‘Somehow, I don't see it for myself:' white identity politics and antirelationality in the US right’s response to covid-19

Abstract

ABSTRACT The novel virus known as COVID-19 emerged in late 2019 and became a global pandemic in early 2020. The supposed origin of the virus in a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan, China led to the deployment of anti-Chinese discourse in the Trump administration’s treatment of the virus. The pre-eminent protective health response, masking, quickly became defined as un-American and as a threat to freedom among Trump supporters. Drawing on public conversations in print and social media in spring 2020, the connections are traced between the US right-wing reaction to the global pandemic and the deep structures of whiteness as an antirelational identity in racial capitalism. This US right’s reaction to COVID-19, specifically the identification of the virus as Chinese and mask refusal, makes up part of a wider effort to reassert whiteness as central to American national identity. This ill-conceived response to the pandemic reveals how whiteness works through antirelational identity politics: i.e. racism, the denial of interconnection, and the refusal of efforts toward collective well-being.