Pandemics and Race

In this chapter, we identify three ways in which pandemics function as both racialized and racializing phenomena. First, invidious racial ideologies often inform attempts to explain and respond to pandemics. Second, critical and diagnostic forms of race-thinking pick out the clusters of conditions that increase the risk of vulnerability to pandemic diseases. And third, racist practices are often causally related to disease incidence. In light of these three ways in which pandemics are both racialized and racializing, we explore how the racialization of the COVID-19 crisis compares with historic patterns of pandemic racialization.