The Formerly Invisible Workers of America

In America’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have witnessed unprecedented attention being paid to a group usually marginalized, forgotten, and left-behind by the media: the working-class citizens among us. In a world where this class of American often never makes it into the history books, the national response and uplifting of the working class may finally push some to realize how integral these people are to our society. When working-class people lose their jobs, the very structure of American life crumbles. We can only hope that this is a lesson history will remember.

In perhaps the most visceral example for much of America, parents across the nation who have been forced to begin homeschooling their children have taken to social media to share their newfound appreciation for teachers. Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes wrote on Twitter, “Been homeschooling a 6-year old and 8-year old for one hour and 11 minutes.  Teachers deserve to make a billion dollars a year.  Or a week.” Over 600,000 likes and tens of thousands of replies later, it was clear that parents across the nation shared her sentiment. “Nothing like homeschooling during a pandemic to make parents realize how truly invaluable teachers are,” replied one user; “The coronavirus has showed … teachers and supply chain workers need to be paid more,” wrote another.

Source: Daily Mail

When was the last time you saw somebody tweet about their gratitude for the cleaning staff? “Thank you for all that you are doing to keep people safe!” wrote Twitter user Christina Noor in response to a custodian.  It is a very underappreciated job, but I think this time has made people a little more open to those still putting in effort day in and day out.” Thousands of other users began to tweet in their support of workers under the hashtag #SaveWorkers and began to raise money for the working people who face dire times throughout the pandemic.

To me, this makes me consider most our conversations about Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. In the same way that Ellison felt at times like a faceless, meaningless ghost floating around the white-dominated society of his time, the working class of America – the grocery store employees, the bank tellers, the custodians, the factory employees – who do the laborious work that keeps society moving for the privileged and unprivileged alike, have felt a similar invisibility.

It is precisely because of this coronavirus that people are beginning to realize how critical these employees are to the fabric of our nation. People are reckoning with the fact that if the delivery man gets sick, if the Amazon warehouse workers get sick, if the construction workers and security employees and custodial staff get sick, parts of our lives will grind to a halt. People are understanding how difficult of a job it must be to clean or teach all day, every day, for little money. Most people might say that they are relatively self-sufficient people, but this shared experience of a pandemic that does not discriminate by class, race, or salary, has made Americans of all types understand just how reliant we are on our working class.

Just as Ellison was ignored in a society largely built on the backbreaking labor of blacks in America, the modern-day working class is historically ignored in the society which they form the backbone of. If America learns its lesson during this pandemic, we might be more conscious of our working class in the future, instead of taking them for granted as history has done time and time again. Perhaps by doing this we can find, and maintain, our shared humanity, as opposed to continuing to hammer home the class divide over and over again.

America is a country that often seems to have trouble learning from its past. We can only hope that now, from this time of global chaos, uncertainty, and distress, we can come out a stronger and more united nation that continues its newfound appreciation of the working class.