What does it mean to “check your privilege” during a pandemic?

Let’s talk about the colour of COVID.

As I engaged in my lockdown morning ritual of scrolling through my Instagram feed I came across an @Privtoprog post charting racial inequality in the States. Nothing new considering the centuries of injustice there, but what caught my eye was this post was specifically about my skin colour – my race as categorised in American lexicon: Asian.

The image illustrated that the highest percentage of people able to work from home in the US fell in the “Asian” category, closely followed by “White” then saw a dramatic drop to “Black” and finally “Hispanic”.

It was Mental Health Awareness Week last week. I’d spent that week reminding myself of the theme this year, which is “kindness” and checking in with friends, joining Zoom calls set up by the company I work for about mental wellbeing and I’d committed an error in judgement this whole time: I was safe, happy, still working, still getting paid, all from the comfort of my own home.

I had to dig deeper. It didn’t take me long to find the recently published TUC results detailing that 35% of critically ill patients with COVID-19 are Black or Minority Ethnic: despite only making up 13% of the UK population. Then there are the government stats: the percentage of workers in “elementary” jobs – the lowest skilled type of occupation by their definition – was highest in the Black (16%) and White Other/non-British (15%) ethnic groups. (I couldn’t find any further metrics on my own skin colour, as I’m listed as “Asian Other”.) Finally, I landed on the Office of National Statistics site, which says “people of Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnicities were least likely to work from home”.

People from minority ethnic backgrounds are more likely to contract COVID-19 and are less likely to be able to work from home because they are our key workers, stuck in zero-hour contract jobs, working as cashiers, postal workers, delivery drivers, manual labourers… the people who make my life working from home possible during this pandemic.

I’ve been privileged enough to have access to excellent education due to the hard work of my immigrant mother, who is currently unemployed as her job BC (Before COVID as I like to say) was in a Chinese take away. I’m privileged enough to have been able to take that education to carve out a career in FTSE 100 companies, which helps me pay extortionate rent in London. Oh yes, we haven’t even touched on the fact that ethnic minorities are more likely to be in overcrowded housing and have up to 11 times less green space access (thank you The Guardian). 

So in the spirit of continuing this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week theme, I ask that if you’re mindful enough to be reading this, you’re mindful enough to take a moment and say a meaningful thank you to the cashier in Tesco next time you’re doing your food shop. You’ll also be mindful enough to use your privilege to educate others on the facts of working from home next time it comes up in conversation. 

Because who knows? Maybe your words will help build a better life for those folks in life after lockdown. At the very least, you’ve made it a part of an on-going conversation.

Cindy