Last semester, we watched a documentary highlighting some of the events that have encouraged white supremacy and xenophobia across the world. Recently CoronaVirus has contributed to xenophobia against Asians. This type of xenophobia against Asians is nothing new. Chinese have been blamed for infectious disease outbreaks and sanitation problems in America for centuries. Now xenophobia in Asia, against other Asians is rising. #ChineseDontComeToJapan trended on social media and citizens from Singapore are fighting for a travel ban for anyone coming from China. When the outbreak was announced, the University of California Berkeley made an Instagram post (now deleted) saying that students may experience xenophobia in the next couple of weeks as a symptom of worry about the virus.
The school was called out for promoting racism as a normal/valid reaction by their student population, which is 43% Asian, and released a statement on Twitter, “We apologize for our recent post on managing anxiety around Coronavirus. We regret any misunderstanding it may have caused and have updated the language in our materials.” UC Berkeley revised their post and doesn’t mention xenophobia and instead says, “Be mindful of your assumptions about others”.
In the Bay Area, Coronavirus didn’t become much of a concern until this weekend when El Camino Hospital announced it had a patient with it and when a patient in Washington died on February 29th, people rushed to the nearest grocery store or Costco to get supplies in case of quarantine. I haven’t experienced any discrimination but one of my close friends was told to “go back to her country” while she was shopping in Trader Joes. Local Asian restaurants are having significant declines in business to almost 50%. It’s alarming how many stereotypes have been placed on Asian-Americans and in a normally progressive area with a huge Asian population, I wouldn’t expect people to act on assumptions so willingly. With more news articles popping up about CoronaVirus spreading, and a second death being reported in the US, I wonder how extensive xenophobia will become. It was advised by the WHO to not impose travel bans, but Trump is already thinking of adding one to the southern border.
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I heard from people that the coronavirus reach some school in palo alto, and 2 kids had to be taken out from school because of it
ReplyDeleteI've definitely heard a lot about discrimination against Asians, which I think it totally racist. Just because they are Asian, doesn't make them any more likely to be infectious compared to a white person, or Hispanic or African American. In this community, most of us are all equally likely to be infected. I heard that lines to get into Costco were averaging at a 90 minute wait, and when I went shopping in TJ's, the majority of the shelves were empty. I do think we should be careful and cautious, but I think people should stop blowing it out of proportion.
ReplyDeleteI think this is really interesting because a lot of teenagers say things jokingly about the coronavirus, that can be taken to heart. I've personally been through this and I'm not even Chinese. It is a serious issue that can be spread to others that are not of Chinese descent. Furthermore, my dad has talked about stocks going down because of the virus. I even heard on the radio that some restaurants are considering closing because they aren't getting enough customers. It is becoming a serious issue that everyone is worried about and has on their minds.
ReplyDeleteI think this is one of the first examples of a disease turning to racism. Back to 2014 when the Ebola virus outbreak occurred, people were not discriminating against African American's knowing that Africa was the origin of the virus. I find this whole corona virus out break to be extreme on very many levels. The fact that people are being discriminated against is ridiculous, the amount of people who are "certain" they are going to catch corona is also unrealistic, and also the amount of deaths that occur are only in older elderly individuals and not in teenagers or overall healthy people. I do think people can take extra precautions in order to stay healthy against ALL sicknesses, but be more sensitive towards the Asian community and calm down.
ReplyDeleteI am glad that most people are taking the virus seriously and are taking precautions, but the resulting racism and xenophobia is not okay. I too am worried about the virus because my brother lives in King county, which has the worst outbreak in the US. However, this worry does not the warrant blatant racism we are seeing right now–nothing would. It is unacceptable that people are projecting their fears onto a group of people, looking for someone to blame and take their anger out on.
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