By Rev. Dr. Billie Boyd-Cox
Conyers, GA
The governor’s asinine enticement of reopening small businesses is another weapon of mass destruction. It’s lynching. It’s Jim Crow. It’s slavery.
According to the Georgia Department of Public Health, as of April 20, there were 19,398 confirmed COVID-19 cases, 3,702 people hospitalized and 774 deaths and of those 774 deaths, 422 were black men and women. There are now 500 new confirmed cases.
It is not safe to be anywhere other than inside your home. But this move, this maneuver by the governor is not about our safety. It’s deeper than that. Last week, we were told that Georgia has not yet reached its peak. Last week, many people woke up to stimulus money in their dwindling bank accounts—monies that must now be used to stimulate the economy, particularly small businesses, which were left out in the cold after big businesses received millions in their coffers.
The stimulus checks are nothing more than a ploy. The government wants to use US (Remember the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment). Let’s look at this with open eyes and from a critical standpoint. Who frequents hair salons, nail salons and barbers religiously? Black people! A white man shaves his face every day at home in his own mirror. His son sits in a chair in the kitchen and his mother trims his hair. They shampoo their hair every time they shower so who then is being targeted to go outside and play with Covid19 to see if they can live through the exposure of venturing into barbershops, hair salons, nail salons that are not large enough for one to safely practice social distancing? It’s us, Black People!
We must think back to the time when we washed and styled our own hair, braided our kids’ hair, polished our own nails. Think back to the time when a mani/pedi was not a thing for our people!
These openings are irresponsible and based on political and economical greed—nothing more.
Black People, stay home! Use what you have in your house. If you want to do something worthwhile, $cashapp your stylist, barber, nail tech the cost of a service that way they can live and so can you.
Let’s live and let’s vote like our lives depend on it because it does.