From Pandemic to Pandemic: Dr. Blair Proctor

Dr. Blair Proctor’s (he/him) current research considers how types of pandemics—including diaspora, racism, gentrification and police brutality—affect these communities. Incorporating the coronavirus into his study, he will give a new angle on these pandemics and will provide an even more intersectional view of how these epidemics disproportionately affect the most marginalized, oppressed and ghettoized communities. Thus, this comparative research can be applied to global conversations of how the pandemics of racism, poverty and the environment are occurrences that affect people of African descent. In short, these pandemics take a direct toll on the African diasporic communities’ health and life chances. From an African diasporic and environmental justice frame, this talk will center on how the coronavirus (COVID-19) has added an additional layer of trauma to already traumatized Black American and South African communities and assert how racism within itself is indeed a pandemic. Through questioning the concept of ‘Environmental Justice,’ the pandemic and sickness of racism at its root will affect African diasporic communities due to unresolved actions of racial hierarchy, health disparities and power dynamics which maintain Black New Orleanian and Johannesburg communities within a marginalized state of continued trauma.