Face Masks, Racism, and African Dust

NASA Image of Saharan dust cloud blowing toward the Americas

The world and everyone in it are closely connected in ways we seldom appreciate. That applies to virtually every item in the news these days, including the controversy over wearing face masks, calls to end racism, and waves of African dust clouds.

It’s not that difficult to connect the dots when you know where to look.

The key lies in understanding the many ways we are part of a singular and all-encompassing web of existence. It’s a concept informed by ecology, economics, politics and religion, yet easily ignored among cultures where individualism is pervasive.

America is all but synonymous with individualistic thinking. We inculcate a worldview in which everything radiates out from self, like proverbial ripples on a pond.

We see ourselves as the center of our own universe, doggedly advocating our given cause(s). We’re taught to demand our piece of the pie based on a variety of constitutionally afforded civil liberties. Trouble is not far behind when those civil liberties intermingle with the brute force of rampant individualism.

Masking a problem

That trouble is what we now see among those insisting on their right not to wear a face mask in public during the pandemic. They proudly tout their individual rights indifferent to the impact on the health and well-being of the nation (and world) and its most vulnerable citizens.

Wearing a mask has become politicized to the point that many now consider it a symbol of liberal causes.

The short-sighted and destructive nature of such attitudes is now evident as the nation roils under a surge in COVID cases spurred on by states reopening too soon and too aggressively. Throngs of young people have chosen to shun CDC guidelines so they can “party on,” blithely confident that if they do get ill it won’t be that big a deal.

Many seem utterly unconcerned about spreading the virus to others who could die from it — including the elderly, disabled, and essential workers needed to save their lives should they land in the hospital. They seem ensconced in what has been termed an “entitlement complex.”

Out of Africa

Yet, as they say, no man is an island. The African Dust Cloud that recently hit the United States is a symbolic reminder that what happens in Africa doesn’t stay in Africa. Its problems and struggles, like poor countries everywhere, always affect the rest of the world in some form or another.

A few days of Saharan dust may not be difficult to cope with this go-round, but as Ebola demonstrated a few years back, we are just one plane flight away from their calamity becoming ours.

What took place in an obscure meat market in a distant city in China underscored the importance of recognizing that the entire globe is now irreversibly interdependent.

Beyond the blowing African dust are millions of needy refugees (among 80 million forcibly displaced people worldwide) and poverty-stricken African subsistence farmers trying to survive amid historic floods, locusts, and COVID-19.

As starvation takes hold, political unrest follows and eventually ripples over to our end of the pond. Our waters cannot remain calm when theirs are perpetually choppy.

The plight of every helpless group around the world is necessarily our plight too. Our stability and prosperity depend on theirs. Contrary to what Cain and many red-blooded Americans seem to think, we most certainly are our brother’s keeper — every single one of them.

Racism’s reach

This is where the connection extends to the wildfire of racially infused unrest now raging across the American social and political landscape. America is in no way unique to racism’s stain, but our unenviable history of slavery and discrimination has finally begun to rattle our cage.

We are reaping what we have sown, though many befuddled Americans are still trying to hide behind masks of denial and diversionary tactics to avoid facing the facts.

At its core, racism is a decidedly moral issue. Elsewhere I’ve argued that a moral solution must accompany any other measure taken if we are ever to rid America and the world of racism’s ugly blight. Laws alone cannot eradicate the hatred that fuels racist ideologies.

The desire and capacity to truly care about those who are different from us is a heart issue that must be addressed for legal reforms to be truly effective.

The same holds true where no laws exist. Loving and caring about the plight of minorities requires the same impulse as loving and caring about the potential victims of coronavirus, as well as those struggling to survive outside our shores.

Laws can’t bid us to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before God (Micah 6:8). My neighbor just proved this point by conspicuously raising a second Confederate flag on his property in response to recent protests against racism. His focus seems limited to his petty concerns within his circumscribed little world.

Whence the blueprint?

So where do we go to find a transcendent vision to address an individualistic culture in dire need of a way to see beyond its own paltry concerns? What model offers a viable alternative to our self-serving attitudes and actions?

There is none I know of that surpasses the example of Jesus, who offers a way to institute real change … from the inside out.

He taught and compellingly demonstrated that freedom is not found in demanding our way while eschewing concern for the welfare of others, but that though loving and serving our neighbors — whoever they are and wherever they might be — we experience true freedom.

He offers to liberate us from our own selfish desires so we can find joy and purpose through protecting the vulnerable and lifting up the less fortunate. This truth lies behind his famed declaration that it is more blessed to give than to receive (Acts 20:35). We’re made to love and give, and will languish in our disaffection and discontent until we learn to do so.

Wearing a mask to protect those we don’t know is not only loving our neighbor but honoring God in the process. Caring for the poor and disadvantaged liberates us from the disappointing consequences of self-absorption. And doing our part to help replace a world of racist ideologies and institutions fosters an environment that frees both perpetrator and victim.

Benefits aplenty

This sort of agenda is not even a sacrifice. We all benefit by promoting societal health, economic security, and a level of well-being that greatly enhances our personal and collective quality of life.

It’s a win-win design of divine origins: Love and serve our neighbors near and far and we flourish right alongside them.

Like it or not, we’re together in this thing called life. In the words of the inimitable Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

We’re not separate races perched on opposite sides of a tittering see-saw. We are one human race, and we rise or fall as such.

Americans can do better than promoting selfishness, hatred, and blatant disregard for the plight of the vulnerable and disadvantaged. Those motivations demean and destroy all who let their hearts and minds be ruled by them.

Ironically, what proponents of self-interest actually seek — including acceptance, security, and prosperity — are found through loving, giving, and sacrificial involvement in the very lives of those mistakenly perceived to be threats and detriments to possessing life’s treasures.

God’s economy is counter-intuitive. When we embrace the honored role offered us as our brother’s keeper, we gain much more than we give. Beyond a sibling and a new identity, we gain the wealth of an entire family and the sorely needed realization that together humanity can flourish in ways that far exceed every individualistic agenda.

The choice

We have a choice to assume the role of advocate or adversary. The consequences of that choice will impact each of us and the world we all share— for better or for worse. Our decisions determine whether our common pond will become a pleasant abode or a fetid backwater.

If we choose to follow our Maker’s plan and accept our true identity as our brother’s keeper, life will emerge within us and around us. But if we choose exclusionary roles and self-interested agendas, hatred and destruction are sure to follow.

As individuals and as a nation, we are constrained to consciously choose our allegiance. It comes with being human. Indifference is tantamount to making the wrong choice.

Moses encouraged the wandering Israelites to “choose life” at a critical juncture in their journey out of slavery toward the land of promise.

Americans would do well to heed and respond to those very words as we negotiate our way through a wilderness rife with self-interest and social unrest. Should we choose life, I’ve no doubt we’ll find ourselves quite happy to live in the world that choice creates.