Seite - 393 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19

CHAPTER D-7 Spread of Anti-Asian Racism: Prevention and Critical Race Analysis in Pandemic Planning Jamie Chai Yun Liew* Abstract The racist discourse and attacks on Asian Canadians in the COVID-19 outbreak has illustrated the differentiated risks, vulnerability, and marginalization of racialized persons. A race-based analysis is essen- tial in public health policy. First, public health responses may rein- force long-standing racist narratives of how a virus is transmitted. Second, the “viralizing” of persons may lead to unfair blame on a racialized community for an outbreak, taking focus away from struc- tural problems in particular environments, as for example in the case of Filipino migrant workers in meat-packing plants who have no control over their working conditions. Finally, there is now data showing that, accounting for other factors, some racialized groups of people, including Black and South Asian people, may be succumbing to COVID-19 more than others. Focusing on the partial border closure as a case study, this chapter looks at how historical and contempo- rary selective but simultaneous inclusion and exclusion at the bor- der has constructed social ideas of foreigners. The border measures reflect an ongoing tension to admit cheap labour for essential services while pacifying public fear of the Asian person as a vector of the virus. Critical race analysis should be employed when evaluating public * Immigration and refugee lawyer and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa.