From Viral Strains to Social Pains: Navigating Racial Profiling in Yang’s New from Here

Abstract

Racial profiling is a discriminatory practice of singling out individuals by police officers based on their race. During COVID-19, Chinese people suffer tsunamis of racial profiling, referring to them as virus holders, which makes them confront substantial challenges facing bias and oppression in different places. Despite the number of studies that tackled racial profiling within the law enforcement field through different perspectives, none of them has tried to approach the topic outside the police field during the pandemic period using Critical Race Theory. Thus, the current study aims to investigate the acts of racial profiling appointed against the Wei-Evans in Kelly Yangs’ New from Here (2022) in light of Delgado and Stefancic’s Critical Race Theory (2017). Following a descriptive qualitative analysis, the study adopts the theory’s concepts of ‘Racism is Common not Aberrational’, ‘intersectionality’, ‘Race is socially Constructed’ and ‘The Unique Voice of Colour’ as methodological tools to analyse the novel. Scenes, where the protagonists encounter degrading, dehumanisation and racism, are examined to figure out how Covid-19 helps in profiling the Chinese characters and how they react to such profiling. The study concludes that racial profiling is a discriminatory practice perpetrated by different individuals against Chinese people during COVID-19 time to perpetuate Western dominance over non-Westerners. Moreover, the study concludes that the Wei-Evans challenge racial profiling by creating counter-narratives, empowered by their ‘Unique Voice of Colour’ to de-profile and voice themselves. Finally, the study circulates the term ‘Racial Profiling’ outside the police institution because it is only used within police areas.