The #COVID19 pandemic painfully illustrates the ways in which race denotes *process* (verb), not *people* (noun).
TL;DR: Race *is* what race *does*. Racial logic is covert. To detect it, we must interpret race with the same fluidity used in its strategic deployment 🧵
TL;DR: Race *is* what race *does*. Racial logic is covert. To detect it, we must interpret race with the same fluidity used in its strategic deployment 🧵
To begin, that race implicates process, not people, is not new. As one of my doctoral supervisors Kendall Thomas writes: “we are ‘raced’ through a constellation of practices that construct and control racial subjectivities.” So how does #COVID19 illustrate these racial processes?
And before anyone repeats Trump’s ‘we always racialize disease’ rhetoric—pause to critically reflect.
Racism thrives on plausible deniability. And we preserve that deniability when we limit our analysis to textual explanation, rather than subtextual motivation.
Racism thrives on plausible deniability. And we preserve that deniability when we limit our analysis to textual explanation, rather than subtextual motivation.
Indeed, Trump often called #COVID19 the “Chinese Virus”, until he truncated it to a stateless “Virus” when tweeting about protecting Asian Americans. Why drop the “Chinese” qualifier, if not because, as is clear, Trump is spitting on the fire he himself set ablaze.
This racial process has consequences. For example, a man in Texas stabbed an Asian-American family “because he thought the family was Chinese, and infecting people with the coronavirus.” Racism, thus, transformed a *health* fear into a *race* fear.globalnews.ca/news/6769462/a…
Also, this racial process is intentional. A white man’s incompetence has been tactically replaced with Asian-Americans’ collective burden. He deployed racial logic to reallocate blame. He is storytelling. And, due to racism, race stories captivate. Process.salon.com/2020/03/20/don…
The disparate impact of #COVID19, likewise, illustrates the process of race. As @nhannahjones explains, this *health* crisis is, more specifically, a *race* crisis—one that overwhelmingly and disparately harms Black people.
Indeed, @DrIbram explains how it is critical to obtain racial data on #COVID19. But doesn’t this show how race is about people, not process? No. It shows how we make (process)—and remake (process)—the races we collectively imagine.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Black people are disproportionately impacted by #COVID19 because of the string of intentional social, political, and economic policies—*processes*—that guarantee their vulnerability to the pandemic. In other words, Black people were *made* at risk.
Further, this disproportionate impact *remakes* Black people; it profiles them as threats, not only through violent crime, but further, as agents of infection. These are, fundamentally, *fluid* processes, not *static* people.
Cultural norms surrounding #COVID19 mitigation, too, reflect racial processes. One’s ability to socially distance is informed by various vectors of privilege. In turn, those less capable of socially distancing are cast as negligent, or worse, criminals.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/opi…
That racial processes undermine Black participation in #COVID19 mitigation is not speculation. Black men are all too familiar with the ways in which our aesthetic—exacerbated by masking—feeds public narratives of criminality.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/05/opi…
As such, #COVID19 unveils racial incoherence. A Black man is a criminal, whether with a mask (robber), or without (infector). This incoherence arises because we aren’t *really* discussing stable Black people; we are discussing fluid racial processes that relentlessly vilify them.
This discussion isn’t playing the race card, as some claim 👇🏾
Rather, it’s illustrating how, to the contrary, #COVID19 is, quite clearly, a racial moment, and specifically, a Black moment. The evidence is mounting, and yet, some still insist on erasing race as a pivotal factor.
Rather, it’s illustrating how, to the contrary, #COVID19 is, quite clearly, a racial moment, and specifically, a Black moment. The evidence is mounting, and yet, some still insist on erasing race as a pivotal factor.
Worse, others want it both ways; raising race when it advances racism (blaming Chinese people), yet rejecting race when it undermines racism (resisting race data collection). This is the incoherence of racial logic—or rather, its intentional illogic that sustains white supremacy.
Given the above, two points:
First, confront those who deny the persisting role race plays in shaping our world. Race is a malleable process that reifies hierarchy. And, without careful scrutiny, that malleability licences the deployment of racism to pernicious—even fatal—ends.
First, confront those who deny the persisting role race plays in shaping our world. Race is a malleable process that reifies hierarchy. And, without careful scrutiny, that malleability licences the deployment of racism to pernicious—even fatal—ends.
Second, monitor your sympathies. Causes have constituents. And if the causes you champion—if the things you care most about—systematically disregard racialized communities, interrogate the extent to which those sympathies have been filtered through the sieve of white supremacy.
#COVID19 threatens everyone. But its most tangible consequences are unevenly distributed, and specifically, disproportionately affect Black people. A “colourblind” response is not fair, or evidence-based; it’s a form of racial injustice, and a perpetuation of systemic racism.
