Assoc Prof Farish A. Noor at RSIS, NTU, wrote in his commentary that HIV was associated with ‘dark’ Africa, Mers with Arabs, and now, the coronavirus is being linked with ‘dirty’ Asians. Many of these prejudices – be it the notion that Africa is “dark” or that Asians are “dirty” – happen to be ideas that date back to the colonial era, and have their antecedents in a colonial discourse that framed Asia and Africa as backward, primitive and unhygienic parts of the world that needed to be rescued and redeemed by colonial intervention. This piece draws on the joint research of his students Firdaus Hair, Saman Rizwan, Nan Zehao, Feng Yiqin and Basilio Ohmar.