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Why Labor’s Role Is Key to Understanding What Freedom Really Is and Achieving it
I was at the grocery store the other day checking out when a white woman at the self-checkout, who was not wearing a mask, was reminded politely by the clerk that state policy required she wear a mask inside the store.
The white woman snapped back with disproportionate rage, while continuing to scan her grocery items, that she wasn’t going to be deprived of her freedom and, next thing you know, she won’t be allowed to buy food for her family.
Her rage, like the white rage seething across the country fueled by Republican ideologues, blinded her to the most basic elements of the reality of the situation in which she found herself.
Among these basic elements was the fact that I and the many others wearing masks and unproblematically shopping for food for our families felt, I’m sure, absolutely no fear that our ability, or “freedom,” to purchase food was threatened in the least. And while it’s hard for me to fully speak for others’ feelings, I imagine many, if not most others, felt, as I did, perfectly free in our masks walking around the store, without impediment, selecting items and filling our carts. Democratic civilization was not about to collapse; we wearing masks were not experiencing the iron heel of tyranny coming down upon us.
