COVID-19 has put a spotlight on racial disparities and social injustices that plague America. The disease has affected Black and Latino Americans harder than any other race. Systemic racism in America has left people behind to work in blue collar jobs, to feed, clothe and serve a mostly privileged White America. They are the frontline workers that are forced to work each day for meager wages, little or no sick pay, and minimal access to healthcare. Here in San Diego, if you take a look at the zip codes hardest hit by COVID-19 and they comprise black and brown neighborhoods.

Black, Latino Americans, and other people of color share a long history of exclusion based on their race. Anyone deemed as non-white has historically been excluded from being a non-citizen. Various laws since the birth of this country have worked to ensure the exclusion of people of color. The 1790 Uniform Rule of Naturalization said only free white men could become U.S. citizens.

From the time of Cotton Mather’s proselytization of Africans as subhuman to advance their use as slaves in the new world, Blacks have been at a grave disadvantage. In the late 1800’s Mexicans and Natives were portrayed in newspaper clippings as savages and inferior to justify as whites explained why their land in the west should be taken and annexed to be a part of the U.S. territories. In 1848, the Treaty of Hidalgo ended the Mexican/American war and allowed Mexicans to become U.S. citizens after their land was taken, but they were still racialized. In the 1830s Jim Crow laws were enacted to enforce racial segregation between whites and blacks in the south, but it is rarely reported that Mexicans in the southwest were forced to follow Jim Crow laws, children were beaten for speaking Spanish in schools and hundreds were lynched, historians have found evidence that at least 597 Mexicans were lynched between 1848 - 1928. With such an intricate and shared history, it isn’t surprising that Black and Latinos face the same types racial injustices. Other people of color in San Diego like Native Americans, Filipino Americans and others also share the same turmoil.

Historians have long poured over newspapers to learn more about how people lived. This anthology would bring together the works of journalists from around San Diego and beyond, to explore and record this historic time as it unfolds. I would like to focus on the San Diego region and tell the unique stories faced by a border town.

For me as an African American journalist and native San Diegan, this is a way for me to give back to my community by bringing world-class journalists to the table to tell stories and do the pieces that aren’t shortened by time or length.

-Lindsay