Blog Post #4

Since we just learned about discrimination, I’ve been thinking about it in the context of the current moment and how it could be manifesting in new or relatively undiscussed ways. The most obvious is the shunning of people who have contracted or could easily be thought to have contracted the virus. A friend of mine told me a few days ago that she had it, and asked that I not tell our other friends because she didn’t feel comfortable with everyone knowing. That says a lot about the situation at hand–she was uncomfortable with me telling a group of people who are literally hundreds of miles apart about her having contracted an illness. Perhaps we’d see that happening in the past with, say, something severe like cancer or ALS, but that’s much more about not wanting to tell people about something traumatic one is experiencing. It’s embarrassing to have contracted the virus for some reason, even from afar. I also wonder about how this might affect racial discrimination in the future. We’re already seeing a really saddening uptick in acts of discrimination towards Asian people, which could perhaps create a new stereotype about Asian people being contagious somehow post-COVID. I also wonder if being in a situation in which most of us are just with our families (which are often comprised of a single ethnicity) will result in an uptick in racial discrimination generally, since our day-to-day ingroup is suddenly tiny and look even more alike than they may have when we were with friends. Perhaps this will make various outgroups seem more different/threatening. Then again, the optimist in me hopes that all of this will bring us together, since we’re all going through different versions of the same thing right now.