Editorial.

AutorSilva, Ana Paula Procópio da
CargoREVISTA EM PAUTA

The second issue of the dossier Ethnic-Racial Question and Anti-Racism is published with a relatively brief interval after the previous one. However, these few months mark a time gap, in light of what has been experienced in the context of the global pandemic of COVID-19, caused by the spread of SARS-CoV-2 or the new coronavirus. A reality that not only produces repercussions of a biomedical and epidemiological nature on a global scale, but that reproduces and crudely displays inequities already present in the lives of various social groups before the pandemic. With no specific vaccines or medications developed to date, social distance and isolation are the basic recommendations of the World Health Organization - WHO for containing the circulation of the virus and reducing contagion. Despite the guidelines, the health crisis is advancing. Worldwide, more than 10,500,000 are infected, with more than 500,000 deaths. In Brazil, there are more than 1,500,000 confirmed cases and more than 60,000 people have lost their lives. This picture needs to be considered beyond mere random casualties in the virus's trajectory to infect human organisms. The circulation of the virus is not democratic. Although it can reach all people, indiscriminately, the possibilities of adhering to WHO guidelines are uneven. The ability to protect themselves and the chances of recovery from the biological threat reproduce unfair social conditions. The pandemic crisis aggravates and opens up structural contradictions in the capitalist social organization. In this sense, the mortality figures for black populations by COVID-19 mirror the data on inequalities in deaths between black and white populations prior to the pandemic. No less relevant, the uncontrolled spread of contamination has severely affected indigenous peoples. According to the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB), in a survey carried out recently by its National Committee for Indigenous Life and Memory, more than 6,000 indigenous persons were infected by the disease and 315 died, totaling 108 indigenous peoples directly affected.

Amidst the pandemic, on May 25, 2020, in the United States, the murder of George Floyd by a policeman who remained kneeling on his neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, deliberately preventing him from breathing, showed that the "new normal" is not just the old indifference. Through technology, the images of the homicide "went viral" and infected people around the world to take to the streets against racism and fascism, stating that "BLACK LIVES MATTER". In Brazil, a few days before, the teenager João Pedro...

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