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We condemn the campaign of racial segregation in Guangzhou, where African immigrants are being evicted from their apartments, barred from restaurants and hotels, tracked, forcibly tested and quarantined, ostensibly to curb coronavirus transmission. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/10/china/africans-guangzhou-china-coronavirus-hnk-intl/index.html?fbclid=IwAR0KlBD0VhTbKslN7_TYK_Xtbe26eQvhZbJ-_XKSetSZnaCU1JBdbJuMUt8
Xenophobic racism under the pretext of epidemic control comes as no surprise; local hostility against African immigrants builds upon a long precedent of anti-blackness in Guangzhou, the city with the largest African community in China. https://qz.com/945053/china-has-an-irrational-fear-of-a-black-invasion-bringing-drugs-crime-and-interracial-marriage/
Anti-blackness has been endemic in Chinese societies at home and abroad: exploitative and discriminatory labor practices of Chinese firms toward African workers accompany increased Chinese investment in African raw materials and construction markets. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/world/africa/kenya-china-racism.html
At the same time, an overwhelming wave of anti-Chinese and anti-Asian xenophobia has swept across the world as the blame of contagion is pinned onto racial and cultural difference rather than the exploits of capitalist accumulation. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/10/blaming-china-coronavirus-pandemic-capitalist-globalisation-scapegoat?fbclid=IwAR2EtbDdeL6-B6Quu-Udx7KmTvbGvJEOW2lDFkXNhcpiSf8ZJUnk0Ya-s0w
Anti-black and anti-immigrant violence have seen a sharp increase as states beef up security infrastructures in the name of viral containment. In fact, Chinese and Western authorities alike have long deployed carceral apparatuses for control and profit. https://jacobinmag.com/2020/4/covid-19-coronavirus-surveillance-technology?fbclid=IwAR2dAD71cT0IGgxAZsbLzOANIPZ5hAH83kutqN-HkSXlSsYfdpXt30W6AYI
Yet punitive policing and surveillance are hardly new realities for communities subjected to scapegoating and uprooting even as they continue to experience disproportionate death and harm in and beyond the current pandemic. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/10/4-reasons-coronavirus-is-hitting-black-communities-so-hard/
Racism is unconducive and dangerous to the containment of the virus. Against such threats of division, we must redouble our support for mutual aid practices and reject the intolerant logics that alienate vulnerable communities from care and survival. https://twitter.com/aafcollective/status/1242918178323300352
