What We Can Learn About Racism From The Swine Flu Scare: Analysis

Front-page images of Mexican soldiers wearing surgical masks armed with Baretas. 71 healthy Mexican citizens quarantined for two weeks in a Hong Kong hotel. A congresswoman from New York declaring that the border with Mexico should be "immediately and completely closed." Countries like Argentina and Cuba banning travel to Mexico. An Israeli-led campaign to change the name of the mysterious disease from swine flu to "Mexican flu."

And then, at long last, news from Mexico's Health Minister José Angel Cordova declared that the death toll of swine flu had been "less than feared." The dreaded H1N1 virus -- which had originally been blamed for over 170 deaths in Mexico -- had killed only 50, giving it a mortality rate comparable with that of the regular flu.

Now that the panic about the H1N1 virus has subsided, perhaps it's time to examine that reaction...The overwrought response from the media and the governments of various countries not only amounted to a public relations crisis for Mexico (which has already lost an estimated two billion dollars in tourism revenue), it also smacked of racism.

Ask yourself this: if the outbreak had occurred in Canada, rather than Mexico, would we have been equally as frightened? If the people it infected were white (rather than brown) and comfortingly middle class (rather than poor and lacking health care), would the world have felt as threatened? And what U.S. lawmaker would dare to request -- or even consider viable -- an immediate and complete closure of the Canadian border?

No. Three times, a hundred times, no. Because we lack precedent for discriminating against Canada (aside from the odd "South Park" joke), the media would be unable to evoke stereotypes in their coverage of the disease. If Americans didn't already stereotype Mexico as a lawless and violent place, images of machine-gun toting police in surgical masks -- a fearsome sight to be sure -- would never have appeared on the Washington Post's front page. And without the preexisting debate about building a wall to stem illegal immigration, the useless measure of closing the border would never have been floated.

Finally, if Americans didn't fundamentally doubt the ability of the Mexican government to manage crises -- an unfounded concern that resulted from the media blitz surrounding the drug war and from the Joint Forces Command's February declaration that Mexico could become a failed state -- we would not have assumed that the initial 17 deaths could explode into global pandemic.

Prejudice against Mexico and its citizens is a fact of life in the United States. Americans are happy enough to party on its pristine beaches and show-off the colorful textiles or handmade sculptures they bought in touristy Oaxaca markets -- but we are bad, bad neighbors to Mexico. 30 percent of Americans think that illegal Mexican immigrants currently working in the U.S. should simply leave (immediately and completely), and 52 percent supported the 2008 effort to construct a 700-mile-long fence along the border. As a caller who voiced his opinion to a CNN panel about swine flu recently summarized: "We should build that wall -- it'll keep out the drugs and the disease."

Yikes.

If we can learn anything from this flu scare (other than that in general we should endeavor to keep cooler heads), it's that Americans are profoundly prejudiced against Mexico. But to be sure, if our southern neighbor were France or England, we would never have employed such insulting vocabulary and imagery to discuss the virus. Call it racism, call it classism, call it xenophobia or whatever other ism you will. Personally, I think it's a combination of the above. To his credit, Barack Obama avoided such pitfalls by exhorting calm and referring to the disease exclusively as H1N1. But shame on the media for exploiting Americans' racism to create hype, and shame on us for eating it up.

...More on Mexico...