Racism and COVID-19

In June, Diana Yeh organised a webinar Racism and COVID-19 to examine the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on racialised minorities. In Europe and the US, this is starkly evident in the staggeringly higher proportion of rates of infection and deaths (in the UK, over 90% of doctors), of households losing jobs and income and of targeting by police under new laws. It is evident in the rise of racial attacks experienced by Asians globally and, increasingly, other minorities, as well as the inaction of governments across the world to tackle the threat of the virus to those incarcerated in border camps, prisons and state detention centres.

At this roundtable event, under the shadow of the death of George Floyd, an internationally renowned group of speakers (Matiangay Sirleaf, Professor of Law, University of Maryland; Gargi Bhattacharyya, Professor of Sociology, University of East London; Nira Yuval-Davis, Professor Emeritus, Honorary Director of the Research Centre on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB), University of East London; Sivamohan Valluvan, Assistant Professor in Sociology, University of Warwick; Vivian Shaw, a College Fellow in Sociology at Harvard University and Colin Clark, Professor at University of the West of Scotland) considered the racialised dimensions of COVID-19 through the lens of international law and global capitalism; nationalisms and the politics of belonging; public health, risk, illness and mortality; and explore its socio-economic and political consequences for different communities.

The event was attended by over 300 attendees from across 23 countries across Africa, North, South and Latin America, Asia, Australia and Europe. You can find out more about the event here and watch a recording of it here.