This article examines the link between racial inequities and COVID-19’s impact on communities, suggesting systemic issues.
In this article, I explore how the unequal exposure to death by COVID-19, taking place at the same time as the eruption of a global protest movement for racial justice erupted, can be understood through the interrelated notions of immunity and auto-immunity. 1 Immunity, considered here both as a juridical and a medical concept, and auto-immunity, taken as a core political tendency of democracies, together expose the racial constitution of the British state. Longstanding, structural racial inequities suppressed Black and Asian peoples’ immunity to the COVID-19 virus, at the same time that the state responded to a multi-racial uprising for Black lives with heavy-handed policing and the criminalisation of dissent, attempting to defend the British body politic from demands for racial justice.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Brenna Bhandar (2025) studied this question.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: