Racism, Intolerance, and the Coronavirus: Policy Recommendations

On July 9, the German Marshall Fund hosted a virtual event titled, Racism, Intolerance, and the Coronavirus. Building on recent analysis, the webinar explored emerging trends and equitable responses to inequalities confronting marginalized groups amid a pandemic. To be sure, the coronavirus crisis has not only highlighted social and economic inequalities but also exacerbated interpersonal, structural, and institutionalized discrimination against minority populations on both sides of the Atlantic. During the interactive webinar featuring U.S. Congresswoman Debra Haaland, a transatlantic panel of community leaders, policymakers, and scholars proposed practical policy solutions.

Disaggregated Data Collection

To understand the pandemic’s impact on diverse populations and ensure effective policy responses, related data regarding prevalence, testing, hospitalizations, and mortality rates disaggregated by gender, race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, age, immigration status, disability, education, and geographic area is necessary. Such information will enable officials to properly allocate funding and resources while designing responsive policies to not only address the pandemic’s effects but the inequities creating the disparities in outcomes between groups.

Universal Healthcare

The coronavirus crisis exposed the need for universal access to both affordable and quality health care. Amid the pandemic, for instance, many unemployed workers who had employer-sponsored health insurance are without coverage. Moreover, uninsured individuals are less likely to receive testing and treatment thus increasing the risk of infection to others. The lack of access to testing, treatment, and health facilities helps prolong the public health crisis.

Telemedicine

In response to the lack of access to medical facilities on reservations and in rural and underserved communities, telemedicine allows health professionals to provide a host of clinical services without an in-person visit. Rather, they utilize video and audio technology to meet and treat patients across vast distances.

Place Testing and Triage Centers in Impacted Neighborhoods

On both sides of the Atlantic, racial, ethnic, and religious minority communities—as well as indigenous populations—are experiencing disproportionate mortality rates related to the coronavirus. Many may be unable or unwilling to access testing, triage, and treatment due to historical distrust of medical professionals, different cultural norms, language barriers, and/or socio-economic factors. As such, these critical health services should be made available at diverse houses of worship and community centers within impacted neighborhoods to help build bridges with minority populations.

Hazard Pay

Essential and frontline workers must be eligible for hazard pay. Those in essential industries should receive additional compensation for tasks involving high health risks, physical discomfort, and distress. This includes workers employed in healthcare, food and agriculture, transportation, delivery, and emergency services.

Rental Assistance, Broadband Benefits, and Nutrition Assistance

In addition to direct economic stimulus payments, financially impacted individuals require other forms of relief. For instance, tenants may require assistance to pay rent and utilities. Additionally, this segment of the population may require financial aid to secure broadband connections to receive an education, secure employment, participate in telemedicine, and review information. In communities lacking broadband access, parked wireless school buses should be considered. Similarly, increased food stamp benefits would alleviate hunger among low-income families. Significantly, in the United States, the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions, or HEROES Act, provides such relief and has already passed in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Criticize Governments, Not Citizens

In both policy and rhetoric, it is important that elected leaders differentiate between official actors and private citizens. The conflation of foreign governments with the national citizenry may inform explicit and implicit biases that contribute to social hostilities toward diaspora groups. It may also inspire interpersonal and institutionalized discrimination against that population. Representative is the Asian community’s coronavirus experience. Since the pandemic’s onset, foreign policy and foreign relations have negatively affected the group's domestic status due to the conflation of Beijing with the Chinese people as conveyed by inflammatory political rhetoric.

Improve Community Standards on Social Media Networks

Interpersonal discrimination disproportionately impacts racial, ethnic, and religious minority communities on social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Such outlets should revisit and ensure effective implementation of community standards to address hate-motivated messages and threats of violence that often have real world consequences. To that end, social media titans should employ monitors in each country familiar with the indigenous language, culture, and politics to help identify violations while doing so in proper context.

Create a Racial Bias Taskforce

Create national and local bodies to adopt a more comprehensive and proactive approach to address and prevent disparate outcomes. For instance, minority groups experiencing interpersonal discrimination in schools, on transit, in employment and housing require adequate responses from corresponding education, transit, labor, and housing officials. A comprehensive and proactive approach that encompasses all of these government agencies will ensure more effective action to prevent manifestations of racism, xenophobia, and related intolerance from arising in the first instance.

Political Accountability

All citizens should hold elected leaders accountable at the ballot box for inflammatory rhetoric and divisive politics. Both minority and majority populations should understand different forms of racism and how they manifest. To inspire positive social change, social media can be utilized for educational initiatives.