Case Study

2003, Fearing SARS, People Avoid Chinese-Americans

Tourists in New York City avoided Chinatown during the SARS outbreak based on the presumption that Asian Americans frequently travel back and forth to Asia and, therefore, posed a SARS threat. Compounding the problem was that the "public face" of the epidemic—i.e., the images featured in round-the-clock news reports—was that of Asians wearing protective masks. Asian-Americans were branded as "outsiders," a category of person long blamed as the origin of disease.

References

Hubler S, Pierson D, Goldman JJ. A fever pitch of fear; misconceptions about SARS are driving away business at Chinatowns across the country. Los Angeles Times. 2003; May 4: part 1, page 1.

King NB, Immigration, race, and geographies of difference in the tuberculosis pandemic. In Gandy M & Zumla A, eds., Return of the White Plague: Global Poverty and the New Tuberculosis. London: Verso, 2003.

Kraut AM. Silent Travellers: Germs, Genes, and the "Immigrant Menace." Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Unversity Press, 1995.