Coronavirus will exacerbate racism

The argument

The association in the public consciousness of coronavirus with China has caused a demonstrable rise in racism against East Asian people. There have already been examples of race-based hate crimes committed due to coronavirus. East Asian people have reported significant increases in microaggressions against them. This is similar to the increase in racism that followed the SARS outbreak. This reflects long term studies on the relationship between spread of infectious diseases and xenophobia. It is common for xenophobia and racism to spike in response to increased spread of infectious disease, partially because the spread of disease makes people irrational. This is reflected throughout history - for instance, the bubonic plague was often blamed on Jewish people and travellers. Coronavirus has caused a significant rise in racism, and as it worsens, this is unlikely to stop.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The evidence offered is of a spike during an acute phase, while the position requires a lasting change to societies — and the historical comparison the body itself supplies cuts against permanence. The hostility that followed SARS receded as that outbreak did, and the scapegoating that accompanied earlier epidemics, including the plague, subsided with them. A surge in incidents during a period of fear is fully consistent with a return to the prior baseline afterwards, so the argument establishes a short-term effect and then infers a durable one. The mechanism offered is also weak. Attributing the pattern to disease making people "irrational" treats as automatic what research on outbreak-related hostility generally traces to specific and contingent triggers — above all how an outbreak is named and framed politically, and by whom. Those are choices, which means the outcome was avoidable rather than inevitable, and the same period produced organised responses running the other way: mutual-aid networks, reporting mechanisms established specifically for anti-Asian incidents, and sustained public campaigns against them. Predicting the net societal effect requires weighing both. Finally, the forecast is explicitly conditional — "as it worsens, this is unlikely to stop" — so once the acute phase passed, the condition on which it rested no longer held.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Documented hate crimes and microaggressions during the acute phase establish a spike, which is compatible with a return to the prior baseline once an outbreak recedes rather than with a lasting change to society. [Rejecting P2] The SARS and plague comparisons cut both ways, since that hostility subsided with the outbreak; and attributing the pattern to disease making people irrational understates the contingent choices involved, such as how an outbreak is named and framed politically.