Enduring Social Inequalities: Black Communities' Responses to the "Covid-19 Crisis" in Brazil, Colombia and Kenya

What are the pre-existing structural conditions that influence how Black communities are impacted by Covid-19? How do Black communities disproportionately affected by Covid-19 respond to the compounded insecurities exacerbated by the pandemic? What pedagogies of everyday resistance have these communities developed to counter the social/racial impact of the virus? How may their local responses inform broader activism, knowledge production, and governance in post-pandemic temporalities? These questions anchor our research project, and we will explore them by using Brazil, Kenya, and Colombia as case studies. These countries were chosen because they are shaped by pernicious human rights records and income disparities while simultaneously being home to strong activist communities whose engagement allows many to survive the systemic challenges produced by state negligence and violence. Moreover, as countries with large Black populations that are enduring the structural inequalities produced by colonial legacies, centering their experiences will allow us to understand how Covid-19 is impacting Black communities outside of the United States and on a global scale.