# A poll on current events: racism vs. coronavirus **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 10, 2020, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343 "2020-06-10T04:13:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/1 "2020-06-10T04:13:51Z")
Okay, no handholding with this poll, no requests for nuance or hypotheticals. Just answer the question in the way you feel is most accurate. Same with the political divisions. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/2 "2020-06-10T05:09:57Z")
The Coronavirus is killing more black people than a century’s worth of police brutality. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/3 "2020-06-10T05:37:14Z")
“Left of center: protesting police brutality”; the Republicans simply\* won’t permit \*the virus to be stopped, so the question is moot. And the two are intertwined anyway, the virus is hitting people along racial lines thanks to various active and structural racist aspects of our society; so it’s doubly a false dilemma. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/4 "2020-06-10T05:46:34Z")
Left of center, definitely Corona. ---
**Author:** ![Die\_Capacitrix](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/die_capacitrix/32/9_2.png) [@Die\_Capacitrix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Die_Capacitrix)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 6:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/5 "2020-06-10T06:43:10Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > “Left of center: protesting police brutality”; the Republicans simply\* won’t permit \*the virus to be stopped, so the question is moot. And the two are intertwined anyway, the virus is hitting people along racial lines thanks to various active and structural racist aspects of our society; so it’s doubly a false dilemma. This is me as well. I really would like to say that stopping the virus should be the priority. However, as stopping the virus is not being taken seriously, then protesting police brutality becomes more important. There are a lot of people who are not social distancing and are not participating in the protests. Therefore I do not see the protests as the primary reason the virus hasn’t already been stopped. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim_r.mortiss/32/142_2.png) [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_R.Mortiss)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/6 "2020-06-10T07:02:01Z")
The left-wing protesters and looters/rioters are doing their damnedest to stop all forms of social distancing, so I’d say the two phenomena are pretty much too intertwined to separate them. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/7 "2020-06-10T07:16:59Z")
Racism isn’t what’s killed 113,000 Americans in just six months, nor has it devastated our economy. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/8 "2020-06-10T07:19:14Z")
> [@Tim\_R.Mortiss](#): > > The left-wing protesters and looters/rioters are doing their damnedest to stop all forms of social distancing, so I’d say the two phenomena are pretty much too intertwined to separate them. No, they are trying to maintain social distancing. It’s the police who are generating the protests, forcing people to remove masks with tear gas, and them cramming the people they grab close together. And the “looters/rioters” mostly don’t appear to\* be\* left wing; they are right wingers, random criminals and the police. ---
**Author:** ![casdave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c6cbf5/32.png) [@casdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/casdave)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/9 "2020-06-10T09:01:12Z")
Left of centre is only meaningful for US posters, since the political geography in many other nations if different, left in the UK is much further left than the US, and Right of centre in UK is probably closer to US left of centre. We even spell centre differently just to prove it! ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/10 "2020-06-10T09:25:14Z")
> [@casdave](#): > > Left of centre is only meaningful for US posters, since the political geography in many other nations if different, left in the UK is much further left than the US, and Right of centre in UK is probably closer to US left of centre. > > We even spell centre differently just to prove it! I like how every single European comes into any American politics topic to drop this gem then confidently strides away like they just revealed something so shocking that every American in the topic is going to stop posting and run outside because nothing in the world no longer makes any sense. Hey guys did you also know Greenland isn’t entirely Green and Iceland isn’t entirely Ice? And plus we need some Canadian to wander into here and then start talking about how Canada is actually the most peaceful country in the world and that they’re actually MORE European than American. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 9:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/11 "2020-06-10T09:30:51Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > And the “looters/rioters” mostly don’t appear to\* be\* left wing; they are right wingers, random criminals and the police. I like how we had a whole large IMHO topic discussing this very subject and turns out it’s completely inconclusive if whether or not the alt-right is actually the ones causing most of the looting and then Der Trihs walks into the topic like a European and just lays this claim out there. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/12 "2020-06-10T12:04:31Z")
Left of center, stopping coronavirus. When something’s killing thousands of people _each week_ just here in America, and the numbers are only as low as they are because the whole country’s twisted itself into a pretzel to minimize the chances of catching this plague, it’s certainly the more important of the two _right now_. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/13 "2020-06-10T12:42:10Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Racism isn’t what’s killed 113,000 Americans in just six months, nor has it devastated our economy. Racism and the systemic structures that propagate it are certainly culpable in a fair number of them. Over the years there is no contest that racism and those structures have contributed to many many more deaths. Very strange phrasing to the OP. Make it apples to apples: either stopping racism (and the protests are about more than police brutality alone) v stopping COVID-19 (neither of which will happen); or protesting at this critical juncture v staying silent out of fear of worsening COVID-19. Left of center. Racism more important. The impacts of the protests have a likelihood of making meaningful positive impacts that will compound over time that is greater than the amount that they risk worsening the course of COVID-19. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/14 "2020-06-10T13:09:27Z")
Systemic racism is a foundational issue that impacts all other aspects of American life, including our ability to respond to pandemics. We always punt on it because it is too hard to address, but until we do, nothing else is possible. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/15 "2020-06-10T15:01:18Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > The Coronavirus is killing more black people than a century’s worth of police brutality. > [@Velocity](#): > > Racism isn’t what’s killed 113,000 Americans in just six months, nor has it devastated our economy. The protests are not merely about preventing deaths due to police brutality. For a black man, the systemic racism is something that negatively impacts your life every day. A related question for white people: would you rather take your chances catching coronovirus at a protest (with mask on), or live the next 10 years as a black person in the U.S.? ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/16 "2020-06-10T15:21:55Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Very strange phrasing to the OP. Make it apples to apples: either stopping racism (and the protests are about more than police brutality alone) v stopping COVID-19 (neither of which will happen); or protesting at this critical juncture v staying silent out of fear of worsening COVID-19. Yeah, this is a weirdly phrased choice since one of the options is something that is actually possible for me, as an individual, to do, and the other one is impossible. If it actually _were_ possible for an individual to stop coronavirus by staying away from a protest, of course that would be more important, but it isn’t. For the vast majority of protesters, their attendance at a protest is going to have absolutely no impact on the spread of coronavirus. For an unlucky few, it will, although there are ways to mitigate that impact other than not protesting at all (wearing a mask, self-isolating after the protest until you can get a test, etc.) Anyway, we’ve already pretty much decided, as a society, that people aren’t ethically obligated to do literally EVERYTHING in their power to avoid spreading or catching coronavirus, and that, in particular, civic activities like voting and protests are going to go on. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/17 "2020-06-10T15:25:36Z")
As presented, the OP question is a less-urgent-but-longterm problem versus urgent-but-shorter-term issue. It’s like asking, which is a bigger problem, the fact that one’s household is a million dollars in debt, or the fact that the living room is on fire right now? The debt is an enormous longterm problem but it can wait; the fire needs to be extinguished ASAP. ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/18 "2020-06-10T15:33:44Z")
Racism is a virus that isn’t going to go away with a vaccine, its needs to be addressed by activily calling it out… Although the number of black deaths by cop is small compared to COVID-19 the overall suffering to the black community as a whole every damn day of their lives is a burden I would not wish to bear myself. I am a half breed Mexican that looks white and has a white last name, so I see a lot of the behind the scences racism that is put out becasue people generally don’t know about my mexican half. And by that I have benifited from white privilage, but that’s my cross to bear. ---
**Author:** ![TroutMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troutman/32/6721_2.png) [@TroutMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroutMan)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/19 "2020-06-10T16:04:16Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > As presented, the OP question is a less-urgent-but-longterm problem versus urgent-but-shorter-term issue. > > It’s like asking, which is a bigger problem, the fact that one’s household is a million dollars in debt, or the fact that the living room is on fire right now? The debt is an enormous longterm problem but it can wait; the fire needs to be extinguished ASAP. This is the very definition of white privilege. The long term problem that can wait might not seem that way to someone who experiences the effects on a daily basis. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [June 10, 2020, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343/20 "2020-06-10T16:06:47Z")
> [@TroutMan](#): > > This is the very definition of white privilege. The long term problem that can wait might not seem that way to someone who experiences the effects on a daily basis. First of all, I’m not white. Secondly, the effects of racism and police brutality in America - bad though they are - still do not add up to 113,000 deaths in half a year, two million infected (with many survivors likely to suffer the effects of organ damage for the rest of their lives,) the worst depression we’ve seen since the Great Depression, and tens of millions of jobs lost. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-poll-on-current-events-racism-vs-coronavirus/855343.md?page=2)