A Crisis within a Crisis: BlackLivesMatter, COVID-19, and a New Sense of Purpose

Rada Mihalcea, Ashwini Ashokkumar, James Pennebaker; The Pandemic Project, University of Michigan, University of Texas

On May 25th 2020, George Floyd, a 46-years old Minnesota resident, was killed in police custody. His horrific death has sparked worldwide outrage, with thousands of protests, vigils, and rallies across the U.S. and abroad. 

George Floyd’s death comes at a crossroads in America.  It follows a number of other killings of Black Americans: Breonna Taylor, Ahmed Aubrey, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Rayshard Brooks, and so many others. At the same time, the COVID crisis has accentuated the great racial disparity in unemployment, income, and health care, which has spurred far higher death rates from the coronavirus in American Blacks than Whites.

Although the black-white differences have been known for generations, the images of George Floyd provoked a tipping point, almost overnight. Within a week, most cities in the United States witnessed marches with occasional violent behavior. Public acknowledgements of widespread systemic racism across all areas of life were made by people across races, ages, among both Democrats and Republicans, and across the ideological spectrum. 

The Black Lives Matter tipping point came during the third month of the COVID crisis. Our research teams at the University of Michigan and the University of Texas at Austin had been collecting data on shifts in attitudes and behaviors linked to the health crisis. Our research methods allowed us to quickly begin tracking the Crisis within a Crisis.  We turned to Twitter, and analyzed several million English tweets randomly drawn from Twitter at a rate of approximately 100,000 tweets per day between March 22 and June 6. Recall that the first general shelter-in-place orders were issued starting March 13.

Rising Anger

Early on during the COVID outbreak, we noticed significant emotional shifts, with high levels of anxiety and large drops in anger. Based on earlier research associated with people’s responses to the Loma Prieta Earthquake and the Persian Gulf War, we expected to see a significant increase in anger starting several weeks after the onset of COVID in mid-March. One reason for this is that during the initial news of the outbreak, peoples’ attention was on the immediate threat and most other life problems had melted away.  However, as the days, then weeks marched on, people continued feeling anxious but they now had the freedom to start looking around and seeing other issues in their lives that were problematic or outrageous.

Indeed, starting in early April, anger language increased and remained at higher levels than the early days of COVID. Beginning in mid-April, armed protests began erupting in several states by people who wanted to stop the quarantines and to get back to work. By the end of May, the brutal murder of George Floyd was a spark to the underlying rage of an even larger segment of the population.  Did the underlying anxiety of COVID cause these protests? No. However, they were likely energized by the simmering anxiety that most of us felt.

Changes in emotions at the beginning of the COVID outbreak, with high levels of anxiety and large drops in anger.

George Floyd’s death in police custody on May 25th 2020 led to thousands of protests, vigils, and rallies across the U.S. and abroad, and a major spike in anger.

Us and Them

While emotions have shifted dramatically in the span of just three months, other things stayed constant. For instance, in the early days of COVID, we saw a major increase in “we” words (including words such as we, us, ourselves) as compared to the times before the pandemic had started, indicating that COVID increased people’s collective focus. Although the relative use of “we” words decreased during April and May reflecting an increasing sense of a “new normal,” we are now once again seeing an increase in use, which suggests a tightening up of social relations during all the protests that took place over the past few weeks. In fact, the BlackLivesMatter movement has seen a swell of support among whites, and has been bringing America together in a way that COVID has not done. 

The BlackLivesMatter movement has also resulted in a sharp increase in “they” words – with words such as they, themselves, their. Of course, the first question that comes to mind is: who’s “they”? (and for that matter: who’s “we”?) An analysis of a large number of tweets reveals no clear pattern: sometimes “they” refers to the police, other times to the “protesters”, other times to the African American communities (similarly, “we” often refers to the same groups, but in other contexts). The clear increase in the use of “they” words appears to be reflective of a heightened ongoing conversation on racism: according to Robin DiAngelo in her book White Fragility “race talk always implies us and them.”

While “we” and “they” words have been going up, we see a low use of “I” words (including words such as I, me, myself). We have seen a clear decrease in “I” words by as much as 47% when comparing the first few weeks of the COVID pandemic with language from the previous year; the relative percentage of “I” words got even lower after May 25th, dropping by another 42%. In other words, neither crisis is about the individual selves, and this lack of self-focus holds even more strongly for the BlackLivesMatter movement.

Changes in the relative use of “we” and “they” words during the early days of the COVID pandemic (end of March) and the BlackLivesMatter movement (end of May).

A New Sense of Purpose

Along with the increase in anger and the larger number of references to “they,” we also see a new set of values being reinforced. Using our values lexicon, we measured the changes in people’s values over the past two weeks, as compared to the earlier days of the pandemic. In addition to an increase in values that reflect a desire to help others or the role of society, we notice a large increase in the value of “order” (with words such as stability, safety, freedom) and the value of “justice” (with words such as equality, justice, equity). These amplified values are a reflection of the new concerns resurfaced by the BlackLivesMovement, and the hope for change. 

The BlackLivesMatter movement has brought an upsurge in core values of purpose, order, and justice.

Above all, the BlackLivesMatter movement has brought a new sense of purpose, as reflected by an increased use of words such as motivation, aspiration, intent, goal. The heavy thoughts and feelings of those who have been oppressed for many years by overt and covert racist behavior are now being voiced during the protest movements, which gives a sense of urgency over what will happen next, and hope for justice, order, and civic change. As a recent tweet has rightfully put it “[…] so many people are risking their lives for a very good reason, so it’s things like that that’ll motivate us more, you know!” 

This crisis within a crisis has swept us across the spectrum of human emotions from a high sense of anxiety to a surge of anger. It has brought a growing sense of togetherness, and an upsurge in core values of purpose, order, and justice. Whereas in other worlds, a shared national threat such as COVID would have united us and racial strife torn us apart, we have been witnessing just the opposite: the COVID pandemic has kept us at a distance, and the BLackLivesMatter has brought us together. 

I’m not black, but I see you.

I’m not black, but I hear you.

I’m not black, but I stand with you.

I’m not black, but I mourn with you.

I’m not black, but I will fight for you.

Anonymous author, shared on Twitter

How To Get Involved and Support Black Communities

1. Get educated on race and racism – read books, watch movies, listen to podcasts. A starting point is here. 
2. Have conversations about race with family and friends.
3. Vote in the upcoming elections. 
4. Shop black-owned businesses.
5. Donate and volunteer to support the BlackLivesMatter movement and equality initiatives. A starting point is here. 

 

Life With Children During COVID: Parents as Professional Jugglers

Rada Mihalcea, The Pandemic Project and the University of Michigan

I’m wearing alllll the hats right now – mom teacher accountant chef maid nurse – so many hats I feel like a circus act.

Anonymous parent, Pandemic Project contributor, March 2020

I am a mother of two. I am a professor teaching computer science. I am a research advisor for ten PhD students, two research fellows, and several masters and undergraduate students. I am the director of a large Artificial Intelligence lab. My first and fifth grade children used to go to school, but that’s no longer the case – so I am also an elementary school teacher. We used to occasionally go out to restaurants, and we used to have house cleaning help, but that’s no longer the case either – so I am a cook and a maid. And aside from all these, I am also me – someone who enjoys taking time to read, to learn or try new things, or simply be by myself (yes, I am an introvert).

I am just one of many. As it turns out, among the nearly 15,000 respondents who completed our survey, about a quarter (25.7%) have one or more children living with them. For all these people, what used to be parallel tracks of life –  parents or caregivers doing their work, children going to school or daycare, food being cooked not only at home but also at restaurants or sometime offered at the workplace, housework sometime done with help from others – has now been all compressed into a single track, with parents becoming full time caregivers and educators, cooks and maids, while also continuing with their work. It comes at no surprise that parents feel like full-time jugglers. Talking to many of my friends and colleagues with children, I hear them often using words like  “juggle,” “manage,” or “balance.” In fact, when the respondents to our survey were asked to talk about their thoughts and feelings related to the COVID outbreak and its effects on their lives, 26.1% more people living with children used words indicating an effort to “juggle” things, as compared to those with no children in the household.

Figure 1. Percentage of people among the 15,000 respondents who completed our survey who reported having one or more children living with them. Gender distribution is similar between the people living with children and those living without children; median age is also similar.

This constant juggling has important implications. First, it amplifies the daily life disruptions brought by the outbreak. While everyone has been equally disrupted when it comes to travel plans, social life, going to public spaces, or living arrangements, people living with children report experiencing more disruption in three main aspects of their lives: daily routines, work patterns, and their family education. This is not surprising as all these disruption patterns are interconnected: work and education are now happening at the same time, which not only disrupts both, but also disrupts the entire daily routine.

Figure 2. Percentage of people with or without children in their household who reported that certain areas of their life have been affected “a lot” or “a great deal.”

Second, it brings a different set of emotions in people’s lives. People living with children experience more stress — when asked to talk about their thoughts around the effects of the outbreak, 29.5% more people with children reported stress as compared to those with no children. This in turn is connected to more anger: 42% more people with children reported getting angry at least once during the past 24 hours (prior to taking the survey), and 34% more people with children reported having at least one argument within the household over the same timeframe. But despite all the increased stress, there is also a flip side to it: people living with children are people who do not live alone. They thus report a smaller amount of time when they feel lonely (9% less compared to people living without children). This in turn is connected to less sadness among people with children in their household: when asked to write about their COVID experience, they used 15% less words reflecting sadness, such as “sad”, “sorry”, “upset.”

Third, the juggling has the effect of bringing different aspects of life within the same space. We as parents are now trying to “keep in the air” multiple balls of responsibilities: children and work and cooking and housework and our personal selves. In the process, we somehow become more responsible for all these aspects of our lives. In fact, when asked to what extent they feel personally responsible for the well-being of others, four times more people with children indicated they felt a lot of responsibility for family as compared to those with no children. Interestingly, those living with children also feel more responsibility toward the people they work with (e.g., employees, students, customers), despite spending the same average number of hours working as those with no children: as many as 50% more people living with children reported feeling a lot of responsibility for their co-workers, which is equally true for both mothers and fathers. Very much like a real juggler, who cannot favor one ball versus another, we feel increased responsibility for all the balls we juggle with.

Figure 3. Percentage of people with or without children in their household, who reported feeling a lot of responsibility for the well-being of people in their family or at work.

Fourth, this whole juggling experience puts us in a somehow more sensitive position. We feel an  increased sense of responsibility toward all those balls we juggle, which changes our perception of the pandemic. When asked to what extent they found the COVID outbreak terrifying, 14% more people with children reported that the outbreak was terrifying  “a lot” or “a great deal” as compared to those with no children in their household.

Finally, in the process, we have become experienced jugglers. We are more efficient in what we do, and for better or worse we eventually manage to keep all those balls in the air. Despite all the disruptions in daily life and habits, the increased responsibilities, the extra load of work, childcare, homeschooling, housework, and a roller coaster of emotions, we parents are equally productive to those living with no children: when asked to what degree they have been  productive in terms of work, all our survey respondents indicated an average of 2.7 on a scale of 1-5, regardless of the presence of children. 

So here I am, one child sitting on my side, writing these findings on living with children during COVID, after a day when I worked on research, advised students, led an event, worked on first grade science and fifth grade math, played, cooked and cleaned, and found some time to read and bike. Along with all the other parents out there, I too have become a professional juggler.