This doesn't make sense to me. Why would humoring the idea that it came from a lab be "racist"? Did anyone with a real platform and influence ever make that claim? What would make the idea that it came from a Chinese lab more racist than the idea that it was spread because Chinese people have strange and unsafe wet markets where they trade and eat strange and gross (to us Westerners) animals?

It doesn't make sense, but yes, it was a thing people did say and continue to say. Apoorva Mandavilli, a science and health reporter for the NYT just yesterday (May 26) tweeted "Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here." That's a recent example I know off the top of my head.

It doesn't make sense to me either but I anecdotally encountered people who think any suggestion, idea, theory, that implicates a non-white “race” of people, even if in a neutral non-accusatory way, is inherently and problematically racist.

> Why would humoring the idea that it came from a lab be "racist"?

Because Trump said it. And trump doesn't exactly have great credit when it comes to not being racist against Chinese people.

So, we label this theory as conspiracist and racist.

I don't think i have further explanation.

I think you're right.

I believe (with no way to prove it) if Trump had, with his trademark tone and delivery, blamed China's Wuhan Seafood Market and thrown in a few choice insults about China, that theory would have been the one Big Media shut down and filtered out. Instead it was the lab leak theory.