Notions of ‘race’ and disease are deeply imbricated across the globe. This article explores the historical, complex entanglements between ‘race’, disease, and dirtiness in the multicultural Chilean context of Covid-19. We conducted a quantitative content analysis and a discourse analysis of online readers’ comments (n = 1233) in a digital news platform surrounding a controversial news event to examine Chileans’ cultural representations of Haitian migrants and explore online racism and anti-immigrant discourse. Drawing on a decolonial approach, we argue that Covid-19 as a crisis has been fabricated at the expense of a constructed ‘other’. We show how colonial racist logics not only endure in digital spaces, but are made viral in new ways by representing Haitian migrants as ‘filthy’ and ‘disease carriers’. We identified two contemporary forms of racism – online cultural racism and online aggressive racism – through which people construct imaginaries of racial superiority in digital spaces.

中文翻译：

---

“肮脏的人”：Covid-19 期间南南移民背景下数字空间中的种族主义

“种族”和疾病的概念在全球范围内根深蒂固。本文探讨了 Covid-19 智利多元文化背景下“种族”、疾病和肮脏之间的历史性、复杂的纠葛。我们围绕一个有争议的新闻事件，对数字新闻平台上的在线读者评论（n = 1233）进行了定量内容分析和话语分析，以考察智利人对海地移民的文化表征，并探讨在线种族主义和反移民话语。借鉴非殖民主义的方法，我们认为 Covid-19 作为一场危机是以牺牲构建的“他者”为代价而捏造的。我们展示了殖民种族主义逻辑如何不仅在数字空间中持续存在，而且通过将海地移民描述为“肮脏”和“疾病携带者”，以新的方式传播开来。我们确定了两种当代形式的种族主义——网络文化种族主义和网络攻击性种族主义——人们通过它们在数字空间中构建种族优越性的想象。