Greetings, 19th friends!
We are super excited to announce a new hire: Chabeli Carrazana, The 19th’s economy reporter. Chabeli comes to us from the Orlando Sentinel, where she was the space and labor reporter. Before rocket launches, Chabeli was a business reporter at the Miami Herald. She's originally from Cuba, but Florida is home.
Her first day is June 22. Join us in welcoming Chabeli, and follow her on Twitter!
Also, we're hiring! The 19th is looking for a reporter to cover LGBTQ+ news and issues. Interested? Apply by June 15.
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A fence outside Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery is adorned with tributes to victims of COVID-19. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
100,000
On Wednesday, COVID-19 deaths in the United States surpassed 100,000, a figure that now accounts for one-third of the lives lost to the coronavirus worldwide.
It’s an unfathomable number, a grim marker of how the pandemic continues to grip the nation. But a series of digits, no matter how large, fails to capture the lives and legacies of the loved ones people have lost. Today, we’re taking a moment to bring you a sliver of the stories of women whose lives have been claimed by the coronavirus.
- More than 85 percent of nurses — who have been on the frontlines of the pandemic — are women. Theresa Lococo, a 68-year-old pediatric nurse, died after serving patients at Brooklyn’s Kings County Hospital, the same facility where she attended nursing school in the 1970s and worked for 48 years. "She was so committed to her patients and her friends and colleagues. That nursing job was her life," her daughter, Lisa, told Business Insider. Outside of work, Lococo was a devoted grandmother and mother who always put others first. “She would push you out of the way of an oncoming bus if she had the chance — that was my mom,” Anthony, her son, told the New York Post.
- In the U.S, Navajo Nation has the highest COVID-19 infection rate per capita, and women have been critical leaders in the traditionally matriarchal society’s fight against the pandemic. Valerie Tsosie, a mother of eight, died on April 23 after battling COVID-19 for a month. She worked as a police dispatcher on the Arizona portion of the reservation. Tsosie’s eldest daughter, Wynona Mitchell, set up a GoFundMe to pay for funeral costs and donations for Tsosie’s younger children. Four of her children are under 18. “Valerie thank you for your services,” a donor on the fundraising page wrote. “We will miss your beautiful smile. RIP dear friend.”
- Coronavirus has disproportionately affected minority populations, and black people in urban areas are among the hardest hit. In Louisiana, black people account for 70.5 percent of the fatalities, even though they represent only a third of the population. Antoinette Franklin, an 86-year-old lifelong resident of New Orleans, died on March 23. Within a 10-day span, her three sons also succumbed to coronavirus. She loved her city and Ebenezer Baptist Church, where she was a member for over 60 years.
— Abby Johnston
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'This invokes a history of terror': Central Park incident between white woman and black man is part of a fraught legacy
By Errin Haines
When Amy Cooper called the police on a black man who asked her to leash her dog in New York City’s Central Park over the Memorial Day holiday, the incident became the latest chapter in the fraught legacy of a gendered and racial dynamic dating back to slavery in America, one that persists in the nation’s imagination today.
It is rooted in an idea, backed by generations of violence, that white womanhood is to be protected and that black men are inherently criminal. The phenomenon is a specific strain of American racism, said Robin DiAngelo, author of “ White Fragility.”
“Who doesn’t know that calling the police on black people risks them being shot?” she said. “This invokes a history of terror. When a white woman says, ‘I’m going to call the police,’ she’s basically saying, ‘You might die.’ ”
“This woman instantly knew to evoke centuries of caste privilege as a white woman and endanger the life of a black man,” said Isabel Wilkerson, who wrote about the lives of millions of black Americans who fled white terrorism in search of a better life during the Great Migration.
This weekend’s incident involving Cooper and Christian Cooper (no relation) — a Harvard graduate and birdwatching enthusiast who is a board member of the Audubon Society — was captured by Christian Cooper on cellphone video. Amy Cooper can be seen approaching Christian Cooper in an on-leash area of the park.
Amy Cooper asked him to “please stop” recording to which Christian Cooper responds: “Please don’t come close to me.”
“She knows she’s wrong,” DiAngelo said. “She’s not supposed to have her dog off the leash, but by making herself the victim, she doesn't have to take responsibility for what she’s actually doing.”
Moments later, Amy Cooper warns Christian Cooper that she is about to call the police to “tell them that there’s an African American man threatening my life.” Christian Cooper continues recording the incident, which lasts for more than a minute, and includes images of the dog, Henry, straining against his collar, which she is clutching.
Amy Cooper’s voice becomes increasingly pitched on the phone with the police, where she repeats that Christian Cooper is “an African American man” who is threatening her. “Please send the cops immediately!” she screams.
Christian Cooper can be heard at the end of the video saying, “Thank you,” as she clips her dog’s leash onto his collar.
“White fragility is not rational,” DiAngelo said. “He doesn’t defer, he doesn’t back down, he’s dignified, he’s competent and calm. The more he is those things, the more unraveled she becomes.”
Read the full story.
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LOST LEADERS
Women may be on the frontlines of the pandemic, but when it comes to the federal response to COVID-19 they’re scarce.
Only 7 percent of the members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force are women — that’s 2 out of the 27. The White House Opportunity & Revitalization Council fares a little better: 13 percent of its members — or 3 of 23 — are women.
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 What we're reading
For her piece on Amy Cooper and the weaponization of white womanhood, The 19th’s Editor-at-Large Errin Haines spoke to four experts about the little discussed history of power dynamics between white women and black men. Their books provide historical context and roadmaps for how to talk about race in America.
“White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo: In 2011, DiAngelo, a sociologist, coined the term “white fragility” to describe the intense discomfort that white people exhibit when their notions of racism are challenged or questioned. Her book explores how generations of societal segregation has led to a lack of “racial stamina” for difficult conversations among white people, and the evolution from overt racism to subtle, but damaging, prejudices.
“The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson: Through thousands of interviews and painstaking research, Wilkerson tells the story of the nearly six million black people who fled the violent segregationist South during the Great Migration. Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, subverts long-held historical narratives about the transplants, who she said were often cast as “poor illiterates who imported out-of-wedlock births, joblessness and welfare dependency.” Rather, she embraces a history showing that their sacrifices led to better lives far from the Jim Crow South.
“Stamped From the Beginning: A Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America” by Ibram X. Kendi: “So many prominent Americans, many of whom we celebrate for their progressive ideas and activism, many of whom had very good intentions, subscribed to assimilationist thinking that has also served up racist beliefs about Black inferiority,” Kendi writes. His book unveils a history of racism in America, from its most obvious incarnations to the internalized actions of politicians.
“They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South” by Stephanie Jones-Rodgers: The historical erasure of women is common, but the credit isn’t always stripped from accolades. Jones-Rodgers explores the role of white women in Southern slavery, which has been obscured by both proslavery propaganda and feminist scholarship. “They Were Her Property” shows that white women, often depicted as fellow victims in slavery, held immense power in the Old South — power that they used cruelly.
🎧 Listen: The six-part podcast companion to The New York Times Magazine’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 project, hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones, explores the long tail of slavery in the United States, from health care to music.
📺 Watch: Singer-songwriter Tianna Esperanza uses music to explore her mixed heritage in a spoken-word song about race in America for Tedx Talks.
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