Race and Ethnicity in the Pandemic

Ethnic and Racial Studies

Social scientists working on race and ethnicity are facing up to the challenge of how the Covid-19 pandemic is impacting on their research agendas. In this introduction, we discuss the emerging evidence about the impact of Covid-19 in terms of race and ethnicity, on migrants and refugees, and on research agendas. By focusing on the discussion that has developed about these issues during 2020 we aim to provide some of the broader background to the specific concerns to be found in the rest of this themed issue. We move on from this overview of key developments to a discussion of the key themes that are explored by the fourteen papers that follow.

The American Journal of Bioethics

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a substantial human, social and economic toll globally, but its impact on Black/African Americans, Latinx, and American Indian/Alaska Native communities in the U.S. is unconscionable. As the U.S. continues to combat the current COVID-19 cycle and prepares for future pandemics, it will be critical to learn from and rectify past and contemporary wrongs. Drawing on experiences in genomic research and intersecting areas in medical ethics, health disparities, and human rights, this article considers three key COVID-19-related issues: research to identify remedies; testing, contact tracing and surveillance; and lingering health needs and disability. It provides a pathway for the future: community engagement to develop culturally-sensitive responses to the myriad genomic/ bioethical dilemmas that arise, and the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to transition the country from its contemporary state of segregation in healthcare and health outcomes into an equitable and prosperous society for all.

Antipode, 2020

Race is a story that endures, from its beginnings in the origins of racial capitalism, slavery, the racial wealth gap and long-standing political struggles. During the pandemic, persistent anti-Black racisms, expressed both in violent deaths at the hands of police and in disproportionate deaths linked to the virus, deny the humanity of Black people. This means that what is at stake in this symposium about the pandemic and associated social distancing and surveillance measures is nothing less than Black human-ness. In featuring diverse Black scholars, Gertrude Mianda, Myrna Lashley, Emma Joseph, Tamari Kitossa, Joseph Mensah, Wisdom Tettey, and George Dei and Kathy Lewis, we seek to reaffirm Black expertise and the importance of Black insights into the pandemic, in the radically unequal world in which we live. If race is a story of injustice, we need to build on the work of Black artists, scholars, activists, and Elders, to write new ones.

Nature Communications

The impact of COVID-19 has been disproportionately felt by populations experiencing structural racial-and ethnicity-based discrimination. Here, we describe opportunities for COVID-19 response and recovery efforts to help build more equal and resilient societies, through investments in: (i) interventions focused on explicitly addressing racial and ethnicity-based discrimination; (ii) interventions supporting the delivery of universal services, and in ways that address compounding and intersecting drivers of exclusion and marginalization; and (iii) cross-cutting enabling measures, such as participatory mechanisms and data disaggregation. More than two years since the first SARS-CoV-2 infections were reported, the COVID-19 pandemic remains an acute global emergency 1. While many countries have successfully vaccinated significant portions of their populations, stark global inequities remain with imbalance in the global distribution of vaccines 2,3 , and potential new variants could further threaten the ability of governments to recover from the interconnected health, economic, and broader human rights crises. Within countries, the impact of COVID-19 has been disproportionately felt by populations experiencing structural racial-and ethnicity-based discrimination. Indeed, where disaggregated epidemiologic data are available, COVID-19 morbidity and mortality rates are often significantly higher among people of African descent, indigenous peoples, and ethnic groups or other minoritized groups experiencing discrimination 4-6. This reflects what social

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society

Public Health in Practice, 2021

The inaugural conference of the Global Society on Migration, Ethnicity, Race and Health COVID-19 examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrants and ethnic minorities and the role of racism. Migrants everywhere have faced tightening immigration restrictions, more obstacles to healthcare, increased racism and worsening poverty. Higher COVID-19 mortality rates have been otbserved in ethnic/racial minorities in the United Kingdom and the United States. Structural racism has been implicated, operating, for example, through more crowded living conditions and higher-risk occupations. In Brazil, good data are lacking but a seroprevalence survey suggested higher rates of infection among ethnic minorities and slum dwellers. Considerable disruption of services for migrants at the border with Venezuela have occurred. National policy responses to protect vulnerable groups have been lacking. In Australia, with strict COVID-19 control metrtrun 0 asures and inclusive policies, there have been few cases and deaths reported in Indigenous communities so far. In most countries, the lack of COVID-19 data by ethnic/racial group or migrant status should be addressed. Otherwise, racism and consequent inequalities will go undetected.

Athena: filosofijos studijos, 2022

In the article, I suggest that the interplay between pandemic and race, instead of opening paths towards an understanding of mutual interconnectedness and vulnerability, deepens the existing structural racial inequality by reinforcing the existing necropolitical regimes of exclusion and amplifying the importance of race in biopolitics. First, I question the biopolitical uses of race, discern the general capitalization of life and highlight the colonial nature of epidemiology. Further, I focus on the neoliberal subjectivity of the new working class and argue that the Foucauldian imperative “make live or let die” gave way to the differentiation between lives to be saved and lives to be risked. Then, I claim that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the race-based necropolitics of usable bodies and the biopolitics based on the distribution of differential vulnerability. Finally, I analyse decolonial, politico-economic, ecological, and solidary remedies that might help to find a way out of...

Cahiers de l’Urmis [Online], 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic, by the nature of this crisis and its primarily sanitary, medical and biological management, offers an exceptional opportunity for observations on the scientific debates surrounding the notion of “race”, used and conceptualised at times as a biological reality, at others as a social construct. Based on a synthetic reading of a variety of scientific productions –in medicine, public health, epidemiology, and social sciences– discussing ethno-racial disparities in COVID-19 related morbidity and mortality, this article shows that these two models of interpretation –biological/genetic and socio-economic/socio-demographic– do not stand in opposition to each other: the relationships between race and identified risk factors in COVID-19 related morbidity and mortality, as recognised by researchers are often conjointly conditioned by both biological mechanisms and socio-economic factors. Furthermore, the intersectional approach –articulating various social relations of race, class, gender, age, disability, etc.– proves to be particularly fruitful in grasping the ethno-racial disparities in COVID-19 related morbidity and mortality. La pandémie de Covid-19, par la nature de cette crise et de sa gestion avant tout sanitaire, médicale et biologique, offre une occasion inédite pour observer les débats scientifiques autour de la notion de « race », utilisée et conceptualisée tantôt en tant que réalité biologique, tantôt en tant que construction sociale. En s’appuyant sur une lecture synthétique d’un éventail des productions scientifiques – en médecine, en santé publique, en épidémiologie et en sciences sociales – discutant des disparités ethno-raciales dans les cas de morbidité et de mortalité liées au Covid-19, cet article montre que les deux modèles d’interprétation – biologique/génétique et socio-économique/sociodémographique – ne sont pas antagoniques l’un de l’autre : les relations entre la race et les facteurs de risque de morbidité et de mortalité liés au Covid-19, qui ont été mises en évidence par des chercheurs, sont souvent conditionnées à la fois par des mécanismes biologiques et des facteurs socio-économiques. Par ailleurs, l’approche intersectionnelle – articulant les divers rapports sociaux de race, de classe, de genre, d’âge, de handicap, etc. – s’avère particulièrement féconde dans l’appréhension des disparités ethno-raciales dans les cas de morbidité et de mortalité liées au Covid-19.

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.

2021

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted all of us, but not all of us equally. Far from acting as the great leveller, the disease that itself does not discriminate has revealed and exacerbated startling health disparities across the United States and globally. The early disaggregation of data indicated that Covid-19 mortality rates were more than double in Black populations than in White populations in the U.S., and were one and a half times as high, nationwide, in Latinx, and Indigenous populations. Infection rates, by population group, were also higher. The disparities of the global spread added further complexities. Now, as the Covid-19 vaccine has been developed in record speed, the challenge of distribution must incorporate facts about public health disparities alongside questions of prioritization. Two big questions loom: how much do our concepts of distributive justice and global justice incorporate racial justice? And how much should they? Matiangai Sirleaf has given us a vocabula...