A lot of people via social media and texts I’ve been getting seem to be falling into a group of people who are not critical consumers of the news. When I say that, what I mean is: do you always believe everything you read? Do you ever fact check claims that you hear about or read? Do you ever question the source of the information? The answer, for many Americans (and people around the world) is no. The human mind is trained to crave and seek out negative news vs. positive news. It’s why newsletters like Good News and Reasons to be Cheerful compilations are put together. It’s also why media companies, seeking to make money, will be more likely to have click-bait-y headlines and over report/cover bad news vs. happy news.

How do media companies make money, you ask? Well, there’s two major revenue streams: a) ads and b) subscriptions. Not everyone requires a subscription, but with ads, this is pretty much universal. How do media companies get people to click ads? You have more sensational headlines and stories that will attract them to read the articles by clicking into them, thus getting exposed to the ads. The user clicks on the ad, and boom! Money is made for CNN, Fox News, and the New York Times.

That’s a bit depressing, right? Well, it is to me. It’s why I discount a lot of headlines I see about protestors majorly being violent, looting stores, breaking into cars and store windows. Yes, looting is happening, but it’s the minority of all protestors. I know based on the way media works and thrives that these are the outliers. The vast majority of protestors are peaceful, trying to make a point and fight for human rights. Don’t let the media brainwash you into thinking all protestors are violent, or even half of them are. This could not be any further from the case.

When Chris and I visited Little Rock, Arkansas, in October 2016, just a couple weeks before the 2016 presidential election, we went to see the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site. We read in great detail and saw endless photographs and videos of the “Little Rock Nine,” which were nine black children attempting to attend their first day of class at Little Rock Central High School, which was, during segregated America, a “white” school, but they were prevented from entering by then Arkansas governor Orval Faubus. The Supreme Court ruling of Brown vs. Board of Education was announced in 1954, but states refused to abide by this ruling, including Arkansas. The documented accounts by the black children who endured this were beyond excruciating and inhuman. The account I remember the most vividly is one of the girls who literally got spit on so much by all the white students and white protestors that she had to actually wring out her dress when she got home. Her dress was sopping wet.

Chris and I walked through the exhibit, looking over the faces of all these 1950s white people protesting, truly believing they were the better race, that people of color were beneath them. Chris commented, “How would it feel to be a child or grandchild at this site and being able to identify one of these white protestors as your own family member, knowing now that they were on the wrong side of history?”

That’s how I feel about all the white people on social media, insisting that the protestors of George Floyd’s and Ahmaud Arbery’s deaths are “thugs” and “criminals” who should be the ones brought to justice. Twitter posts will live on, won’t they?

So, based on what I am seeing on social media, everyone is calling Amy Cooper “Karen.” Apparently, this is slang for my generation (I am seriously just learning about this during this week), where Karen is defined as “a pejorative term for a person perceived to be entitled or demanding beyond the scope of what is considered appropriate or necessary.” Well, I feel really terribly for people who are actually named Karen.

So while I’ve learned that, I am also learning via social media, both generally on Twitter and within my own social networks, a) how surprised people are that the Amy Cooper/Christian Cooper incident happened right here in New York City and b) that Amy Cooper is not a conservative Trump supporter, but rather a registered Democrat who has repeatedly donated to progressive causes. Neither is surprising to me, and I’m actually shocked that people are surprised by this.

First off, just because someone lives in an outwardly liberal/progressive city like New York or San Francisco does NOT mean the person is for the equality of races, and it certainly does not guarantee the person actually cares about people outside of themselves and their families. Bigots, both closeted and those out in the open, are literally everywhere.

Second, while there are vocal and outward bigots who hate black people, Asian people, Latino people, think women are lesser species than men, etc., they are the obvious people we need to go against if we have any heart or soul. The people who are truly a danger that we should all be worried about are the ones who harbor subconscious racism, sexism, and bigotry without even being aware of it. That’s scary… because how do you identify these people? And that racism/sexism/bigotry tends to come out only when said person feels threatened, which is exactly what happened in Amy Cooper’s case in the Ramble. As Martin Luther King, Jr., so aptly put it in his letter he wrote from the Birmingham Jail:

“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.

That was 57 years ago, but how true it still painfully rings today when incidents such as these continue to crop up, when the white men and women who surround us at school, at work, in our social circles, make subtle racist comments without even realizing they are being racist. They initially appear as micro aggressions, but they are just masked racist thoughts. They say they voted for Obama or love Michelle Obama. They say they donate to the ACLU. But that’s what they want to show of themselves to the public.

I would even challenge that the people who are surprised by either point above are part of the problem, that they desperately need to educate themselves on the voices and opinions of people of color because they clearly are out of touch with reality. They are the ones who need to read more, listen more, and seek out more information. But will they, or will they just be paralyzed by their shock that wow, a white Democrat-voting woman could be racist and do what Amy Cooper did? So shocking! Or, wow, something this could actually happen in New York City?

And that is absolutely terrifying.

I look at the way countries like Taiwan and South Korea have handled COVID-19, and I am constantly in awe at how people in some societies just obey orders they are given, barely question it at all, and stay inside. This type of collectivist mindset, while not great for innovation and producing independent critical thinkers, is extremely productive for global pandemics like the one we are currently facing.

Unfortunately, American dipshits in this country think that these stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are a violation of their civil liberties, of their ability to “live free and die.” An Orthodox Jew recently sued the state of New York for not allowing him to participate in Jewish gatherings, whether that was a wedding that got disbanded or Passover, because it was a violation of his rights as a citizen of this country. Others are going to their state capitol buildings to protest to end the shelter-in-place in their state, saying that these orders are more politically driven than anything. “This is not being done out of need because we’re being overly paranoid about how serious this virus is.” “It’s not that bad.” “Not that many people have died.”

And I’m sure that the people who are saying this either have not gotten the virus, have no loved ones who have gotten the virus or has died from it, nor do they work on the frontlines of these hospitals combatting the virus and treating patients needing ventilators and blood donations. These people are absolute idiots, and the world would truly be better off if they themselves were eradicated.

I understand that this is hurting the economy. Not all of us have the luxury of being able to work from home. Many people are out of work. It’s awful to not be able to put food on the table or not know when you will have health insurance again (yeah, THAT thing, which is its own can of worms). What they are being selfish and ignorant about, though, is that it’s not about caring or not caring whether they catch the virus or not; it’s that they could have the virus and give it to people who are weaker or older than them and have THEM die. COVID-19 is asymptomatic in so many people, so many of us are likely walking around with it and have no idea at all. And it’s not like there’s enough tests to go around just to check to see if we have it. So, the safest thing for all of us to do is to assume we have it and stay inside, away from everyone else, unless absolutely necessary.

So I’m not really sure if I should feel sorry for these people with their ignorance or just hate them. I think I’ve settled with hatred here, though.

We’ve been really privileged and fortunate during this crazy pandemic period. Our fridge, freezer, and pantry have been full of both fresh, frozen, and homemade frozen foods (like my wontons). We aren’t out of any critical necessities, and if we get close to being out of anything, we’re able to get them with ease. It’s been sad to hear about people who are not able to get the food and essentials they need, either because they no longer have jobs and income, or because they are old, frail, or disabled, without the ability to go out and get what they need, or with no one who can help them.

The New York Times has a lot of faults in terms of its reporting and elitist slants and lenses when it digs into certain topics, but one thing I think they’ve done a pretty good job of is highlighting all the communities during this period who are oftentimes overlooked. The reporting they’ve done on at-risk communities has been quite well rounded, like those in foster care and abusive households, and even non-human communities at risk: the elephants and rhinos across countries in Africa whose lives are truly endangered because of the increase in poachers.

I’ve checked in with my own mentee during this period a few times. She has enough food and supplies, but she’s at risk given she suffers from depression and lives at home. She has anxiety issues being by herself for prolonged periods. There’s little I can do to help her given she just wants to be around other people, but at least we can check in via text and social media like everyone else is. These situations are just blunt and harsh reminders of the inequalities that we oftentimes are shielded from on a day to day basis. Some of us are luckier than others… a lot luckier.

I was never a great test taker. It didn’t matter if it was math, science, English, whatever — I always hated them, and the pressure of the clock always irritated me to no end. Standardized tests, particularly the SAT, were the biggest things I dreaded while in school.

The scariest exam I ever took was in college — it was my sophomore year when I was taking my final exam for intermediate microeconomics, the most difficult course I’ve taken in my entire life. It didn’t seem to matter how many hours I studied, how much time I spent 1:1 at office hours with my professor, or what study groups I went to — I just really sucked at it. On final exam day, I opened to the first page of the test, and it said in huge capital letters: “BREATHE. DO NOT PANIC.” Too late. I already was.

So you can imagine how freaked out I was when I started reading about the recent influx of online proctor companies that are getting all kinds of money from closed colleges across this country. Student surveillance is becoming the new norm during this current pandemic. The proctor forces you to enable screen sharing and your web cam, but you are not able to see them. At any time, they have the right to force you to move your camera to your desk, your wall, the back of your room — anything. And for some, when you look away from the computer screen for more than four seconds, you get flagged for cheating and could fail the entire course. Because, of course, that makes a lot of sense when you’re taking a MATH exam and need to crunch some numbers by HAND with a pencil and paper on your DESK. Because, no one ever allows their eyes to wander when contemplating a test response.

These companies are absolutely insipid and short sighted. They’re certainly raking in the money right now and taking advantage of a pandemic when people are dying every single day and gloating over it all. But I think what is even worse are the universities that are hiring them in droves.

This would only add to any student’s stress given the pandemic and trying to finish a course now. If I were living as a student during this time, I would be completely miserable and likely sweating buckets. Because, yeah, I really want to have some random stranger who I cannot see stare at me nonstop for a 1-3-hour-long exam and rate me with a “suspicion” score on whether I may or may not have cheated based on where my eyes wander.

Some things are predictable when it comes to pandemics: you know before it descends upon us that citizens across the world will freak out and panic buy items such as canned and dried goods, shelf-stable items, and toilet paper/paper products, but what about all the random items that you don’t necessarily think are necessities, but somehow have increased in purchases and general demand/inquiry? Here is a list of items I’ve seen across multiple news sources that have been a little surprising to me:

1. Thermometers (I guess we all think we have the virus now, huh?)
2. Raw chicken (boneless chicken, particularly breasts, and mince make sense, but even whole! Whole chickens never sell out.. until now!)
3. Dried beans (but even more peculiar are the heirloom varieties run by small family businesses across the country)
4. Flour (the gluten-free fad totally bites the dust when a pandemic happens…)
5. SOURDOUGH STARTER – bakeries and sourdough starter companies that have 50-100-year old starters are reaching their peak demand!! I guess I wasn’t that original in wanting to use this time to begin my sourdough journey)
6. Live chicks / hens: People suddenly think they want to self-provide food by raising hens to lay eggs for them to eat, not to mention have their own mini farms. Do these people have ANY idea what they are getting into? Do they even have the proper space/conditions for this to not kill the chicks…?!)

We have a new director who got hired for our team, and he is spending a couple of days with us here in New York this week. He introduced himself and put time on my calendar for us to catch up one on one. We were only supposed to meet for half an hour, but half an hour ended up turning into two-plus hours over the course of two days.

He introduced himself by saying that he can handle and would prefer that I be fully honest and blunt, that he could handle it, that he doesn’t really do very well with politics.

“You don’t do well with politics, huh?” I said to him coyly. “Well, we have quite a bit of that here, so I hope you enjoy.”

I can get away with being this provocative because I’ve pretty much earned the right to do that. It was amusing to see how he responded to certain things I said. This was actually enjoyable. In some ways, this almost feels like a bit of a game now.

I know everyone says they don’t like politics, that they don’t deal with it or put up with it. But let’s face it: once you are in an office environment or any kind of group environment, there’s inevitably going to be politics regardless of what you say or do. Some people are going to be favored over others for reasons other than concrete performance or data that backs up how “good” they are. Others are going to be dismissed because they have been labeled as “complainers” or view work with “low urgency.”

It’s exhausting. It’s why my dad retired early from his “day” job to run his own business. “Why should I slave away for the white man when I can earn my own money and work when I want?” he declared when he retired in 2001.

His words come back to me all the time when I get frustrated with work.