Letters | As Hong Kong fights the coronavirus, racial stereotypes add insult to injury

Comments from the head of the government’s Health Promotion Branch depict all members of Hong Kong’s diverse ethnic minority community as Covid-19 super-spreaders who indulge in high-risk behaviour

Such remarks are counterproductive to an inclusive Hong Kong and help to further spread racial discrimination

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A man wheels his bicycle across a street in Jordan, where most shops are closed after a cluster of Covid-19 cases were discovered in the surrounding areas, on January 19. Photo: Nora Tam

Published: 1:16pm, 20 Jan 2021Updated: 11:35pm, 20 Jan 2021

The words of Raymond Ho Lei-ming, head of the Health Promotion Branch at the Centre for Health Protection, as reported in your paper on Tuesday, are demeaning and insulting to all ethnic minorities of Hong Kong (“Hong Kong’s Covid-19 caseload jumps to 107; ethnic minority members warned of risks”, January 18).

Ethnic minorities have been depicted as super-spreaders of Covid-19 who indulge in high-risk behaviour.

“They like to share food, smoke, drink alcohol, and chat together.” Mr Ho, not all ethnic minorities drink alcohol and smoke, and you have actually deeply offended many who don’t. You have categorised all ethnic minorities as the same, from the Indians and Nepalese to the Filipinos and Pakistanis, when you refer to them as “they”.

The ethnic minority groups in our city are varied and diverse, and you have grouped about 8 per cent of Hong Kong’s population together.

Also, like many others living in poverty, they “need to share sanitary facilities with neighbours if the living environment is crowded”.

Such comments reinforce stereotypes that ethnic minorities are dirty and unsanitary. Those members of minority communities who live in subdivided flats, like their Chinese counterparts, need to share bathrooms, not because they want to, or because they lack hygiene, but because they are too poor to afford homes with private facilities.