fear about the government removing disability rights and services from the millions of people living with a complex chronic illness who depend on them.

I’m not alone in worrying about this. Slowly peeling back the layers of the onion–and revealing the histories and politics that are driving the decisions of our policy makers can be a dangerous business. Moreover, people who are calling for more empathy and recognition of the dignity of our neighbors and friends (and even people we don’t like!) are being perceived with disdain from those currently holding power.

Greying fact and fiction, what matters and who we should care about has become a central point of contention in politics. Returning to the joy and power that we hold collectively in a multi-ethnic democracy—where the people support each other— might feel far away. But it’s worth fighting for.