Pandemics and prejudice (original) (raw)
Related papers
covid-19 and Anti-Asian Racism
Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, 2021
This issue of adva responds to the covid-19 pandemic and the resulting highly-mediatized surge in anti-Asian racism and misogyny, which has exacerbated deeply-rooted anti-Asian Pacific racisms in North America and underlined continuing legacies of global histories of colonialism and empire. In order to hold space for collective grief, anger, frustration, and exhaustion, and to address the heightened sense of precarity we are experiencing, many of the contributions to this issue focused on how the pandemic affected Asian diasporic artists, activists, community organizers, curators, and scholars this past year. Our authors and editors were not immune to the toll of the pandemic. We were affected by illness, from covid or from pre-existing conditions, worsened by the overburdened healthcare system and global strain, first in the search for a vaccine and now in its administration and dispensation. Rather than rush back to a business-as-usual model, we extended our deadlines and engaged with slowness; we practiced a politics of refusal. Our emergency editorial
Discrimination, Othering, and the Political Instrumentalizing of Pandemic Disease Two Case Studies
Journal of Interdisciplinary History of Ideas, 2020
The complex history of pandemics has created a diversified array of anti-epidemic responses, which have allowed structures of authority to express their power in multiple ways. In this paper, by considering theories applicable to cases ranging from Europe to Asia, from the 11th to the 18th century, we conduct a comparative analysis capable of identifying common traits and radical differences, aiming to show how such deployment of power was not always commensurate with the medical theories of the age, and with the gravity of the epidemiological situation. Specifically, we analyse how Western European States, in their process of formation, employed the concept of ‘public health’ to create the grounds for an unprecedented exercise of power over the private sphere. Furthermore, we compare this attitude with the discrimination of the minority known as burakumin in Japan, which was destined to undertake any ‘dirty’ or ‘impure’ occupation, to preserve the immunity of the community. In other words, we examine how structures of power have exploited states of exception to implement control measures beyond the needs of the situation through an increasingly hypertrophic apparatus of security; and ways in which political authorities have not aligned with medical or philosophical authorities of their times, for opportunistic reasons that benefited their own social, religious, or racial group.
The Impact of Covid-19 Blame Game Towards Anti-Asian Discrimination Phenomena
The Journal of Society and Media
The purpose of this paper is to explain how the relationship between foreign policies based on the 'Blame Game' could affect the social conditions of society, especially in terms of discrimination against people of Asian descent. The act of accusing each other by Western countries against China over who should actually be responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic has made international political conditions more tense and heated. China's defensive foreign policy strategy turned out to be aggressive and even creates a distortion of information regarding the truth of the origins of the pandemic. So the result is a Blame Game that is destructive, uncooperative, and actually makes problems unresolved where to deal with a global pandemic requires collective action. This is also leads to the increase of discrimination acts towards Asian community. This paper uses an explanatory-qualitative method, with data collection techniques through literature study. Constructivism theory and t...
Perspectives on xenophobia during epidemics and implications for emergency management
Journal of Emergency Management, 2020
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease that traces its earliest known cases to the Hubei region of China in late 2019. As the COVID-19 pandemic has spread across the globe wreaking unprecedented disruption, increasing levels of xenophobia and racial discrimination have been documented against those of Asian descent. We investigate the historical connections between disease and rise of xenophobia as described in the peer-reviewed literature addressing prior epidemics, such as Ebola and the Hong Kong Flu, in conjunction with concurrent cases of prejudice toward certain groups of people. Attempts to better understand why such attitudes emerge are examined in the context of xenophobic actions during pandemics. Prevailing views suggest that xenophobia ultimately leads to increased stigmatization of those afflicted by disease, which in turn leads to decreased trust in the medical system, resulting in a negative feedback loop. Accurate disseminated information and imp...
Year of the Bull? Global Bullying of the Asian Diaspora as Repercussions to the Covid-19 Pandemic
International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Economic Issues, 2020
The Covid-19 global has exposed another pandemic, that of racism. As a result, Chinese citizens throughout the global community have faced bullying and malice. Bullying is a global problem; in this case the international community has concentrated its collective anxiety about Covid-19, which originated in Wuhan, China, to discriminate against those of Chinese descent. Therefore, this short essay reflects on some historical and psychological underpinnings, which inform the cruelty and blame ascribed to many Chinese people during this unprecedented public health emergency.
The Politics of Pandemic Othering: Putting COVID-19 in Global and Historical Context
International Organization
As COVID-19 began to spread around the world, so did reports of discrimination and violence against people from marginalized groups. We argue that in a global politics characterized by racialized inequality, pandemics such as COVID-19 exacerbate the marginalization of already oppressed groups. We review published research on previous pandemics to historicize pandemic othering and blame, and enumerate some of the consequences for politics, policy, and public health. Specifically, we draw on lessons from smallpox outbreaks, the third bubonic plague, the 1918 influenza pandemic, and more recent pandemics, such as HIV/AIDS, SARS, and Ebola. We also compile reports to document the discrimination and violence targeting marginalized groups early in the COVID-19 pandemic. This article lays bare the continuation of a long history of othering and blame during disease outbreaks and identifies needs for further inquiry to understand the persistence of these pandemic politics.
Virtual Town Hall Examines Anti-Asian Racism during COVID-19 Pandemic, GW Today, April 20, 2020
GW Today, 2020
Asian Americans have been spat on, verbally assaulted and physically attacked in more than a thousand race-related incidents in the United States as a result of fear evoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Alexa Alice Joubin, professor of English and international affairs, women’s studies and East Asian languages and cultures, provided a historical context for the discussion. She said connecting the language of disease to racism is not a new phenomenon. For example, it was seen in an 1886 soap advertisement “for kicking the Chinese out of the U.S.,” she said, and dubbed “yellow fever” in reference to white men who have a fetish for Asian women. Joubin said the language is associated with a history of discrimination against Chinese that made it into U.S. law, including the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Cable Act that prevented Chinese from becoming citizens even when they married U.S. citizens. It will take all of our cognitive ability, analytical reasoning “to concentrate and harness our resources to combat disinformation,” she said, “Our greatest fight is about fear.”
Sinophobic Stigma Going Viral: Addressing the Social Impact of COVID-19 in a Globalized World
American Journal of Public Health, 2021
This article critically examines the recent literature on stigma that addresses the overspread association among the COVID-19 pandemic and racial and ethnic groups (i.e., mainland Chinese and East Asian populations) assumed to be the source of the virus. The analysis begins by reviewing the way in which infectious diseases have historically been associated with developing countries and their citizens, which, in turn, are supposed to become prime vectors of contagion. The latter extends to the current labeling of COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus,” that—along with a number of other terms—has fueled race-based stigma against Asian groups in the United States and overseas. This review further discusses the limitations of current COVID-19 antistigma initiatives that mostly focus on individual-based education campaigns as opposed to multisectorial programs informed by human rights and intersectional perspectives. Finally, the article ends with a call to the international public health community toward addressing the most recent outbreak of stigma, one that has revealed the enormous impact of words in amplifying racial bias against particular minority populations in the developed world.
EXPANDING THE NARRATIVE ON ANTI-CHINESE STIGMA DURING COVID-19 - Initial Report.pdf
2020
Due to the geographic origins of the first major outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, there have been reports of Asians around the world experiencing discrimination, xenophobia, or racism. Such reports have been prevalent in Toronto, Canada and in Nairobi, Kenya, two global urban centres that have significant Chinese diaspora communities. Discriminatory actions have ranged from outright physical aggression to subtle microaggressions. While reports (both media and academic) have highlighted such incidents, we argue that when the conversation starts and stops at the reporting of experiences of stigma, the narrative remains the victimization of the community. While the emerging story of the instances of COVID-19 stigma and discrimination are only one aspect of this story, other aspects include a deeper understanding of the community itself along with an awareness of the capacity the Chinese diaspora community brings forward to help us all overcome COVID-19. By better understanding the...
How Racism Against Asians Exploded In The Pandemic
Junkee.com, 2021
I spoke with Junkee contributor Elfy Scott on the connections between the surge in racism around the COVID19 pandemic and the long history of disasters and discrimination. Episode date: March 16th, 2021
Stigma, Discrimination, and Hate Crimes in Chinese-Speaking World amid Covid-19 Pandemic
Asian Journal of Criminology, 2021
The Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to stigma, discrimination, and even hate crimes against various populations in the Chinese language–speaking world. Using interview data with victims, online observation, and the data mining of media reports, this paper investigated the changing targets of stigma from the outbreak of Covid-19 to early April 2020 when China had largely contained the first wave of Covid-19 within its border. We found that at the early stage of the pandemic, stigma was inflicted by some non-Hubei Chinese population onto Wuhan and Hubei residents, by some Hong Kong and Taiwan residents onto mainland Chinese, and by some Westerners towards overseas Chinese. With the number of cases outside China surpassing that in China, stigmatization was imposed by some Chinese onto Africans in China. We further explore how various factors, such as the fear of infection, food and mask culture, political ideology, and racism, affected the stigmatization of different victim groups. Th...
H1N1 is not a Chinese Virus: The Racialization of People and Viruses in Post-SARS China
In this article, I trace how the race-making of people, viruses, and the places they share became a powerful means by which Chinese public health professionals made sense of two major infectious outbreaks that threatened to stall or interrupt China's development: the SARS outbreak of 2003 and the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009. By inscribing geographical stability onto infected bodies in motion through the languages of race and genetics, Chinese public health professionals sought to constrain the mobility of infection and, in doing so, to contain the symbolic and material threats to China's modernity and development that flu-like infections, and the people who carried and spread them, had come to represent. While SARS in this imaginary became a BChinese^or BCantonese^disease, H1N1 became a EuroAmerican disease that, when it reached inside China, adhered more easily to those Chinese who did not quite belong. In constructing this imaginary, public health professionals' racialization of certain groups thought to be infectious joined with the racialization of the infections themselves. H1N1 could not easily infect most Chinese because both the virus and its hosts were racially alien.
Xenophobia Attitude during Covid-19 Pandemic: A Disease Naming Stigma
2021
Not only has the impact of 2020 global pandemic occasioned the spring of social and economic worries for the worldwide statehood, community response for this stress has also elevated an intercultural issue on the society consequently. The birthplace of this global epidemic has seized the issued stigmatization through the disease naming. This naming disease which is credited to a neutral meaning at the first place, now gainsays the harmful weight of its stigmatization. In response for avoiding stigmatization, in 2015, WHO underlines that naming disease should not refer to a convinced animal, place, people. Therefore, today pandemic has been presented as ‘Covid-19’. On the contrary, instead of following the endorsed plague name, “Chinese Virus” has been plied highly by the communities in a favor of Covid-19 stigmatization. The urgency of this study is to investigate the “Chinese virus” in alliance with the Covid-19 pandemic stigmatization. Several meme websites has been inspected as t...
Caste, COVID-19, and Inequalities of Care: Lessons from South Asia, 2022
This book explores how identity-based discriminations contribute to health disparities and impede well-being. In doing so, it both draws from and extends the robust anthropological literature on how social suffering shapes health outcomes, specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Flare of Xenophobia in America during Covid-19 Pandemic
E3S Web of Conferences, 2021
Covid-19 pandemic contribute in creating xenophobic attitudes among American people. Recently, there are many reports about Asian-American people or Chinese people in America facing racisms and xenophobic attitudes; moreover there are also reports that Asian-American and Chinese people attacked by Americans. The aim of this study is to know how bad xenophobia in the middle of pandemic in America by analysing the data and what kinds of xenophobic attitudes do Asian-American and Chinese people frequently received during Covid-19 pandemic by society in America. This study uses descriptive research method to know the phenomena of xenophobic attitudes and its circumstance that happen at the present. We collect the data from reports on the various articles or news regarding to Asian-American and Chinese people experiencing racisms and xenophobic attitudes. The results are show that Asian-American and Chinese people received verbal and non-verbal attacks by American people, that is Hate-sp...
The Politics of an Epidemic: SARS & Chinatown
2005
This thesis explores how the 2003 epidemic of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, threw into relief the myriad historical, political and economic factors that shape understandings of and responses to a new disease. The author traces how the historic "othering" of Chinese immigrants and their descendents in the United States was combined with dominant discourses of risk and blame to understand SARS and the potential for a domestic epidemic. Narratives from community members of Manhattan's Chinatown are used to investigate the local impacts of the production of these discourses during the SARS epidemic. Finally, the author explores how these dominant discourses were applied locally within Chinatown understand local and personal risk.
Racism and nationalism during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic
Ethnic and Racial Studies
Racism and xenophobia associated with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic disproportionately affect migrants and minority groups worldwide. They exacerbate existing patterns of discrimination and inequity, impacting especially those already facing intersecting social, economic and health vulnerabilities. In this article, we explore the nature and extent of racism sparked by COVID-19. We briefly introduce the relationship between historical pandemics and racist sentiments and discuss ethnic and racial disparities in relation to COVID-19. We contextualize racism under COVID-19, and argue that an environment of populism, resurgent exclusionary ethnonationalism, and retreating internationalism has been a key contributor to the flare-up in racism during the COVID-19. We then discuss links between racism, nationalism and capitalism, and consider what intercultural relations may look like in a post-outbreak world. We conclude by highlighting the potential effects of COVID-racism on intercultural relations, and the national and global implications for social policy.
Related topics
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Journal of Community Health
The numerous negative health impacts of COVID-19, which include expected changes to psychiatric illness and physical activity (PA), are disproportionately distributed in the United States. Mental illnesses and physical inactivity are prevalent among U.S. college students. This study examined whether there was a change in minutes of PA and depression scores after a stay-at-home order and examined predictors of these changes. An online survey was sent to all undergraduate and graduate students attending a large, diverse university via an electronic newsletter. The survey requested information about demographic and academic data, cardiorespiratory fitness, and depression symptoms. Paired t-tests and logistic regression were employed. Our sample (n = 194) was predominantly female (73%), young (mean age of 25), not a sexual minority (82%), and had a mean 3.4 GPA. Students reported worse depression scores (p < 0.01) and fewer minutes of PA (p = 0.01) after the stay-at-home order. There was a small but significant (p = 0.04) correlation between changes in total minutes of PA and depression scores. Senior (p = 0.05) and Hispanic (p = 0.03) students were less likely to report worsening depression scores than freshmen and white students, respectively. Asian students were significantly more likely than white students to report decreased PA. This study suggests that COVID-19 and its consequences may be contributing to reduced PA and greater depression symptoms in college students and that subgroups have been affected differently. Targeted interventions to promote PA and support mental health may bolster the ability for resilience of college students.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Increasing research shows that migrants are disproportionately exposed to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, little is known about their lived experience and related meaning-making. This qualitative study maps COVID-19-related experiences among respondents from three migrant groups living in Finland: Somali-, Arabic- and Russian-speakers (N = 209). The data were collected by telephone interviews over four weeks in March and April 2020. Using inductive thematic analysis, we identified seven themes that illustrate respondents’ multifaceted lived experiences during the first phase of pandemic. The themes depict respondents’ difficulties and fears, but also their resilience and resources to cope, both individually and collectively. Experiences varied greatly between individuals and migrant groups. The main conclusion is that although the COVID-19 pandemic may be an especially stressful experience for migrant populations, it may also provide opportunities to deepen cooperation...
Racism and nationalism during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic
Ethnic and Racial Studies
Racism and xenophobia associated with the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic disproportionately affect migrants and minority groups worldwide. They exacerbate existing patterns of discrimination and inequity, impacting especially those already facing intersecting social, economic and health vulnerabilities. In this article, we explore the nature and extent of racism sparked by COVID-19. We briefly introduce the relationship between historical pandemics and racist sentiments and discuss ethnic and racial disparities in relation to COVID-19. We contextualize racism under COVID-19, and argue that an environment of populism, resurgent exclusionary ethnonationalism, and retreating internationalism has been a key contributor to the flare-up in racism during the COVID-19. We then discuss links between racism, nationalism and capitalism, and consider what intercultural relations may look like in a post-outbreak world. We conclude by highlighting the potential effects of COVID-racism on intercultural relations, and the national and global implications for social policy.
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 2020
Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre-including this research content-immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
Journal of Migration and Health, 2021
The Covid-19 pandemic provides a stark reminder of the political tensions associated with the field of immigration and health, highlighting the central role that nationalism, racism and xenophobia play in determining responses to communicable diseases. The blurring of global health, immigration governance, and the global health security agendas has long been recognised. However, an improved understanding of the politics influencing these entanglements, specifically within the context of the Covid-19 response in low-and middle-income country contexts, is urgently needed. This includes-but is not limited to-the immediate concerns surrounding inclusive social, political and medical responses to Covid-19; vaccine nationalism-at both global and national levels; and calls for 'vaccine passports'. To this end, we draw on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) context-one associated with high levels of diverse population movements and a large burden of communicable diseases-to explore responses to Covid-19. We unpack tensions surrounding the management of migration and the ways in which sovereignty impacts attempts at building regional, coordinated responses to migration and health, and consider how this affects progress towards global health targets. With an initial focus on South Africa, we build on previous work exploring the blurring of global health, immigration governance, and the global health security agendas in SADC, and draw from ongoing research on the governance of migration and health within the region. This includes current and evolving research exploring migration and Covid-19, initiated in March 2020 when the first cases of Covid-19 were identified in Southern Africa. The aim is for these findings to catalyse a new and evolving researh agenda to inform the development and implementation of appropriate pandemic responses in a region associated with some of the highest levels of inequality globally. To this end, an evolving research agenda should be responsive to current needs. We suggest that, in SADC, priority research should focus on improving our understanding of (1) the political factors influencing the (dis)connections between migration and health governance structures in the context of Covid-19, and how to overcome these in the context of a pandemic; and (2) the motivations for and implications of a 'vaccine passport' system on movement within and beyond the SADC region. This requires a reactive, cross-disciplinary, regional research network. In a context where funding for research is increasingly inaccessible, this requires innovative, informal, collaborative engagement.
Current Psychology, 2021
Our study investigates several antecedents and consequences of negative emotional reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic in a cross-national sample of 737 participants. Our results show that COVID-19 anxiety and negative mood are positively predicted by death anxiety and the use in communication of general COVID-19 information. Death reflection reduces negative mood in relation to COVID-19 and attenuates the positive association between death anxiety on the one hand and the negative mood and anxiety in relation to COVID-19 on the other hand. The use of humoristic information about COVID-19 reduces anxiety and social distance towards people infected with COVID-19 and also attenuates the positive association between the use in communication of general COVID-19 information and negative mood in relation to COVID-19. Our results also show that the association between death anxiety and social distance towards those infected with COVID-19 is mediated by anxiety and negative mood in relation to COVID-19. Finally, the association between the use of COVID-19 information in interpersonal communication and social distance is mediated by anxiety and negative mood in relation to COVID-19. The study thus reveals specific insights for tailored interventions to reduce negativity towards people infected with COVID-19.
Journal of International Migration and Integration
Italy was the first European country touched by COVID-19 and one of the most severely affected, with a death toll that overtook China’s by mid-March 2020. As a result, lockdown measures aiming to mitigate — and eventually interrupt — the spread of COVID-19 proliferated during the first wave of the pandemic. The vast majority of these concerned the resident population, regardless of their status or country of origin, and mainly involved the closure of public offices and proscription of private activities with the aim of reducing mobility and social and physical contacts. Only a few concerned the foreign population and arriving irregular migrants. This article analyses migrant-related policy measures taken by the Italian government during the first wave of the pandemic that aimed to prevent infection and reduce the impact of COVID-19 among the population. These measures addressed two emergencies: the spread of COVID-19 that hit the resident population hard, regardless of origin or nat...
International Journal for the Advancement of Counselling
For Chinese international students attending colleges and universities, COVID-19 and protests related to racism intertwined to create impactful experiences. In this narrative inquiry study, Emma's experiences as a graduate student culminate in her story of identity and racism. Narrative themes of personal and cultural identity, experience and interactions with racism, privilege, and advocacy and social responsibility were constructed.
Frontiers in Political Science
Theory and research in social, evolutionary, and political psychology indicates that subjective feelings of threat and exposure to objectively threatening circumstances—including pandemic diseases—may contribute to increased affinities for political conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism, and prejudice against out-group members. We investigated these possibilities in the context of Italy, which was the first Western country to be severely affected by the spread of COVID-19. Early on in the pandemic, from March 3–8, 2020, we surveyed 757 Italian adults ranging in age from 18 to 78 years. Results revealed that antipathy toward immigrants and sexual minorities was predicted by (male) sex, COVID-19 anxiety, RWA, and political distrust. Furthermore, COVID-19 anxiety magnified the effect of RWA on disliking of immigrants and sexual minorities (but not obese or disabled people). Contrary to prediction, political trust failed to attenuate the effects of COVID-19 anxiety or RWA on out-gro...