The Racialized Pandemic: Wave One of Covid-19 and the Reproduction of Global North Racial-Ethnic Inequalities

• In Event: Pandemic Politics: International Perspectives

Abstract

We document the broad patterns of Covid-19 as it affects people racialized as of color. We present a theoretical framework rooted in Global North democracies’ racial and ethnic legacies to analyze the health and economic disparities between these communities and the white majority population. Marshalling first-cut empirical evidence from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Sweden we find patterns of the pandemic’s distribution consistent with how the burden of racial and ethnic legacies endures: people racialized as of color have worse health and economic outcomes under normal circumstances, inequalities the Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated. The comparison shows that the impact of racial and ethnic discrimination on pandemic policy outcomes is not unique to the US. Health inequalities stemming in part from patterns of institutional racism and discrimination perversely help reproduce these societal inequities. We find that governments’ initial responses have failed to mitigate the disproportionate impact of this health and economic crisis on communities racialized as of color because they did not acknowledge or address the particular challenges that these groups face.

Authors

• Gerda Hooijer, University College London

• Desmond King, University of Oxford