Social distancing and the class divide

Social distancing is like boarding an airplane. Remember those? Magical transport devices that took you from one land to the next? They seem so distant now. 

Not a rich person, I tended to fly economy. Sometimes my tickets were so cheap they had a big fat X, meaning I wasn’t even deemed any class, and as a result, I was the last to board. And when I did, I’d pass the cloth curtain dividing the have and the have-nots, eyeing all the people sitting comfortably while the rest of us trudged to the back of the plane. Today, as I socially isolate myself in my studio apartment, I am well aware of this partition.

There is an inherent classism in lockdowns.

It feels like a great deal of the people I know are riding out the coronavirus in business or first class. Some even on the equivalent of private jets. They have large homes with plenty of room and yards in which their children can frolic. Whether it be suburbanites or people with second homes, there are those who isolate with legroom and comfort, and I can’t help but feel a bit of a divide. They share pictures of long walks, sunshine, quiet gourmet meals. But most of us aren’t having a quiet pandemic. Those of us in cities are not isolated. We are unable to walk down the street without someone in our paths.

Still, I can’t complain. I’m in economy or economy-plus, really. It’s like I'm on one of those planes in which the row has one seat for just one passenger. You can stretch out and relax. No one next to you. No one to talk to and look at when the plane hits those rocky turbulent moments when you think, even as an experienced traveler, that you might actually die. And you wish you didn’t ignore that video and all those warnings on which seat cushion converts to what and who to put the oxygen mask on first. Oh wait, it’s just you, so you don’t have to worry, but you kind of wish you could worry and take care of someone else. 

So I sit in my seat, or rather my apartment, and notice it is clean, really clean for the first time ever, and the irony is no one will ever see its pristineness. I scrub the sinks and the countertops in ways I never knew I could until I see them sparkle and my hands began to crack from all the washing. I make this 500ish-square-foot place an oasis. But when I get up from my seat, I am with everyone on a plane that's filled to capacity. It’s like playing a game of leapfrog, darting in and out on the sidewalk, trying to keep a safe distance. Yet, the people in economy are everywhere: the mailroom where I pick up my precious packages, the laundry room, the parks and the supermarket. I have learned to fear the supermarket. They wear masks and gloves, and no longer smile the way they used to. 

In my building, the elderly who once talked my ear off, seem frightened of me now. I take the stairs instead of the elevator and sift through the endless Amazon packages hoping to find the one with the hand sanitizer. I once waited for more glamorous purchases but a knock-off Purell would make my day!

Also in my section are the ones who are in cramped apartments with pets and children who need to run and jump, but they don’t have the means to go away and they didn’t have enough nepotism to go to someone’s else’s seat and they contort and rearrange to just be. They are the ones with the crying baby on the plane and while you feel for them, you are like, "Who would take a baby on the plane?" Why would you live in such a small apartment where a closet is converted to a bedroom? But they have no choice, they have to survive, and their days are filled with noise and cramped quarters and now fear. There is little-to-no legroom.

Alas, there also is the biggest group of them all, the ones you rarely hear about, the ones who don’t even get a seat on the plane. The ones who are told to distance themselves. But how? They can’t afford it, or are too sick, or don’t have the right paperwork, so they are in the crampiest quarters of them all. They are the ones with multiple kids in a room, or in countries with such heat that they are forced to sit outside, unable to get a few inches let alone a few feet – and definitely not six feet away. There are those who can’t afford any food, or what little food their food stamps allow are being hoarded at stores. They are the recently unemployed workers who may not be able to pay their rent. Maybe they never could. They are the women who are being beaten and have no place to go. There are so many who have to face this lockdown as a knockdown.

We have always flown different classes, it’s just that much more evident now and that much crueler.

I’m not saying that it’s always easier in first class because pain is pain and fear is fear, and we all have one thing in common no matter what our boarding pass says. We are all isolated and stuck on that airplane, waiting to take off, listening as our pilot reassures us, announcing that this is just a momentary lapse and that we will take off soon. But no one wants to stay on that plane one second longer than we have to. It is hot and cramped and we have been seated way too long.

At that moment the baby behind you cries and while you try not to, you do, too. 

It doesn’t really matter where you sit on the plane, where you live during the pandemic, because we are all stuck on that 747, and when turbulence hits, we are all in this together. While COVID-19 may be the great equalizer in its victims, it is not in its distancing.

Elana Rabinowitz is a writer and teacher in Brooklyn.