Ella Fukushima

In class, I started on USC Libraries (ie. ProQuest and Credo) as a starting point. As I continued my research, I felt that I needed to consolidate my focus on one group, the African American community, rather than have less-detailed information on two, unique and diverse groups. The main keywords in my searches were “COVID 19” and “African Americans”. The information, news articles, etc. instantly popped up, showing that there are some efforts in educating the masses on the racial disparities that are occurring during this pandemic. One of the most helpful websites that I found was an article on the Harvard Gazette “Curating the experience of Black America in the age of pandemic” that brought me to a website that provided links to datas/statistics, narratives, more news sources, workshops and activities, and other educational information. This is where I was able to find a majority of my sources for my research. I’m still deciding whether I’d like to start my essay with the narrative o...

Initially, I thought of focusing on Asian Americans, particularly Chinese immigrants, due to the recent racial discrimination and Anti-Asian movements as a result of COVID-19. As an Asian American, I remember seeing on the news a growing number of hate crimes towards Asians in America, especially as people were referring to the epidemic as the 'China-virus'. However, focusing on the accessibility to health care, my research showed that the African American and Hispanic communities were more negatively affected and had the highest number of COVID-19 cases. In my beginning steps of the research process, I found that in many communities including Des Moines, Iowa, the African American and Hispanic accounts for the smallest numbers in population yet make up for the highest percentage of contracting/being affected by COVID. In order to properly look into the social determinants impacting these two communities, I will need to look into the statistics, their accessibility to health ca...