If you look at your history, you’ll see that when a disease hits, one of the first impulses by irresponsible and bigoted leaders and people is to scapegoat a certain race or religion for it.
Everyone — newspapers, scientists, public health officials — all over the world call it coronavirus or covid-19. Yet over the last few weeks there’s been a concerted effort by conservatives to associate it with Chinese people. Rep. Paul Gosar referred to it as Wuhan virus, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called it Chinese coronavirus. Sen. Tom Cotton and others have suggested it was deliberately released by the Chinese military. And now of course President Trump has jumped in on the scapegoating of Chinese people.
I’ve heard a great deal of excuses for this, that it’s just accurately depicting where the disease originated, or that we need to make sure the Chinese government is held responsible for it. But let’s not bullshit ourselves. Here’s a tweet that perfectly highlights what I’m talking about.
What is the point of calling it Chinese Virus or Chinese Coronavirus other than to scapegoat Chinese people for it? The Black Plague for instance was used as an excuse to persecute Jews, so I’m not fooled at all about what the intent is here. We’re already seeing an outbreak of racism against Chinese people over this — the Chinese New Year parade in SF was sparsely attended, Oakland Chinatown where my mom lives was empty when I went to see her a month ago, Chinese restaurants have seen a sharp drop in business. This is just going to inflame that sentiment.
A week and a half ago I was on the BART platform waiting for my train and was drinking water when some went down the wrong tube and I started coughing. Immediately three people in line glared at me, obviously for understandable reasons given what’s been happening, but I couldn’t help but think they were looking at me more warily since I’m Chinese.
This is incredibly disturbing for me personally and for my family, but makes me disturbed about my adopted country. I’m so goddamned pissed off right now I can barely type this. And also so goddamned sad and disappointed in my country and my fellow countrymen.