The first thing that comes to mind when mentioning race and racism impacting Covid-19 is the treatment of Asian Americans. Unfortunately, our past president, Donald Trump, called Covid-19 the “China Virus.” With his cult following, this led hundreds of Americans to call it the same thing as him. Not only did this remark increase the ideology of racism in American, it also allowed discrimination to be present towards the Asian American population.

There were instances where Asian Americans were kicked out of restaurants and fast food industries because of the new phrase for Covid-19. With one swift remark dipped in racism, Covid-19 no longer was an air born disease, but one tied to a specfic race. Suddenly Asian Americans were being treated as if they had “cooties” and were rejected from an abundance of everyday normal actions.

Picture from the Gonzaga Bulletin of Asian Americans fighting racism and poor representation in their college community

Asian Americans were directly affected by the result of the pandemic. Racism was evident and, in my opinion, outright disgusting. The pandemic was given a biomedical model view, but instead of it being a disease, it was a physical human race. A specific origin of life and culture became the target of anger, destruction, and a poor excuse for white people to lash out with their rage. They were treated with conscious racism, while other races were met unconscious racism.

The articles we read for class briefly mentioned that leadership and power played a role in the events of the pandemic. Were the people proud of what our leader was doing? Let’s find out.

According to The Commonwealth Fund article, “Compared to healthcare providers, state and local officials and the president received lower marks in their response to the pandemic. Black survey respondents held the least favorable views of government leaders’ actions.”

Self – report surveys speak volumes, but not everyone wants to truly see what they have to say. If the statistics are taken into account, it is evident that people suffering from economic hardship suffered the most during this time of lockdown. Another questions arises: Why and who are those people?

African Americans and Hispanic individuals are, unfortunately, living in poverished and low income areas. This is a direct result of racism and discrimination. However, this immediately impacts their covid-19 experiences. More African Americans died from covid than white people did during the duration of the worst of the pandemic. They also faced worse cases of mental health decline than white people as well.

“Pollution and poverty are close friends,” said Aaron Bernstein in the Harvard Gazette. With African Americans and Hispanics living in polluted areas, their lungs do not have the same health and strength of those living in higher income areas. This is a direct biological consequence to a social construct such as race. People living in poverished areas are usually living in conditions where mulitple people are living on top of others, so of course, covid-19 would spread at a much faster rate. With healthcare being so expensive in the United States, most people living in low income areas do not have the money for treatment or hospital stays, resulting in a higher death rate than others.

“Pandemics like Covid reveal in the most painful way what we need to fix in the world,” Aaron Bernstein.

With evidence, statistics, and articles being published, it is clear that race and environmental injustice are linked together when it comes to the rate of infection and death. Instead of looking at race and racism as something that is not present anymore in this country, we should be looking at how the actions of racism have biological consequences for a specific population of people and start making a change.