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The temerity of allergy season to try to steal Covid’s moment is astounding. As a black person I try to look as healthy as possible during this crisis yet people still leave the aisle when I walk through the grocery store. Then I sneeze and people are horrified. It’s only after many microseconds have elapsed that they realize sneezing isn’t a symptom of Corona virus, however, the CDC says that it can be spread through saliva. They walk briskly away from me praying that I have not infected them and I can’t help but to feel sorry for those poor racial profilers. And no, contrary to recent national media coverage leading Americans to believe that every black person is a walking respiratory disease, I don’t have Covid 19 but I do have seasonal allergies—BADLY. I sneeze. I snot. I sniffle. I get pink eye. It’s very unsexy but not at all deadly.

I’ve had allergies since I was about 9-years-old and it isn’t going away but—GOD DAMN! I really wish it would disappear this Spring. I have a global pandemic to try to steer clear of. I can’t be cough sneezing while another jogger is passing me in the opposite direction on a trail. One moment the man is enjoying his essential daily workout as ordained by Governor Gavin Newsome, and the next moment he thinks that I may inadvertently give him an airborne virus so he runs off the trail so far into the brush that he almost hits a tree. And it’s so rife with irony that as children growing up in the south, my parents had to get off of the sidewalk and walk down the middle of the road when a white pedestrian approached them and now the whites do the exact same thing for us. I suppose one could call that progress—well if it is then I don’t want it. Having hay fever is hard enough but to give white folks another reason to be afraid of me is just too much. I don’t know if this is truly a result of “The Rona” or if this is how they always felt but now they are somehow justified. Or perhaps maybe racism is the pandemic beneath the pandemic. No amount of hand sanitizer or surgical mask could ever prevent the spread of racism. They would never shut the country down to deal with it either. Even though it’s killed more Americans than Corona ever will and continues to destroy our potential at an alarming rate.

-Roger Porter