Racism creates countless problems—some glaringly obvious, others subtle, systemic, and uniquely dangerous to everyone. Historically and politically, we regularly see nationalistic and isolationist ideologies used to undermine global health initiatives, defund the CDC, or threaten withdrawals from the World Health Organization (WHO). Beneath these political maneuvers often lies a deeply rooted, unspoken racial bias: “Why should I care about people dying in other parts of the world?” This mindset stems from a delusion of geographic and racial insulation—a subconscious belief that certain populations are inherently “other,” and that the West is magically immune to the crises affecting black and brown communities.
This biological blindness manifests at the individual level, too. I recently had a student who genuinely believed that tetanus did not exist in North America. In their mind, tetanus was exclusively an “African disease” that Caucasians could not contract. This is dangerously false. The bacterium that causes tetanus, Clostridium tetani, lives in soil all over the Earth and enters the body through simple cuts and punctures.
Driven by anti-vaccine sentiment and scientific illiteracy, tetanus cases are entirely preventable but tragically on the rise. A notable report detailed four unvaccinated American children who contracted tetanus; even after enduring severe illness, grueling treatments, and intensive rehabilitation, the parents still refused post-exposure immunization for three of them. While we cannot know every individual motivation behind vaccine refusal, the underlying mechanism is the same: a profound denial of universal biological vulnerability.
This willful ignorance places both the ideologue and the rest of society in severe danger. Pathogens do not respect human borders, socio-economic status, or racial constructs. We saw this vulnerability starkly illustrated when a passenger exposed to the Andes strain of Hantavirus on a cruise ship was repatriated to the United States, only to walk freely around New York City without proper screening or instruction from public health authorities.
Here is the bottom line: we are one species. We share the same genetics, and we are vulnerable to the same diseases. If your world-view convinces you that human differences are so vast that you are immune to the pathogens affecting others, you are factually wrong. Relying on a false sense of racial or geographic supremacy does not just display a profound ignorance of science—it compromises the biosecurity of us all.