The Leicester lockdown is really difficult to hear about, especially since I was born in Leicester as part of the East-African Asian community, and my family still live there. Thread to unravel my thoughts. 👇🏼
1/ I feel defensive of the community because I’ve seen lots of sly insinuation (and overt declaration) that the reason for the lockdown is the fault of the ethnic minority communities in Leicester.
2/ What bothers me is that the commentary is entirely un-nuanced. The equating of viral disease with ethnic minorities is troubling, with people dragging out out of context stats on TB to support this ‘fact’.
3/ The implication is also that ethnic minorities have somehow ‘disobeyed’ more so than anyone else, a suggestion that there is a lack of care or loyalty for the nation in ethnic minority communities.
4/ What seems to be happening here, which is horrible to watch, is the literal drawing of lines within cities to demarcate areas of disease. Some of those areas are known to contain large populations of ethnic minority communities.
5/ it may be that the prevalence of Covid is clustered in some of those areas. But people who want to speak loudly to the dog whistle of Boris Johnson’s ‘difficult to make people understand’ comment are now out in force.
6/ yes, there are communities where English is not spoken. Where TV, reading material and radio is all in a different language. But adult access to language classes is rare and expensive. And translation of govt materials on Covid almost non existent.
7/ inter-generational living is more common, so children going back to school or someone working affects aunts, uncles, grandparents more quickly.
8/ inner city ethnic minority communities are more likely to suffer from socio-economic disadvantage and families may be dependent on someone working in dangerous conditions, such as the factories of Leics that stayed open and demanded workers to come in regardless of risk.
9/ this isn’t just true of Leicester. Other cities have similar socio-economic conditions and housing conditions that do not allow for the same level of social distancing as the rest of the nation.
10/ but this doesn’t matter to below the line DM commentators - because it’s much easier and far more natural to default to ‘brown people spread disease’ mentality. And that’s what hurts.
