The pandemic brought about by the rise of COVID-19 – that is, Coronavirus disease of 2019 – has been the occurrence that can without hesitation be labeled a historical one. There is a great amount of ways in which it has affected the global economy, the way of life of mankind – and, evidently, millions of people’s health. It is interesting to explore what the effects are depending on the different groups’ characteristics – that is, for example, race and ethnicity – and whether there are any in accordance with that at all. In order to find out, one is to delve into the researches delineating the notions of race and ethnicity from the point of view of genetics and come to the corresponding conclusions.
First of all, it is reasonable to mention that some time ago race was not even considered a notion. As Jackson (2018) states in the Genes, Patents, and Race video, according to the Human Genome Project, which was launched in 1990 and started winding down closer to the beginning of the 21st century, there is only one race – that is, the human race – since the similarity between human genes is 99,9%. The HapMap project, established a few years later and funded by various governments and pharmaceutical companies, however, claimed that that small difference – that is, the approximately remaining 0,10% – was extremely medically relevant for understanding health, human variation, and migration. The one question that had to be answered is whether that small percentage could correspond to race.
There is a number of ways to characterize human difference – for example, local adaptation or geographic ancestry. According to Jackson (2018), sociologists and cultural anthropologists state that there is no such thing as a race on a molecular level. A stronger debate is held among molecular biologists, though they prefer to use words like ‘population’ and ‘ancestry’ instead – it is possible that these are proxies for the race without having that immediate baggage behind them as concepts. Jackson then claims that there actually are biomedical researchers who have been on the record to support race. He cites a research declaring that the notion of race has to be embraced, since ignoring the differences that people have, will ultimately lead to the disservice of those most vulnerable – that is, minorities. It is proclaimed that races are not meaningless in terms of different races being affected by different diseases at different frequencies. In addition, when it comes to using biological samples from biobanks, the vast majority of them come from white people. Therefore, until the race is embraced as a notion, medicine is still going to be learned about from studying whites, which is, consequently, discrimination against people of color.
Consequently, the question of how race should be defined is to be looked at thoroughly. According to Nelson (2008), the concept of ‘race’ is defined by law, by the media, by bioscience and from relatively minor acts that take place at the everyday life level. Therefore, racial projects are considered to be grand-scale; they are formed by the interaction of macrolevel, mesolevel, and microlevel processes. Genetic genealogists’ experience shows that the composition of ‘race’ and ethnicity can vary according to the scale: for example, the social categories codification in a commercial laboratory is not always, or not always easily, morphed into the identity genetics. Appropriately, analysis should go through scales ranging from microscopic molecular forms of race in the form of bytes, through individual and collective experiences of social identity, to large-scale racializations and ethnicizations.
The question that follows is whether or not decoding the human genome can justify the validity of the concept of ‘race’. Nelson (2008) thinks that it is not possible due to the amount of epistemologies and ontologies that are instrumental to its meaning. Now is not the time to assess the long-term impact that genetic genealogical testing can have on social norms and political beliefs. However, it is clear that the practice of creating racial and ethnic subjects by genetic genealogical notation – the concept that has been roughly characterized as ‘recreational’ genomics – is complex and requires attention and further research.
In view of this – that is, the lack of opportunities for proper understanding of how race and ethnicity are to be defined from the scientific point of view – one is still to try and bring to light how coronavirus impacts ethnic and racial minorities differently. Evidently, the virus’ spread has a clear explanation from the scientific point of view – based on its natural properties, about which the researchers have done everything they could to learn. However, the spread of the coronavirus in real life has been also defined by political factors specific to this period of time. Thus, the disaster is considered to be not only of a natural character, but also of a social one. Coronavirus first came with animals from the black markets in Asia, first clashed with people in a seafoods market, and then spread through primitive routes of regional tourism and foreign business and education.
It has been estimated that it is most hazardous to, unsurprisingly, poorer segments of the population. According to Liu (2020), coronavirus threatened 27 million Americans who do not have health insurance – particularly, 23 million who live from salary to salary, including people working at hourly rates in hotels and food industries. Many of those do not receive sickness benefits and are not included in the assistance package, which, being pressured by McDonald’s and Walmart, releases employers and covers only 10 working days. These people are in captivity, since the living wage they receive makes quitting their jobs – and any infractions – potentially fatal.
Thus, while economic necessity forces service workers to be constantly exposed to danger, for the rich their wealth is what protects them. As Liu (2020) puts it, what American scholars do not understand when they say that ‘market choice’ is a weapon against welfare aids is that the social safety net is not a means of deprivation of a person’s liberty, but said liberty’s very condition of opportunity. Indeed, it turned out that the best guarantee against coronavirus – or any virus of the like – is the ability to withdraw from capitalism and not feel the immediate effects from it.
The relation that it has to race and ethnicity is not so tough to think of. People of color are generally the ones that are reduced to working low-paying jobs. It is unreasonable to deny that Caucasians are the most privileged group in America in terms of every aspect possible – including economical status. The rest are bound to get by and make the best out of what they have. That is undoubtedly one major factor that has been reported to influence the spread of diseases such as coronavirus among the racial and ethnic minorities. There is a possibility that it will be recognized as the most prominent one even after the conclusions of genetic specialists in the future related to the issue will be.
References
Jackson, M.W., & Levine, A.J. (2018). Genes, patents, and race [Video]. Institute for Advanced Studies.
Liu, A. (2020). “Chinese virus”, world market. n+1.
Nelson, A. (2008). Bio science: Genetic genealogy testing and the pursuit of African ancestry. Social studies of science, 38(5), 759-783.