What you should know about RACISM-20 in the U.S.: a fact sheet in the time of COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Drawing from social epidemiology literature on structural racism, and rooted in critical race theory and critical theory related to narrative power, this paper uses satire and humor as commentary on mainstream U.S. public health discourse related to the role of “race” (properly understood, racism) in shaping inequities observed via COVID-19. Taking the form of a “RACISM-20” fact sheet, this paper transposes structural racism and COVID-19. In doing so, it accentuates how individualist, ahistoric, and pathologizing “downstream” frames of health risks/solutions curtail productive dialogue and action to advance racial and health equity. In the spirit of “racial emancipatory humor”, this work represents a potential pedagogical tool to discuss and critique dominant frames of racial(ized) risks, “vulnerability”, and responsibility – both in the context of COVID-19 and within broader discourse of racial health inequities, including as related to racialized police violence. In this capacity, this “fact sheet” serves as an example health promotion product of critical resistance and counternarrative.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• structural racism
• racialized police violence
• narrative power
• social epidemiology
• satire
• humor

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this work was published via the author’s institutional repository PDXScholar (October 2020). The previous version did not include the essay portion of this manuscript, and portions of the RACISM-20 “fact sheet” have been removed and/or edited for the version presented here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2022.2078180

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.