[97fan]

Interestingly, in China, there was a string of hostility towards Africans after a couple of African travelers tested positive.

BC

Racism toward Africans in China is long-standing and quite ugly, even in normal times. (My sister-in-law has been working for several years on a documentary about this topic.) It's not surprising that the pandemic would amplify prejudices that previously were less likely to be expressed openly.

The same phenomenon explains the recent increase in anti-Asian hate speech in the U.S. I can't prove scientifically that Asians are now more likely to be targets of discrimination in the U.S. than they were before the pandemic, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence to support this conclusion, and indeed it would be surprising if there weren't such an increase, given the tendency of large negative events to produce scapegoating and to bring existing prejudices to the surface.

[97fan]

Interestingly, in China, there was a string of hostility towards Africans after a couple of African travelers tested positive.

BC

Racism toward Africans in China is long-standing and quite ugly, even in normal times. (My sister-in-law has been working for several years on a documentary about this topic.) It's not surprising that the pandemic would amplify prejudices that previously were less likely to be expressed openly.

The same phenomenon explains the recent increase in anti-Asian hate speech in the U.S. I can't prove scientifically that Asians are now more likely to be targets of discrimination in the U.S. than they were before the pandemic, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence to support this conclusion, and indeed it would be surprising if there weren't such an increase, given the tendency of large negative events to produce scapegoating and to bring existing prejudices to the surface.