Coronavirus Is Not An Excuse To Be Racist Toward Asians
Source: CNN
“Obviously, coronavirus does come from Asia, but it doesn’t mean that every Asian person has it.” said David, one of eight people who spoke on their experience with the coronavirus-related racism they have faced in the UK.
This isn’t happening in just the UK, but globally. As the virus continues to spread at a very fast rate and hitting different countries, people continue to panic about the epidemic and they express their fear through discrimination and xenophobia. Since the outbreak, people have begun to lump all Asians together and be racist and ignorant towards them by spreading the incorrect belief that they have the virus.
“People seem to have put a whole race behind it and it’s exposing all these underlying prejudices towards Chinese people, or at least anyone who looks Chinese. It’s shocking in this day and age. It was so blatant.” Jason Ngan says in The Guardian article.
There have been many cases of racial comments and videos surfacing on social media of people getting verbally and physically attacked by people who believe that they have the virus. Trang Dong, a 21-year-old Vietnamese-American posted a video on TikTok of her and her cousin slurping up leftover broth from pho soup. Within the next few days, Dong had several racists comments on her video saying, “Where is the bat in your soups?” one user wrote. “It’s corona time,” another user wrote.
Another case of this hate crime happened right in New York City at a subway station. An unknown woman who was wearing a face mask was accosted in the video by an outraged stranger. Wearing face masks is also something that East Asians had been doing well before the coronavirus outbreak—they do this to protect themselves from the air pollution.
In this video posted by NYPD Hate Crimes twitter, it shows this woman getting attacked by a man who calls her “a diseased b*tch.”
Source: Twitter
While we hear violent or hateful stories of people being ignorant and racist, stories about Chinatown businesses all over the world are also being affected as well.
Chinatown businesses across the country have experienced major business downturns as the fear of this outbreak continues. Although Wuhan is thousands of miles away, and there is only one confirmed case of the virus in NYC, the streets of Chinatown have been quieted. David Ching, the owner of the Chinese restaurant called Yin Ji Chang Fen located downtown said, “We laid off about 40% of our staff to maintain the business because we’re getting less profit.” This restaurant used to be packed with customers before the epidemic, but since the outbreak they have lost sales. Other New York boroughs like Queens and Brooklyn Chinatown businesses have also decreased by 50 to 70 percent.
Businesses in other major cities like Boston, Houston, and San Francisco have also been experiencing business drops. The coronavirus is spread by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching the mouth, nose, or eyes. It only affects those who have been to Wuhan, China. Not by a single race.
Roger Keil, a professor who studied the impact of SARS that emerged in China back in 2002 said, “There are two things to remember every morning when you get up: wash your hands and don’t be racist.”