Black bodies have been the site of devastation for centuries. We who inhabit and love these bodies live in a state of perpetual mourning. We mourn the disproportionate dying in our families, communities and the dying in the black diaspora. We are yet to come to terms with the death that accompanied the AIDS pandemic. Tuberculosis breeds in the conditions within which most of us live. We die from hours spent in the belly of the earth where we dig for minerals to feed the unquenchable thirst of capital. Malaria targets our neighbors with deathly accuracy. Ebola stalks west Africa where it has established itself as a rapacious black disease. It kills us. In the black diaspora, African Americans are walking targets for American police who kill and imprison them at rates that have created a prison industrial complex. Africans die in the Mediterranean ocean and join the spirits of ancestors drowned centuries ago. With South Africa as the point of departure, this paper stages a transcontinental examination of black death. It is animated by the following questions. What are the dimensions of black death, what is its scale and how is it mourned? What does the COVID-19 pandemic mean for we who are so intimately familiar with death?

黑体已经毁灭了数百年。居住并热爱这些尸体的我们生活在永恒的哀悼中。我们哀悼我们家庭，社区和黑人散居者中不相称的死亡。我们尚未对艾滋病大流行带来的死亡感到满意。结核病在我们大多数人赖以生存的环境中繁殖。我们死于在地球腹中度过的时光，在那里我们挖矿藏来满足对资本的坚定需求。疟疾以致命的准确性瞄准了我们的邻居。埃博拉病毒在非洲西部肆虐，并因此成为狂暴的黑人疾病。它杀死了我们。在黑人侨民中，非洲裔美国人成为美国警察的袭击目标，他们以造成监狱工业综合体的速度杀害和监禁他们。非洲人死于地中海，并与数百年前被淹死的祖先的精神融为一体。本文以南非为出发点，对黑死病进行了洲际检查。以下问题使它充满生气。黑死病的规模是多少，规模是多少，如何哀悼？COVID-19大流行对我们如此熟悉死亡的人意味着什么？