COVID-19 and the rebiologisation of racial difference

In the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, early dashboards set up by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering tracked overall numbers of cases and deaths but provided no demographic breakdown of these statistics. Current data show wide racial disparities in the burden of COVID-19 in the USA, with Latino, Indigenous, and Black people disproportionately affected. Similar disparities are also evident in other nations with histories of structural racism. However, at the outset of the pandemic the focus of some research turned toward biological racial differences as an explanation for differences in COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. Early in the pandemic rumours that members of the African diaspora were immune to SARS-CoV-2 infection circulated in the global media. While public health messaging worked to combat these myths, some researchers began to investigate whether differences in blood type or gene expression could explain why racially minoritised groups were more or less likely to contract the virus. Historians and social scientists, such as Chelsea Carter and Ezelle Sanford III, and...