Degrees of Separation: Part 4
By Anna Gaberscik

Xenophobia and Othering: Scapegoats in Times of Crisis

This Degrees of Separation essay series has touched on some of the many human responses to epidemics and pandemics, ranging from anger and frustration to confusion and desperation. Part 3 covered the phenomena of disorder in times of quarantine, adjusting to chaos instead of striving for a return to the normal order.

On the one hand, people may not attempt to rationalize irrationality. And thus, instead of trying to curb or deny the existence of chaos and confusion, they adapt to it as a new way of life.

On the other hand, however, we find a very different approach by people who attempt to rationalize a tumultuous situation by seeking out a culprit for the disruption: A need arises for an unambiguous answer to a frustrating problem, from which, in turn, there arises the need to find a scapegoat. This reaction is very common in crises such as outbreaks, as countless examples throughout history testify.

People are more inclined to blame an outbreak on something easily identifiable before accepting disorder and confusion as the new norm. Seeking scapegoats to assume responsibility relativizes societal turmoil and hardships, whereby the weight of blame is put on something or someone else. Finding a concrete perpetrator seemingly rationalizes a crisis and creates a false sense of clarity.

There are countless examples of scapegoating in times of crisis. In this issue of Degrees of Separation, we scratch the surface of the history of xenophobia during infectious outbreaks. It simply cannot be emphasized enough that the targeting and persecution of selected groups of people during an outbreak has been an extremely common occurrence throughout history.

Here, I by no means intend to summarize in its entirety the deep and vast history of xenophobia in times of epidemics and pandemics, but rather hope to provide some insight by way of a few examples. When examining past and present instances of xenophobia during epidemics and pandemics, we bear witness to one of humanity’s greatest shortcomings, namely, the susceptibility to the dangerous ‘them’ versus ‘us’ ideology and the concomitant discarding of solidarity and togetherness.

We set off on this journey in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople in the year 542. Constantinople was hit with a devastating outbreak of what became known as the Plague of Justinian. The contemporary ruler, Emperor Justinian I, used the outbreak to enact xenophobic laws that blamed certain groups of people for spreading the sickness. He issued restrictions on the rights of Jewish people, Samaritans, pagans, heretics, Arians, Montanists, and queer persons residing in the capital. Due to the branding of non-Christian and dissident groups as the source of the epidemic, an ineffective system of quarantine was enacted, whereby the movement of infected Christians continued uninhibited, thus causing the pathogen to spread further. An early example of a practice that repeats itself throughout history, Emperor Justinian I’s exclusionary quarantine policy threatened public health and safety for purely political reasons.

Throughout Europe’s many bouts of plague, Jewish communities constantly suffered from the blame foisted on them for the outbreaks and consequent exclusion and persecution. Conspiracy theories were rampant, along with fictious narratives as to why and how the Jewish inhabitants were to blame, and what was to be done.

The ravages of the Black Death during the second half of the fourteenth century, bolstered anti-Semitic sentiment by using the Jewish community as a scapegoat for economic troubles and the coming of the Black Death. One such case in Chillon, southern France, clearly illustrates this. A theory was in circulation in Chillon that the main city water well had been poisoned, and, indeed, many people fell ill and died from water obtained therefrom. This was, however, during a time in which the Black Death was infecting and killing many people throughout Europe, including Chillon. The Jewish community of Chillon were blamed for poisoning the well because their own well was uncontaminated. The conclusion was that they must have poisoned the main well. This explanation fit perfectly into the long-standing anti-Semitic narrative, which claimed that Jewish people were always plotting against and sabotaging other communities, especially Christians. The Jewish inhabitants of Chillon and surrounding villages and counties were tortured for confessions after being arrested. With the ensuing arrests and alleged confessions, the Jewish inhabitants were brutally killed, mostly by being burned. The accusations about Jewish communities poisoning water supplies were subsequently so widespread that the events in Chillon became common practice, above all, within the German Empire. Mass burnings and executions of Jewish communities condemned for the poisoned water wells and the occurrence of the Black Death, were frequent within the German Empire of the late Middle Ages.

The next example, centers on the insufferable situation endured by the Chinese inhabitants of San Francisco in the years spanning 1870 to the early 1900s. By 1870, San Francisco was home to the largest Chinese population in the state of California. This period was to witness vehement, sky-rocketing opposition to Chinese immigration. The financial crisis of the 1870s, combined with the arrival of leprosy greatly contributed to the population’s willingness to direct hatred towards Chinese immigrants. Leprosy was known as the “Chinese-sickness” in the Hawaiian Islands, where much of the initial information of its arrival came from. Inexperience and lack of knowledge about leprosy, led to hysteria and racist-based panic directed at the Chinese population in California, a culmination of long-standing fear and loathing. 

Prominent health officials at the time, John L. Meares and John C. O’Donnell, bragged about their regular visits to Chinatown in San Francisco where they observed and documented what they believed to be the horrible, disgusting and uncivilized nature of the Chinese people. These visits would turn into “hunts”, largely popularized by O’Donnell, who would have newspaper reporters accompany him when tracking down and turning over the sick to the authorities as proof of his racist theories. Health officials constantly spewed medically spurious information about diseases, in particular leprosy, syphilis and smallpox. Since, at the time, little if anything was actually known about the nature and transmission of these pathogens, officials would instead explain the ailments by recourse to racist rationale and by recourse to the Holy Bible. Both O’Donnell and Meares, for example, would often quote from the Bible during their racist rants, Meares fearfully brandishing his bible while walking through Chinatown. O’Donnell drew on anti-Chinese rhetoric on his travels throughout the state of California, propagating his conspiracy theories and hollow medical information. O’Donnell claimed that Asian women, who worked as prostitutes, carried a particular kind of venereal disease specific to their kind, which he referred to as “Chinapox.” When expressing his indifference to the lives of the Chinese, O’Donnell went so far as to say, “What odds can it make to a leper whether he dies sooner or later?”

The anti-Chinese movement in California went into full swing with the establishment of “anti-coolie” clubs (coolie being a derogatory term for the Chinese and other Asian migrants) and the normalization of racist ideology among high-ranking figures in contemporary politics.

The San Francisco Illustrated Wasp, a popular magazine of the late 1800s, was well-known for its nefarious anti-Chinese views. The Wasp published deeply racist, anti-Chinese cartoons expressing contemporary racist political and socio-economic views.

In consequence of the actions and statements issued by the San Francisco Board of Health, together with the support by a growing racist population, the Chinese were to become the medical scapegoat of the Pacific Coast.

The Chinese were accused of being inherently filthy, savage and immoral, something which was to lead many to believe that the natural condition of the Chinese was conducive to such diseases as leprosy, syphilis and smallpox. People believed that such illnesses were inherently Chinese and that they brought diseases with them to America, which posed a threat to the “clean and civilized” West. Their presence, many felt, contaminated the homogenous, white population. Chinese prostitution was deemed especially heinous, many believing that conniving, syphilis-infected Chinese prostitutes were purposely seeking out white men to corrupt and ruin them.

In 1880, the pamphlet “Chinatown Declared a Nuisance” was distributed by the Workingmen’s Committee of California, including contributions from the Board of Health and Mayor I.S Kalloch. 

“These words are not hastily or thoughtlessly written, but express the deliberate and well-considered opinion of one who, as your Health Officer, has had opportunities of observation afforded to no other individual of witnessing the destruction of life, the ruin of families; children made orphans, fathers and mothers rendered childless; young men stricken down in the bloom of their youth and vigor; all by the willful and diabolical disregard of our sanitary laws, so criminally neglect to report their cases of small pox to the authorities, so maliciously pursue that course of conduct which they know is bringing distress upon our city, by destroying the lives of our citizens, and seriously impairing the business of our whole community, can only be accounted for on the supposition that they are enemies of our race and people, and in their wickedness rejoice in our distress and sorrow…

The Chinese cancer must be cut out of the heart of our city, root and branch, if we have any regard for its future sanitary welfare. It will be a mercy to the Chinese themselves, as well as to out people to compel them to live in healthier conditions. … with all the vacant and health territory around this city, it is a shame that the very centre be surrendered and abandoned to this health-defying and law-defying population. We, therefore, recommend that the portion of the city here described be condemned as a nuisance; and we call upon the proper authorities to take the necessary steps for its abatement without delay.”

The (San Francisco) Board of Health

I.S Kalloch

H.J. Gibbons Jr.

J.L. Meares

The horrific statements of these men made no attempt to conceal their brazen racism or utter disgust towards the innocent Chinese community. Steeped in the ideology of white, Western supremacy, their language is utterly oblivious to the fact that Chinese immigrants were members of the society in which they live, and the city to which they contribute. Rather than assuming responsibility for their own inaction and inadequacies, such politicians and health officials blame the people they oppressed for problems to which they were elected to office to solve. Failing to put to right the broken system they had the power to overhaul, Kalloch, Gibbons Jr. and Meares instead pointed their fingers at those living in it. 

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 marked America’s first limitation of immigration as based on ethnicity or country of origin, thus greatly restricting the number of Chinese immigrants by allowing only healthy immigrants in certain professions.

The Angel Island Immigration station may well be likened to Ellis Island on the East Coast, the site at which immigrants from all over the world would disembark and be processed. The Bureau of Immigration implemented the Exclusion Act on Angel Island, resulting in a specific screening process for those arriving from China. Chinese immigrants were subjected to humiliating and dehumanizing inspections, and families were torn apart by the authorities. Those classified with communicable diseases were separated from the others and indefinitely detained on the island’s unhealthy and unsanitary conditions. The station burned down in 1940, which led not to the closure of the station, but to its relocation. The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed as late as 1943, whereby severe limits on Chinese immigration continued through to the 1960s.

At this point we take a small leap from Angel Island to Guantanamo Bay. 

In the 1980s, the world experienced the arrival and explosion of HIV/AIDs. Within the first year of that decade five continents had already been affected, and three years later the World Health Organization held the first ever meeting dedicated to the AIDS crisis. HIV and AIDS became strongly associated with the LGBTQIA+ community, and was stereotyped as a ‘gay sickness’, originally being referred to as GRID (gay-related immune deficiency).

According to the World Health Organization’s “The World Health Report 1999,” by the end of the 1990s about “33 million people were living with HIV and 14 million people had died from AIDS since the onset of the epidemic.” The HIV/AIDs epidemic devastated many communities. The LGBTQIA+ community and the African continent, though by no means the only communities, were among the most acutely affected; by 1999, AIDS was the number one cause of death in Africa. Although the HIV/AIDS crisis reached a peak at the end of the 20th century, it is still prevalent today. We focus here on one specific event in the crisis, without thereby lessening the importance of the magnitude of events, stories and suffering caused by the epidemic. 

After the military coup of Jean Bistrand Aristide in 1991, a rush of Haitian refugees attempted to escape the ensuing violence by making their way to the United States. Together with the United States Coast Guard, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) would hastily process and screen the Haitians in order to determine who, and who not, would be admitted to the United States. The decision was based on whether those screened could prove that they were actually fleeing from persecution, and whether their life would be in danger should they return.

This policy encountered legal hurdles once implemented in this form, above all due to the threat of mass repatriation. The injunctions for repatriation meant that those Haitians currently being screened had to be held somewhere for extended periods while legal decisions were being made. Those Haitians awaiting their fate were brought to the United States Naval Station Camp Bulkely, at Guantanamo Bay.

In the spring of 1992, it was discovered that certain refugees were being singled out by the INS. These refugees did not belong to the ‘screened in’ (let into the U.S) or the ‘screened out’ (not let into the U.S) categories. They underwent additional interviews and were not admitted to the U.S. It then came to light that HIV-positive Haitian refugees were being held indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay.

Due to its actions at Guantanamo Bay between 1991 to 1993, the United States thus established the world’s first ever HIV detention camp. Many referred to Camp Bulkely as a HIV “concentration camp.” The location of the operation was strategic, Haitians had no constitutional protection and no rights of political asylum.

The INS, along with other U.S. agencies, used The Immigration and Naturalization Act as a defense for their practices, stating that persons confirmed as having a “communicable disease of public health significance” can be barred entry to the United States and, as determined by the Department of Health and Human Services, HIV was considered classifiable under this stipulation. This classification was adopted in spite of the fact that numerous international and national health organizations disagreed about HIV being a communicable disease.

The disgusting state of the camp, which news media brought to public attention, prompted widespread outrage and opposition. However, the INS spokesman at the time, Duke Austin, revealed his lack of respect and concern for the lives of the HIV-positive Haitian refugees by commenting that there is “no policy allowing people with AIDS to come enter the United States for treatment”, and that “they're going to die anyway, aren’t they?” This not only makes blatantly clear the absolute disregard for the lives of refugees, but for all underprivileged people of color who find themselves infected with a disease or virus. The fact that a number of these refugees were infected with HIV/AIDS was especially problematic at the time, since HIV and AIDS were shrouded in fear and paranoia, much of which still lingers on until today.

In view of the heightened prospect of HIV transmission, incarcerating the Haitian refugees in this dreadful camp was irresponsible and extremely dangerous. Many politicians, including parts of the George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton presidencies, failed to deal with the matter in a timely manner, if at all. The three years that many of these Haitian refugees spent in the camp reflect the reality that what matters is “who” is sick: Whereas Haitians at the camp were given considerable support by AIDS organizations, and by Haitian and other refugee organizations, there was also great setbacks in their admittance to the U.S. Although these Haitians were fleeing persecution in their homeland and simply searching for safe haven elsewhere, the HIV positive status of many of them, when accompanied by racism and xenophobia, made that quest for freedom extremely difficult and painful.

Michael Ratner,  a lawyer at The Center for Constitutional Rights at the time, represented the Haitians detained at Camp Bulkely. In February 1993, Ratner described the camp thus:

“The conditions under which they are living, if you can call it that, are out of Dante's inferno--the ninth circle of Hell.”

U.S. District Court Judge Sterling Johnson Jr., who also described the conditions of the camp in 1993, went on to declare the camp unconstitutional in June of the same year.

“They live in camps surrounded by razor barbed wire. They tie plastic garbage bags to the sides of the building to keep the rain out. They sleep on cots and hang sheets to create some semblance of privacy. They are guarded by the military and are not permitted to leave the camp, except under military escort. The Haitian detainees have been subjected to predawn military sweeps as they sleep by as many as 400 soldiers dressed in full riot gear. They are confined like prisoners and are subject to detention in the brig without a hearing for camp rule infractions.” (Haitian Ctrs. Council v. Sale, 823 F. Supp. 1028, 1037 (E.D.N.Y. 1993).

As we have seen, scapegoating in times of crisis has many insidious faces. The many faces it assumes, however, take very similar forms. Political and economic dissatisfaction combined with an infectious outbreak may all too often lead us down a path of divisiveness, a path of “us” versus “them”. Rather than focusing on structural deficiencies that allow certain communities to suffer more than others, or on deficiencies that leave the majority in a public health crisis unprotected, blame is instead directed at those suffering from just such structural inadequacies. This shift of focus not only injures the targeted communities, but society as a whole. Thus, we return once again to interconnectedness. Contributions by all groups and individuals are valuable for the functioning of the system as a whole. Selective responses to collective problems neglect the degrees of separation that connect us.

In this edition of Degrees of Separation, I invite you to observe the political climate of the country you are living in. What kinds of xenophobic tendencies discussed in this Degrees of Separation can you see observe today? Who do you notice being singled out during COVID-19, and how has this developed, according to your personal observations, over the past few weeks?

German: In dieser Ausgabe von "Grade der Trennung" lade ich dich ein, das politische Klima des Landes zu beobachten, in dem du lebst. Welche Muster, die in dieser Ausgabe von "Grade der Trennung" diskutiert werden, kannst du in deinem Alltag beobachten? Wen bemerkst du, der während COVID-19 herausgehoben wurde, und wie hat sich dies nach deinen persönlichen Beobachtungen in den letzten Wochen entwickelt?

I look forward to your amazing responses! Please respond by clicking on this link and filling in the blanks.

**If you can’t reply via GoogleForms, send an email to hq@jumpstar.love. If you send us your answers via email we kindly ask you to copy and paste the following statement into the text body: I hereby confirm the free transfer of the usage rights of these texts to "Brunnenpassage / Caritas " for the project Jump!Star. We will add the responses into a Jump!Star 'Time Capsule' document. -- Hiermit bestätige ich die kostenlose Übertragung der Nutzungsrechte der Texten an die "Brunnenpassage / Caritas" für das Projekt Jump!Star. Die Texte werden in einem Jump!Star 'Time Capsule' zusammengefügt. **

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