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ABSTRACT
This article outlines an argument about the morbid character of racism in the time of COVID-19. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci's famous characterisation of the crisis as an ‘interregnum’ in which various ‘morbid phenomena’ appear, we suggest that one of the main underpinning logics of the current crisis could be thought of in terms of racist morbidities. Framing the article within Stuart Hall's reading of Gramsci and David Theo Goldberg's understanding of the postracial, we discuss two empirical cases: the disproportionate morbid effects of the pandemic on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) in the UK – that we name ‘political morbidities’, and the Moscow municipality's measures addressing migrant workers during the pandemic – that we name ‘socio-spatial morbidities’. The COVID-19 crisis, we conclude, seems to elicit racist morbidities in post-racial guises.
Acknowledgement
We thank the two anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful and challenging points on this article which have helped us to improve it. Special thanks to Daria Ukhova for collecting the data of the Moscow case.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Imprisoned by the Mussolini regime, Gramsci was concerned with eschewing Fascist censorship. Hence, his ‘Prison Notebooks’ require a dedicated work of interpretation.
3 See references to war in Macron’s speech https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2020/03/17/nous-sommes-en-guerre-face-au-coronavirus-emmanuel-macron-sonne-la-mobilisation-generale_6033338_823448.html and in Johnson’s speech https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/enemy-deadly-boris-johnson-invokes-wartime-language-coronavirus.
5 ‘COVID-19: London’s Response, Inequalities, and the Health and Care Workforce’. https://www.london.gov.uk/about-us/londonassembly/meetings/documents/s82817/Minutes%20-%20Appendix%201%20-%20COVID-19.pdf.
7 We do acknowledge that during the COVID-19 front line doctors, whose salaries are likely to be higher than those of low-skilled workers, are at high risk, but pandemic, their risk is comparatively lower than several low-skilled professionals’. See various sources: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6918e3.htm; https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-front-line-visualizing-the-occupations-with-the-highest-covid-19-risk/;
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Karim Murji
Karim Murji is a Professor of Social Policy at the University of West London, UK. His research focuses on race, culture, and policy and his books include Racism, Policy and Politics (Policy Press, 2017); edited with Asma Sayed, The Transnational Imaginaries of MG Vassanji (Peter Lang, 2018); and edited with John Solomos, Theories of Race and Ethnicity: Contemporary Debates and Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2015. With Sarah Neal, he is the Editor of Current Sociology. Recently he has edited, with Giovanni Picker and Manuela Boatcă a special issue of Social Identities on ‘Racial Urbanities’ (2019), and with Giovanni Picker, a special issue of the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy on ‘Race and Place’ (2019).
Giovanni Picker
Giovanni Picker is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Glasgow. He researches and teaches on European Cities, Race and Racism, Global Inequalities, and Ethnography. He is the author of Racial Cities: Governance and the Segregation of Romani People in Urban Europe (Routledge 2017), and co-editor of Racialized Labour in Romania (Palgrave 2018). He more recently edited with Karim Murji and Manuela Boatcă the journal special issue ‘Racial Urbanities’ (2019) and with Karim Murji ‘Race and Place’ (2019). Giovanni is also the coordinator for Central and Eastern Europe and Russia of the Summer School on Black Europe: Interrogating Citizenship, Race and Ethnic Relations.