1st Edition
The Color of COVID-19 The Racial Inequality of Marginalized Communities
The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected communities of color while highlighting the prevalence of structural racism in the United States. This crucial collection of essays, written by leading scholars from the fields of communications, political science, health, philosophy, and geography, explores the manifold ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted upon Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities and the way we see race relations in the United States.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the significance of U.S. health inequalities, which the World Health Organization defines as "avoidable [and] unfair." It has also highlighted structural racism, specifically, institutions, practices, values, customs, and policies that differentially allocate resources and opportunities so as to increase inequity among racial groups. Navarro and Hernandez therefore argue that the COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a race war in America that has further marginalized communities of color by limiting access to resources by different racial and ethnic minorities, particularly women within these communities. Moreover, the systemic policies of the past that upheld or failed to address the unequal social conditions affecting Blacks, Latinxs, and other minorities have now been magnified with COVID-19. The volume concludes by offering recommendations to prevent future humanitarian crises from exacerbating racial divisions and having a disproportionate impact upon ethnic minorities.
This timely volume will be of great interest to those interested in the study of race and the social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.
Foreword
J. Michael Ryan
1. Introduction
Sharon A. Navarro and Samantha L. Hernandez
2. Placing a Band-Aid on a Bullet Wound? Black and Latinx Educational Experiences During a Pandemic
Dani Parker Moore, Betina Cutaia Wilkinson, Olivia Field and Alondra Ramirez
3. Necessity as the Mother of Invention: Attempting to Overcome the Digital Divide during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Adam McGlynn and Caitlyn Stout
4. COVID-19 Racial Disparities: A Content Analysis of News Media Coverage
Sarah V. Gordon-Brilla, Dana L. Rogers, Jackson Higginbottom, Leila M. Ensha and Ryan A. Sutherland
5. Perceptions of COVID-19 and BLM Protesting on Twitter
Tanya Gardner, Wei Sun and Carolyn A. Stroman
6. Same Pandemic, Different Plights: The Conjoined Effects of Socioeconomic Status
And Ethnoracial Identity on Psychological Distress at the Dawn of COVID-19
Tyson D. King-Meadows, Abigail Timbol and Priscilla Nalubula
7. The Auto-immunization of Black Life in Pandemic America
Mark Martinez
8. Fight the Virus, Fight the Bias: Asian Americans’ COVID-19 Racism Experience, Health
Impact, Activism
Jungmi Jun and Nanlan Zhang
9. "Balancing it all": The Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Working Mothers in Texas
Nazgol Bagheri and Joshua Yates
10. Essential, Contingent, Informal, and Infected: Work and Ethnicity During COVID-19
Amy Schoenecker and Elizabeth Alejo
11. Social Distancing as Lens: Race and the Instructive Facets of Mass Pathogenic Self-Isolation
Miguel de Oliver
12. "To Make Live and Let Die": Vaccine Nationalism, Vulnerable Solidarity and Global Inequalities in the Age of COVID-19
Liz Jordan
13. Looking Ahead
Sharon A. Navarro and Samantha L. Hernandez
Biography
Sharon A. Navarro is a professor of Political Science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, United States. Her research interests include women in politics, race and American politics, and Latinx politics. She is author of Latina Legislator: Leticia Van De Putte and the Road to Leadership (Texas A&M University Press, 2008) and co-author of Políticas: Latina Public Officials in Texas (University of Texas Press, 2008). She is also co-editor of Latinas and the Politics of Urban Spaces (Routledge, 2020), Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of the American Judiciary (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Latinas in American Politics: Changing and Embracing Political Tradition (Lexington Books, 2016), and The Roots of Latino Urban Agency (University of North Texas Press, 2013).
Samantha L. Hernandez is a visiting scholar at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame, United States, and Director of Policy and Strategic Affairs at San Antonio City Council. She is co-editor of Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of the American Judiciary (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Latinas in American Politics: Changing and Embracing Political Tradition (Lexington Books, 2016). Her work has also been featured in the Gender and Politics journal and various media outlets, including New York Times, NBC Nightly News, Marketwatch, WIRED, and The Wall Street Journal.
"This collection of essays by a group of distinguished scholars examines the impact of COVID-19 on America’s racial and ethnic minorities. I highly encourage anyone interested in this timely and important topic to reflect on these essays from various methodologies on the wide array of lessons learned from the pandemic."
Jason Casellas, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Houston, USA
"Drawing together cutting-edge scholarship from across multiple disciplines, this collection of essays powerfully details how the COVID-19 pandemic both unveiled and exacerbated systemic and persistent racial inequities for communities of color across the United States. This is a must-read for policymakers and scholars of public health, race, and political science."
Teresa Irene Gonzales, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA
"The authors cover disparities in access to healthcare, the effects of a lack of appropriate media coverage, the effects of racism, and almost every institutional aspect that affected the response to COVID-19 to effectively demonstrate the devastating disproportionate effects on the Latinx and African American communities. Indeed, as Navarro and Hernandez claim, it is a 'race war' being waged on communities of color through the failure of the system to respond properly and the inability of these communities to access healthcare generally."
Henry Flores, Distinguished University Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science, St. Mary's University, USA
