Media Representations of Race and the Pandemic

Published on Seattle Star

In Episode 3 of Race in Society (video below), Associate Professor Alana Lentin and I lead a panel about how mainstream media create sensationalist accounts of the pandemic, and the proactive ways in which Aboriginal people and Asian people in particular lead their own responses. We spoke with Dr Summer May Finlay, a Yorta Yorta woman and Public Health Researcher at the Universities of Wollongong and Canberra. In our video below, she details how Aboriginal community controlled health organisations have effectively dealt with COVID-19 using social marketing campaigns. We also chatted with Dr Karen Schamberger, an independent curator and historian. She covers the history of Australian sinophobia (the fear of China, its people and or its culture), and how anti-Chinese racism plays out in media reports on racism and the COVID-19 pandemic. This issue remains pertinent, given that the suburbs currently under strict lockdown in Sydney have relatively large Asian populations.

Even though we filmed this discussion 10 months ago, the commentary illuminates the current COVID-19 crisis.

Three states in Australia are presently under a “hard lockdown” (see my next post). A heavy police contingent has been sent to enforce the Public Health Order in South West and Western Sydney, two highly multicultural regions. The daily press conferences excessively focus on ‘multicultural’ communities not following the rules by visiting family members who don’t live in the same house.

Media and officials continue to blame racial minorities in a way that does not feature for white-majority communities, some of whom are boldly defying the lockdown. Why does this happen? Our Race in Society series provides broader cultural and historical context.

Read more on Seattle Star.

Citation

Zevallos, Zuleyka (2021) ‘Media Representations of Race and the Pandemic,’ Seattle Star, 28 August.