A collection of quotes on the themes of gender, Covid-19, and capitalism.
“The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure…vaccine equity is not just a moral imperative, it is a strategic and economic imperative.”
– Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, January 18th 2021.[1]
“Natives have survived so many apocalypses during the eurochris-tian conquest of Turtle Island; this was just another one. Among other memories of genocide, American Indians carry the persistent memory that infectious disease was always a tool of eurochristian conquest and domination. We’ve done this before.” – Tink Tinker (wazhazhe / Osage Nation).[2]
“In order to protect Elders, we cannot have people from out of Territory (meaning workers at the mine) entering on charter flights exposing their potential illness to Yukoners. On the one hand the Premier is correct in saying the situation is extremely serious, declaring an Emergency. On the other hand, the Yukon Government is saying mining is open for business. That doesn’t not make sense.”
– Chief Demit of White River First Nation, 30 March 2020.[3]
“COVID-19 has significantly changed the discussion about extractive industries and public health, as transient workers are potential vectors through which the novel corona virus could be spread to remote communities. The industry response to the pandemic has thus far been uneven. While the province of Quebec has ordered mines to shut down to help halt the spread of disease, other jurisdictions have categorized mines and other extractive industries as ‘essential services’, allowing them to continue operations.”
– Warren Bernauer & Gabrielle Slowey[4]
“My team turned ghost white. We asked for tests, and they sent us a box of body bags.”
– Esther Lucero, CEO, Seattle Indian Health Board.[5]
“American citizens who share George Floyd’s skin color are perishing from COVID-19 at shockingly inordinate numbers. Data show that Black Americans face excess COVID-19 death as a result of disparate access to testing, high levels of underlying health conditions, greater occupational exposure, and lower rates of medical insurance coverage. Black bodies have been wounded and strained by decades of discriminatory housing policies, mass incarceration, malnutrition, and trauma. These are the in-justices that make them unable to breathe.”
– Jennifer Tsai[6]
“…the current trend in India suggests an epidemic, still more a pandemic, forces social divisions more starkly into the open, transforming fissures into fault lines.”
– David Arnold.[7]
“We are basically alone in this…We have been through many pandemics in our history here on Turtle island and I believe we will get through this one too.”
– Steve Teekens, Executive Director, Na-Me-Res Indigenous Men’s Shelter, May 2020.[8]
“This moment is a conjuncture between the COVID-19 crisis and the increasing awareness of the structural nature of racism.”
– Angela Davis, in conversation with Ava DuVernay, Vanity Fair[9]
“One of the dominant stereotypes of Asian Americans is that they are perpetual foreigners, where individuals directly link phenotypical Asian ethnic appearance with foreignness, regardless of Asian immigrant or generational status (Ancheta, 2006; Tuan, 1998; F. H. Wu, 2002). This stereotype is longstanding in American history and has forcefully re-emerged during the COVID-19 crisis.”
– Hannah Tessler, Meera Choi, and Grace Kao.[10]
“I have seen this incredible seesaw effect. We can go back to the turn of the century, when Chinese were the only people to be legally excluded from this country because people were so fearful of the jobs they were taking. That was seemingly a place that we would never go to anymore, that level of vitriol. We’ve seen it, though, in waves since then: World War II, we had an Asian enemy; Korean War, we had an Asian enemy; Vietnam War, we had an Asian enemy. And then we had Asian enemies that were economic in nature.”
– Janet Yang[11]
“COVID led to a stereotype that Asians are still barbaric, unclean and a cause of disease. And that turned into blatant attacks sometimes toward the Asian community.”
– Esther Lim, 2021[12]
“From an Indian perspective, it seems as if this pandemic actually allowed the sociopolitical whole to function in ways that work – have always worked – toward the earliest goal of the eurochristian invaders to erase any lingering Native presence or identity on the continent other than the colonizers’ romantic and overtly racist mascot-ization.”
– Tink Tinker (wazhazhe / Osage Nation).[13]
“Black communities in Canada have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. This may explain why places like Montreal, with large numbers of Black immigrants, have emerged as Canada’s COVID-19 epicentres.”
– Kate H. Choi, Patrick A. Denice, Michael Haan, and Anna Zajacova, 2020[14]
“There is a clear contrast between the wealthy and celebrities, who can escape to country homes or boats to live in isolation, and the poor, in urban slums, whether in India or racially segregated or immigrant neighborhoods who can’t isolate themselves, where food shortages require people to go outside and stand in long lines for food donations, or crowd in markets and grocery stores where it is more difficult to physically distance.”
– J. Michael Ryan and Serena Nanda[15]
“In Africa, one leader noted that suspending Western patents would allow vaccines to be made in African countries, which would help build trust and confidence in these nation’s people who do not trust Western governments. This lack of trust is based on their colonial histories of exploitation and the widespread fear that they were being used as ‘guinea pigs.’”
– J. Michael Ryan & Serena Nanda[16]
What we found was that the more people perceived there to be racial disparities, the less fearful they were of COVID-19, and the less they supported safety precautions to prevent the spread
– Allison Skinner-Dorkenoo[17]
“Race doesn’t put you at higher risk. Racism puts you at higher risk. It does so through two mechanisms: People of color are more infected because we are more exposed and less protected. Then, once infected, we are more likely to die because we carry a greater burden of chronic diseases from living in disinvested communities with poor food options [and] poisoned air and because we have less access to health care.”
– Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones, 2020.[18]
[1] WHO Director-General’s opening remarks at 148th session of the Executive Board, 18 January 2021. Link to Source.
[2] Tink Tinker, “The Corons and American Indian Genocide,” in Religion, Race, and Covid-19: Confronting White Supremacy in the Pandemic, ed. Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, 122-140 (New York: NYU Press, 2022): 122. Link to source.
[3] Warren Bernauer and Gabrielle Slowey, “Covid-19, extractive industries, and Indigenous communities in Canada: notes toward a political economy research agenda,” The Extractive Industries and Society 7.3 (2020): 844-846. Link to source.
[4] Warren Bernauer and Gabrielle Slowey, “Covid-19, extractive industries, and Indigenous communities in Canada: notes toward a political economy research agenda,” The Extractive Industries and Society 7.3 (2020): 844-846. Link to source.
[5] Erik Oritz, “Native American health center asked for COVID-19 supplies. It got body bags instead,” 5 May 2020, NBC News. Link to source.
[6] Jennifer Tsai, “COVID-19’s Disparate Impacts Are Not a Story about Race, They’re a story about racism,” Scientific American, 8 September 2020, Link to source.
[7] David Arnold, Pandemic India: Coronavirus and the Uses of History Vinayak Chaturvedi, ed., The Pandemic: Perspectives on Asia (New York: Columbia University Press and Associations for Asian Studies, 2020).
[8] Qtd. in Heather A. Howard-Bobiwash, Jennie R. Joe, and Susan Lobo, “Concrete Lessons: Policies and Practices Affecting the Impact of COVID-19 for Urban Indigenous Communities in the United States and Canada,” Frontiers in Sociology, 23 April 2021, Link to source.
[9] Ava DuVernay, “Ava DuVernay Interviews Angela Davis on This Moment – And What Came Before,” Vanity Fair, 26 August 2020. Link to source.
[10] Hannah Tessler, Meera Choi, and Grace Kao, “The Anxiety of Being Asian American: Hate Crimes and Negative Biases During the Covid-19 Pandemic,” American Journal of Criminal Justice 45 (2020): 636-646. Link to source.
[11] Janet Yang, qtd. in Robert Scheer, “The Power and Pain of Being Asian American During the Coronavirus Crisis,” Scheer Intelligence Podcast, 17 April 2020. Link to source.
[12] Esther Lim qtd. in Bianca Hillier, “‘How to Report a Hate Crime’ booklets empower Asian Americans amid rise in discrimination,” The World, 18 May 2021. Link to source.
[13] Tink Tinker, “The Corons and American Indian Genocide,” in Religion, Race, and Covid-19: Confronting White Supremacy in the Pandemic, ed. Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, 122-140 (New York: NYU Press, 2022): 123. Link to source.
[14] Kate H. Choi, Patrick Denice, Michael Haan, and Anna Zajacova, “Studying the Social Determinants of Covid-19 in a Data Vacuum,” Canadian Review of Sociology 58.2 (4 May 2021): 146-164. Link to source.
[15] J. Michael Ryan and Serena Nanda, Covid-19: Social Inequalities and Human Possibilities (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2022).
[16] J. Michael Ryan and Serena Nanda, Covid-19: Social Inequalities and Human Possibilities (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2022).
[17] Allison Skinner-Dorkenoo, interviewed by Ailsa Chang and Adrian Florido, “White people feared COVID less after learning other races were hit hardest, data show,” All Things Considered Podcast, NPR. Link to source.
[18] Camara Phyllis Jones qtd. in Claudia Wallis, “Why Racism, Not Race, is a Risk Factor for Dying of Covid-19,” Scientific American, 12 June 2020. Link to source.