COVID-19 Response

Tree of Life: HEALING THE HEALER in a Time of Dual Pandemics

The dual pandemics of Racism and Covid-19 triply impact Black health care providers who bear the stress of caregiving while they themselves suffer from racism, sexism and homophobia.  Our Board of Directors is pleased to announce that we have been awarded a CARSS Rapid Response Grant for “Tree of Life: Black Faith Matters in a Time of Dual Pandemics”  from the Center for African-American Religion, Sexual Politics, and Social Justice at Columbia University.  Our project was one of sixteen recipients in this grant program made possible by the generous support of the Henry Luce Foundation. 

The mission of The Braxton Institute centers helpers and healers with historically minoritized identities. “Tree of Life: Black Faith Matters in a Time of Dual Pandemics” will enable health care providers of color, racial justice activists, spiritual care givers and faith leaders to engage with one another to articulate emergent  struggles, hopes, resources, and questions for Black Faith as a wellspring for their sustainability in this critical time.  This process will identify new critical questions and creative evolutions of Black Faith important for the fields of Africana Studies and Religion, with specific application to the work of clinicians of color and spiritual caregivers in the face of Covid 19 and the current uprisings for Black Lives.

Our “Tree of Life: Black Faith Matters in a Time of Dual Pandemics” project will be conducted in collaboration with colleagues from Colgate Rochester Divinity School, Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) and the John W. Kluge Center Library of Congress Office of Scholarly Programs and trusted institutional partners including the William & Mary Africana Studies Program, The Middle Passage Project and the Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation. This project builds on the successes of the W&M-EVMS Narrative Medicine for Excellence Project, the W&M Middle Passage Project 1619 Health Equities Initiative,  the “Tree of Life: Spirituality and Well-Being in the African American Experience” research conducted at the Library of Congress by the Project Director, and the  Womanist and LGBTQ-led Braxton Institute Dialogues on Resisting and Thriving.  “Tree of Life: Black Faith Matters” has three goals, achieved through specific objectives:

GOAL ONE:  Design and offer a Womanist and LGBTQ-led program of on-line seminars and “Restorative Care Circles”  for  Black health care providers and spiritual caregivers in dialogue with each other.  

GOAL TWO: To initiate related scholarly research and teaching on Black Faith, Spirituality and Health, bringing together the fields of Black Studies and the Study of Religion. 

GOAL THREE: Make the outcomes and learnings from Tree of Life: Black Faith Matters   available to a wider public by documentation and on-line publications.  

TIMELINE:  November -December 2020: Planning, Preparation and Recruitment of seminar participants. January-March 2021: On-Line Seminars (Seminar  #1: “God of Our Silent Tears”: Breaking Through Silence to Name our Suffering in a Time of  Twin Pandemics; Seminar #2:   Identifying the Sources of Our Spiritual Wellbeing in the Face of Trauma and Disruption; Seminar #3: Deepening Understanding of Our Diverse African American Identities and Spiritualities.) April-June 2021: Circles of Care #1,2, and 3; Collating emergent questions for Black Faith. July-September 2021: Preparation of Report and articles, Video, and On-line Registry; Planning a Washington, D.C Symposium; Revising W&M Africana Course.  October 2021: Online Dissemination of Report, Evaluation of Project, and Celebration.

For more details or an opportunity to participate, please contact:

jbraxton@braxtoninstitute.org or jmbrax@wm.edu

“This is an abomination, but it is not unexpected.” Dr. Corey Hebert, M.D., New Orleans

COVID-19 is culling the herd of humanity. Beneath the conversation about herd immunity lies a silent and unstated conversation about who will survive. Why are black and brown communities being hit so hard? Why are we more likely than whites to die if admitted to the hospital? Who gets access to health care of any kind, and with regard to COVID-19, to inequitably distributed tests? Who gets a ventilator and who does not?

History matters. There is a peculiar resonance between sentiments popular among 18th century white Philadelphians during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 and a rumor circulated at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 1794, two prominent African Americans reported:

“A solicitation appeared … to the people of colour [sic] to come forward to assist the distressed, perishing and neglected sick; with a kind of assurance, that people of our colour were not likely to take the infection.”

Similar myths of black immunity popular in social media at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic prompted black actor Idris Elba to reveal his own infection as a warning not to believe the myth that minorities could not get COVID-19. Another piece of unfortunate thinking at the beginning of the pandemic in the U.S. limited testing to those who had traveled or who had contact with known COVID-19 victims. This initial protocol left out a large swath of individuals, making it difficult to track and limit infection among those who had not traveled internationally, and had not the means to do so. These are but two examples of how myths, cultural assumptions, and social and structural determinants can intersect to create dangerous lacunae that disadvantage all but the most privileged.