Thread by @thePhDandMe

🧵Over this year I have been working with @kateetthompson on translating my research on #racialcapitalism & #covid19 into a comic illustration - one that I hope will grasp everyone's attention. Open access: escholarship.org/uc/item/48j236…. Now let me share some important details ⬇️

https://twitter.com/UCMercedCFH/status/1588610244841570305

I wrote the original article after finding stats in spring 2020 about the racialized death gap in Michigan, with a focus on Detriot - showing 40% of deaths among Black folks, though they made up 14% of the population. See:

https://twitter.com/thePhDandMe/status/1254494409011261440?s=20&t=hfFNOXM5h2OXTgYrS7_jzA

We just got done talking in person about the process in sessions from our funder @UCMercedCFH and I want to demystify what this type of work is. I am very appreciative of @kateetthompson who treated this project with much care.

First, we wanted to make sure there was a coherent story that showed the main point: Racial inequities in covid-19 are not rooted in pre-existing conditions, but racial capitalism is a pre-existing condition for inequities that were amplified in the pandemic.

But beyond the argument, I think the finer details are most illuminative. Like how each cough is captured in orange...

.@kateetthompson used real images of Detriot as the backdrop for the story throughout the comic. And we wove in real stories about environmental harms facing the area (see mlive.com/public-interes… )

A key focal point was that story that we witness over and over. Essential laborers, predominantly people of color, were being exploited for their labor.

We told this story through honoring an older Black woman caretaker, who caught covid-19 but was forced to continue to work & whose sickness was diminished.

Another powerful illustrative idea from .@kateetthompson was to memoralize the workers placed throughout the comic into a visible memorial in this panel.

Given the way whiteness permeates privilege in this story about people of color, we decided to have white individuals become a part of background - not to render them invisible, but to minimize that focus.

The woman we showcase was being looked after by her daughter. You can feel her love and then anger as the story goes on & ends with her at a protest. In the last scene, the daughter is wearing the bracelet the mother had worn. Our legacies continue and so does our fight!

*dismissed (& diminished I suppose)