Colin McGregor and Joyce Hughes
Mexican immigrants waiting to be disinfected on International Bridge in El Paso, Texas – 1917
Beginning in early 2020, the world was shaken and shut down by Covid-19, instilling the fear of disease at the forefront of everyone’s lives. However, for many, this pandemic not only endangered lives through the threat of infection but also by racist narratives that arose alongside the virus. Racism mobilized by political leaders towards Asians in connection to Covid-19 resulted in a huge spike in hate crimes. Unfortunately, this is not the first time we’ve seen this happen. In order to understand the events that put the lives of Asian people in danger, we can reflect on medicalized racism endured by Mexican immigrants during the early 1900s to see how it impacted the ways they were treated by American institutions and within society. From this, we can compare the treatment, attitudes, and rhetoric spread in the past to those seen in more recent times.
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One thought on “The Consequences of Medicalized Racism: From Anti-Mexican to Anti-Asian Sentiment”
Thank you for sharing! I feel like I learned so much from this podcast.It is unfortunate to hear just how much racial scripts has affected and still affects our society today. The connections that you made between the Braceros program and the Covid-19 pandemic make it easy to see how racial scripts affect our society. Additionally, I believe that the quick accessibility of news and other media sources allows racial scripts to spread more quickly. For instance, as you mentioned in your podcast, Donald Trump’s labeling of Covid-19 as the “China virus” allowed the association of Asian-Americans with Covid-19. Unfortunately, this resulted in Asian hate int eh United States. Thank you for piecing together the information between then and now!