Explaining how RFK Jr.’s recent remarks were racist

It’s a good reminder that “hate” is a very limited way of talking about racism.

By Roberta Millstein

I recently got into a conversation with some people on Facebook about whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent remarks about Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews regarding COVID-19 were racist.  The conversation was too hard to have on Facebook, so I stopped engaging, but I think it’s worth looking at his remarks in more detail because I think they are quite damning, and yes, racist. 

I take his remarks personally because I myself am an Ashkenazi Jew, but since RFK Jr. is running for President of the United States, and since apparently some Davisites think he is a good candidate, it’s important for all of us to take a second look.

The video of his remarks is here.  The quotes below are my transcription.  I edited lightly (removing stutters, etc.), and may have missed a small word here or there, but I am confident that I have it mostly correct.

The video begins with RFK Jr. stating:  “We need to talk about bioweapons.  I know a lot about bioweapons because I’ve been doing it for the last 2 1/2 years and you know what, the technology that we now have to develop these microbes… we have put hundreds of millions of dollars into ethnically targeted microbes.  The Chinese have done the same thing.”

Whether this is true or not is not really relevant for the points I want to make here, so I will just grant for the sake of argument it is true.  I’ll say that it would not surprise me. 

RFK Jr. continues:  “In fact COVID-19 – there's an argument that it is ethnically targeted.”

There are two assumptions in this short sentence.  One is that COVID-19 was bioengineered.  I think the jury is still out on that, but again, I’m willing to grant that point for the sake of argument.  Let’s supposed COVID-19 was bioengineered.  Even assuming that, to claim that it was ethnically targeted (or that “there’s an argument” that it was) goes beyond the claim that it was bioengineered.  That is a much bigger and troubling accusation.

RFK Jr. then asserts: “COVID-19 attacks certain races disproportionately.  The races that are most immune to COVID-19 [are immune] because of the of the structure, the genetic structure, genetic differentials among different races, of the receptors, of the ACE2 receptor.  COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people.  The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

This is the most damning part of RFK Jr.’s remarks.  Notice how he slips from the fact that there is some reason to think that different races have different susceptibilities to COVID-19 – which is true, there is a study that does indicate that – to claiming that COVID-19 was targeted to attack certain people (Caucasians and Black people) and spare others (Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews).  Those are two very very different claims.  Many diseases affect different races differently without their being any reason whatever to think they were bioengineered to be that way.  RFK Jr. is making a huge leap here.

RFK Jr. then admits: “And we don't know if that was deliberately targeted at that or not, but there are papers out there that show the, you know, the racial and ethnic differential impact for that. We do know that the Chinese are spending hundreds of millions of dollars developing ethnic bioweapons and we are developing ethnic bioweapons.  That’s what all those labs in the Ukrainian are about – they are collecting Russian DNA, they're collecting Chinese DNA, so we can target people by race.”

So, he is now saying “we don’t know if they were deliberately targeted,” but that is right after saying that they were targeted.  Furthermore, to say “we don’t know” is already to imply that it is likely to be the case; even if this was all he had said (and it wasn’t), just asking the question is to raise the issue in people’s minds.  So he is not exonerated for that admission.

As problematic as these remarks are on their own terms, they are more problematic when one considers the social context in which they occur.  In our present-day society, demonizing the Chinese for whatever ails us is extremely common.  And demonizing Jews is more than decades old – it’s centuries old.  The racist trope that gets stated explicitly and implicitly about Jews, over and over again, is that they (we) are controlling the world behind the scenes (the government, the media, etc.).

So RFK Jr.’s remarks feed right into these stereotypes.  His remarks make it sound as though the Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews are in cahoots to attack Caucasians and Black people even though he lacks the evidence to say that.  Certainly, anyone who is already predisposed to have these widely held stereotypes will hear his remarks that way.

RFK Jr. should know about these stereotypes – it’s hard to believe that he doesn’t – and should have been more cautious in his wording.  Does this make him a racist?  I am not claiming that.  I don’t have access to his personal beliefs.  What I am claiming is that he said something racist and at a minimum, should have known better and acted better.  And that he didn’t makes him a concerning candidate for President of the U.S.

Finally, let me bring this back around to Davis.  Davis and UC Davis are supposedly engaged in a Hate-Free Together initiative.  (I say supposedly because I’ve not seen much come out of this initiative yet).  What the case of RFK Jr. shows is that focusing on hate can cause someone to miss important instances of someone expressing and perpetuating racist ideas.  I have no reason to think that RFK Jr. “hates” Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews.  I do have good reason, however, to think that he promulgated and fed into racist stereotypes.   

What we most need to combat racism is education about the many forms that racism can take and how best to combat them.  Will Hate-Free Together provide that?   I am doubtful, but we shall see.