Don’t Kill Remote Learning. Black and Brown Families Need It.

Remote instruction. Virtual learning. School-by-Zoom. Whatever you want to call it, it has kept this Black man — along with my wife and 7-year-old son — safe from Covid over the last year, even if it hasn’t been easy on anyone. Each day, as my son sits at his desk in our home near Washington learning about bar graphs on a laptop screen, I am comforted by the knowledge that he’s not sitting in a poorly ventilated classroom at risk of getting sick.

While my wife and I managed to get vaccinated, I also know that vaccine inequity has left many Black and Latino communities like mine, already the hardest hit by this pandemic (and often lacking health care to start), without access to inoculations they and their children need. This includes neighbors of mine who have no choice but to work in person because of the nature of their jobs.