Identity Politics and Vaccine Distribution

"For me, the most important and the most shocking was the way in which the United States rolled out vaccines in 2021. We had these amazing life-saving vaccines, but there were too few of them, so what were we going to do? Virtually every country in the world did it by age. But the key advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control, called ACIP, said that even though that course of action is much easier to implement, we're not going to do that. It would, they said, be unethical because a disproportionate number of older Americans are white. Even though, according to their own causal models, adopting a different rule would increase the number of deaths by between 0.5 and 6.5%, could lead to thousands more people dying, simply prioritizing older people would be the ethically wrong thing to do. 

Instead, they recommended putting essential workers, who supposedly are more diverse, first. A couple of things happened because of that. One is that it's really hard to communicate who's an essential worker. And immediately the politicking started about being included as essential workers: Film crews were essential workers. Finance executives were essential workers. I was an essential worker, as a college professor in Maryland, at a time when I was not allowed to teach classes in person…

Then what happened is that you had way too many people eligible for the vaccine at a time when there were barely any appointments. So who got the appointments? The people who were able to refresh the websites for hours a day, or who could write computer programs to find eligible spots, or who were able to drive hours out of town in order to get to some rural pharmacy that had more capacity for some reason. They were the ones to get it. In other words, more privileged people who were probably at slightly less risk of death. AI suspect that this policy even killed more non-white people, because if you give a vaccine to two 25-year-old black Uber drivers, rather than one 80-year-old black retiree, more black people are going to die.

So here's a policy that is a life or death question; is capable of inspiring just the worst kind of zero-sum racial competition in our politics; and can easily be exploited by the political right (...)"

Yasha Mounk

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- photograph by Dennis Feldman (1969-1972, Hollywood) via

- Yasha Mounk, full interview: link

Racist Racism: Complicating Whiteness Through the Privilege & Discrimination of Westerners in Japan

Abstract: With no anti-discrimination legislation, strong Confucian-inspired in-group mentality, and a belief in their mono-ethnicity, Japan is marred by a culture of widespread discrimination. Although it has ratified the International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and guarantees equality in its Constitution, all those who differ from the closely-circumscribed norm are excluded culturally, and legally. Whites’ position in this milieu is complicated because of the West’s unique historical relationship with Japan, and due to the perception of white global dominance.



Although admired and arguably privileged over other outsiders, Caucasians are nevertheless mocked and discriminated against - openly, frequently, and with impunity. The concept of racism, as funneled through critical race theory’s (“CRT”) reliance on homogeneous white privilege, lacks dialectic space to address their experiences of discrimination. Yet both CRT analytical tools and desire for praxis, and Confucian respect for human dignity have much to offer in expanding discrimination discourse, exposing the concept of racism as Western-centric, supporting equality, and giving voice to victims who do not fit the victim norm. In the process, this enlarged theoretical and analytical space can help alleviate Japan’s labor shortage, prompting multi-faceted reforms, and achieving true Confucian harmony and democracy. 



I propose to create new discourse, situated within expanded CRT and whiteness studies, while providing analytical coverage to a group of Caucasians rarely mentioned in popular or scholarly literature. Definitions of “the other” and “white privilege” need to move away from monolithic notions of race and power, which are white-centric and racist themselves. (Myslinska, 2014)

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- Myslinska, D. (2014). Racist Racism: Complicating Whiteness Through the Privilege & Discrimination of Westerners in Japan. 83 UMKC Law Review 1, link
- photographs by Issei Suda (Japan in 1970s) via and via

Sacrificing Oneself for the Poor Victim

“It is more satisfying to sacrifice oneself for the poor victim than to enable the other to overcome their victim status and perhaps become even more succesful than ourselves.” 

Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times

photograph via