When COVID-19 became a worldwide public health crisis, many people became afraid for their health and safety. As a result, people began looking for something they could blame for making them so fearful. This led many members of the Asian community to be targeted for people’s expressions of hate since the pandemic originated in China’s Wuhan province. It did not matter if people were not entirely or even part Chinese; the Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and people from other east Asian countries, were targeted (Human Rights Watch, 2020). However, this aggression towards minority groups in response to health crises is not a new phenomenon. Throughout history, minority groups have been singled out as responsible for any number of societal problems, and pandemics are not different. As early as the Black Plague of 1346 to 1353, minority groups have been singled out as either being responsible for or carriers of devastating pandemics.
Back in the years when the Black Plague tore through the European countryside, killing almost all who encountered the deadly bacteria, those spared were quick to blame the Jewish people as being at fault. Back when no one knew what bacteria was or the role it played in disease transmission; the terrified people looked for anything they could think of to explain the aimless death that moved all around them. Some looked to the stars for a supernatural explanation; others looked for a more grounded answer in the body’s fluid balance. But others looked for someone to blame. As historian John Aberth wrote, “Scapegoating of minority groups seems to be a common failing in times of crisis, and medieval Christian society during the Black Death was no exception. The pogroms from 1348 to 1350 took place within the context of centuries of assault and ‘blood libels’ directed against the Jews by Christians” (Aberth, 117). The Christians viewed the Jews as responsible for several theories about the cause of the Black Death. Some viewed the plague as retribution from God for the Jew’s persecution of Jesus Christ over thirteen hundred years earlier. The amount of theories people had come up with to try and place blame on the Jews became so large that “not even the specific accusation of well poisoning leveled against the Jews in 1348 was unprecedented” (Aberth 117). This pervasive thought led to thousands of Jewish people being attacked and killed in the streets in various towns and settlements all over Europe in hopes of bringing the vile plague to an end. In the days leading up to Valentine’s Day of 1347, the people of Strasbourg, France began preparing by slandering the names of Jewish sympathizers and reestablishing Strasbourg’s government as their anti-Jewish sentiments grew more powerful. Then, on February 14th, the people went through the town and massacred the town’s Jewish population (Landau, 1958)
Religious minorities were not the only minorities targeted in response to pandemics. Back in the 1980s when there was an explosion of cases of the previously unknown Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which leads to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) worldwide. “Because the disease appeared to affect mostly homosexual men, officials initially called it gay-related immune deficiency, or GRID” (History.com Editors). Even though the disease passed through other bodily fluids besides semen, like blood and saliva, and could be transmitted through items such as needles, many turned the minority group of homosexual men into their scapegoat for the disease that left people’s bodies vulnerable to any number of potentially lethal pathogens their body would be unable to fight. One man, Peter Tatchell, recounts the demonization and criminalization of homosexuality he experienced in London. In the article, Tatchell explains how “[Margaret Thatcher’s] government legislated the notorious section 28, which banned the ‘so-called’ promotion of homosexuality by local authorities” (Tatchell, 2012). In other words, the British government was trying to outlaw a group of people from expressing a part of themselves under threat of imprisonment. In the same article, Tatchell also recounts, “by 1989, the number of gay and bisexual men convicted for consenting same-sex behaviour was almost as great as 1954-55, when male homosexuality was totally illegal and when the country was gripped by a McCarthyite anti-gay witch hunt” (Tatchell, 2012).
Flash forward about forty years to 2020 and we can see similarities between the Black Death of 1346, the 1980s AIDS crisis, the 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic, as well as other plagues throughout history. Most of this blame seeking behavior comes from fear caused by a lack of knowledge regarding the threat rather than pure hate, as can be seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Across the country, “Asian-Americans have even reported that sneezing and coughing can trigger harassment and violence” (Solomon, 2020). Since the first reported cases originated in China, many people became fearful of anyone of Chinese or any Asian-American descent and the possibility of contracting the disease from them. When something makes people fear for their health and safety, they tend not to discriminate between the actual threat and what could potentially be deemed a danger to them. This type of reactive behavior is not just limited to Americans. In France, one Chinese man “described walking out of a Paris gym and being accosted by teenagers, who laughed and said, ‘There’s coronavirus coming’” (Bryant, 2020). No matter the period, humans have remained good at a few things throughout all of them. One of them is their propensity to experience heightened racist thoughts and behaviors during times of health threats and pandemics. Maybe in the future, we can advance from so quickly falling victim to the willingness to blame minorities in the future, but for now, we are quite some ways away from being there.
Sources cited:
Aberth, J. (2017). The Black Death the great mortality of 1348-1350: A brief history with documents. Boston, Massachusetts: Bedford/St. Martin’s Macmillan Learning.
Bryant, Lisa. “France’s Ethnic Chinese Community, Other Asians Complain of Coronavirus-Linked Discrimination.” Voice of America, 31 Jan. 2020, www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/frances-ethnic-chinese-community-other-asians-complain.
History.com Editors. “History of AIDS.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 13 July 2017, www.history.com/topics/1980s/history-of-aids.
Human Rights Watch. “Covid-19 Fueling Anti-Asian Racism and Xenophobia Worldwide.” Human Rights Watch, 28 Oct. 2020, www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/covid-19-fueling-anti-asian-racism-and-xenophobia-worldwide.
Landau, Lazare. “THE MASSACRE OF VALENTINE’S DAY.” Le Massacre Des Juifs De Strasbourg, judaisme.sdv.fr/histoire/antisem/peste/stval.htm.
Solomon, DeShawn Blanding, and Danyelle. “The Coronavirus Pandemic Is Fueling Fear and Hate Across America.” Center for American Progress, 30 Mar. 2020, www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2020/03/30/482407/coronavirus-pandemic-fueling-fear-hate-across-america/.
Tatchell, Peter. “1980s: A Decade of State-Sanctioned Homophobia.” Peter Tatchell Foundation, 19 May 2016, www.petertatchellfoundation.org/1980s-a-decade-of-state-sanctioned-homophobia/.
