COVID-19 Community Diaries in Sociology of Race & Ethnicity

Each entry responds to specific prompts. Prompt 1: How is race prevalent in your personal life? What are some ways that race has shaped your ability to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and the related economic recession? Prompt 2: What aspects of contemporary racism/s do you want historians to consider as they examine the time period related to COVID-19 and the racial reckoning? Be sure to explicitly discuss both COVID-19 and the racial reckoning of 2020 sparked by the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor.

Entries should be about 600 words in length, excluding the student author’s name, the date, and any references. I also emphasize providing examples to support responses and anchor their narratives. Lastly, I remind students their entry will be part of the historical record; therefore, they may want to avoid sharing anything extremely sensitive. Each entry is worth ten percent of the course grade, assessed using a rubric to evaluate response clarity, use of supporting examples, and writing quality.

The Sonoma County Library has a release form for gifting items. Students who complete this form initiate the donation of their diaries to the historical record. Those who authorize my facilitating this donation receive extra credit (two points in a course of 100 points). In the assignment’s prelude, I acknowledge the need for publicly accessible data, stating: Adding your voice to the public record is exciting because it is a way for you to be heard long into the future, enabling academic researchers and members of the public to better understand what our lives are like during this challenging time.

COVID diary entries in my course invite students to reflect on how their lives intersect with the global pandemic and a national racial reckoning. Throughout the course I include learning activities guiding students to apply concepts about specific racisms, such as institutional racism and settler colonialism as well as anti-Black and anti-Latinx racism. This assignment, however, requires explicit personal reflection.

The context of self-reflection assignments matter. I teach at a Historically White College and University (HWCU), or Predominantly White Institution to some. My institution also has Hispanic-serving status. Very few students identify as Asian, Black, or First Nations/Indigenous/Native American. Most identify as White and/or Latinx. Racial identity continues to shape my students’ ability and willingness to recognize how race and racisms are endemic. COVID-19 is no exception. This observation is unsurprising. Yet it provides a window into how racial advantages and disadvantages impact student lives, as well as how the uneven visibility of disparate access to value-producing resources manifests at a time of heightened scarcity. The material consequences of less access to jobs, housing, food, healthcare, and public safety are familiar to an increasing number of students.

As I continue to teach about how institutional arrangements – from healthcare, housing, and mass incarceration to employment and education – create, reproduce, and can also potentially ameliorate racial inequalities, I use their diary content to shape the examples and case studies I provide. My reflexive practice aims to incorporate their diary entries as data about who my students are and what local communities are enduring right now. Perhaps this approach increases the effectiveness of lessons intended to instruct students about the life-or-death consequences of the racialized distribution of resources.