Abstract and Introduction
Abstract
Objectives: To determine the prevalence of COVID-19–related discrimination among major US racial/ethnic groups and estimate associations between discrimination, race/ethnicity, and other sociodemographic characteristics.
Methods: We conducted a nationally representative online survey of 5500 American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black/African American, Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, Latino (English and Spanish speaking), White, and multiracial adults from December 2020 to February 2021. Associations between sociodemographic characteristics and COVID-19–related discrimination were estimated via multinomial logistic regression.
Results: A total of 22.1% of the participants reported experiencing discriminatory behaviors, and 42.7% reported that people acted afraid of them. All racial/ethnic minorities were more likely than White adults to experience COVID-19–related discrimination, with Asian and American Indian/Alaska Native adults being most likely to experience such discrimination (discriminatory behaviors: adjusted odd ratio [AOR] = 2.59; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.73, 3.89; and AOR = 2.67; 95% CI = 1.76, 4.04; people acting afraid: AOR = 1.54; 95% CI = 1.15, 2.07; and AOR = 1.84; 95% CI = 1.34, 2.51). Limited English proficiency, lower education, lower income, and residing in a big city or the East South Central census division also increased the prevalence of discrimination.
Conclusions: COVID-19–related discrimination is common, and it appears that the pandemic has exacerbated preexisting resentment against racial/ethnic minorities and marginalized communities. Efforts are needed to minimize and discredit racially driven language and discrimination around COVID-19 and future epidemics.
Introduction
Historically, infectious disease outbreaks have often been accompanied by discrimination, stigma, and xenophobia.[1,2] How these diseases are named and discussed can have a major impact on subsequent discrimination. Because of this, both the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have guidelines that recommend against attaching locations or ethnicity to a disease to minimize backlash against members (and perceived members) of the identified community.[3,4] Despite these recommendations, some public officials in the United States repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus” instead of COVID-19,[3,5] and reports of racist and xenophobic incidents directed toward those perceived to be Chinese or of Asian descent have increased.[6–9] Because of the broad scope of systemic racism in the United States, we hypothesized that attributing blame for the pandemic could also extend to other minority and marginalized communities.
To date, 4 studies to our knowledge have attempted to measure the prevalence of COVID-19–related discrimination in the United States. However, 2 focused on Asians only;[10,11] 1 was restricted to Asian, Black, Latino, and White individuals;[12] and 1 combined several racial/ethnic minority groups into a single category (“other race”).[13] Thus, discrimination among other racial/ethnic minority groups (e.g., American Indian/Alaska Native) has yet to be assessed, and a comparison of all groups in one study is needed. Also, although other sociodemographic characteristics, such as age, household income, and immigration status, have been linked to a higher prevalence of discrimination,[13] additional research is needed.
Thus, the goals of this study were to (1) estimate the prevalence of COVID-19– related discrimination among all major US racial/ethnic groups (as defined by the US Bureau of the Census), (2) estimate the association between COVID-19– related discrimination and race/ethnicity after adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics, and (3) identify other sociodemographic characteristics associated with COVID-19–related discrimination among a nationally representative and diverse sample of US adults.