Until We’re Seen: Public College Students Expose the Hidden Inequalities of the COVID-19 Pandemic

This event centers the voices of Brooklyn College student-authors who contributed to the recent book Until We’re Seen: Public College Students Expose the Hidden Inequalities of the COVID-19 Pandemic, co-edited by professors Joseph Entin and Jeanne Theoharis. Through firsthand accounts by college students at Brooklyn College and California State University Los Angeles, Until We’re Seen chronicles COVID-19’s devastating, disproportionate effects on working-class communities of color. Very few of these students and their families had the luxury of laboring from home; if they were able to keep their jobs, they took subways and buses, and they worked. They drove delivery trucks, worked in private homes, cooked food in restaurants for people to pick up, worked as EMTs, and did construction. They couldn’t escape to second homes; if anything, more people moved in, as families were forced to consolidate to save money. The accounts in this book show that the COVID-19 pandemic did discriminate, following the race and class fissures endemic to U.S. society. Recounting 2020–22 through the experiences of predominantly young, working-class immigrants and people of color living in the first two major U.S. COVID-19 epicenters, Until We’re Seen spotlights untold stories of the pandemic in New York, Los Angeles, and the nation.