“So there’s a rumored case of someone testing positive for Corona in San Antonio,” my friend says as she drove us back to campus one night in late February. “Are any of y’all worried?” The car goes silent, and the past hour of laughs that we shared from hour long post-concert high are over.
“Is it stupid of me to feel like more people are gonna be racist to us?” I muttered from the back seat. “I might not be Chinese, but people don’t distinguish what type of Asian you are before something like that happens.” My friends reassured me, saying that since I’m Filipino, it might not be as bad. But this small thought in the back of my mind became a reality.
Three weeks later, I was packing my essentials to fly back to New York. COVID-19, also known as the Coronavirus, was rapidly becoming an international concern. The virus hit America around spring break, and many college students still have not returned to campus since then. Everything began to shut down: schools, workplaces, flights; American society has had to change and adapt to this pandemic. What’s worse is that there are people dying every day, and people still choose to be unkind in a time of hardship for us all.
There has, specifically, been a rise in Asian-American motivated attacks in the United States. From verbal harassment, shunning, and an increased amount of physical attacks, the hatred towards Asian Americans (not only those of Chinese descent) have snowballed into a very real problem for a lot of us. Local businesses are suffering from lack of income, with many people considering Asians to be “dirty” after a viral video of a Chinese person eating “bat soup,” once believed to be the cause of COVID-19, took the Internet by storm. The issue is, no one is afraid to hold back on the Internet and those disgusting thoughts are easier to spew from behind a screen. Even so, people have had the audacity to make a mockery of Asian culture. Xenophobia is one of our greatest enemies in our current society. This virus does not define who I am as a person, and neither does it testify to the millions of Asians living in America today. Though COVID-19 arose specifically from Wuhan, China, it does not mean that the geographic location/cause of this outbreak should condemn anyone of Asian descent.
A shocking example of an anti-Asian attack includes a Belgian school condoned a very racist class photo, of teenagers at first glance, appreciating Chinese culture, but then noticeably intertwining the nature of the photo with COVID-19, with one girl going so far as to pull her eyes back to mock Asian features. The Sint-Paulus School in Waregem-Belgium issued a statement writing: “They chose an outfit long beforehand, in this case even long before there was any mentioning of the coronavirus. The students alluded to the recent events in a playful way by adding a sign.
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“Neither the school team, nor the students involved have ever had the intention of adopting a condescending or offensive attitude,” the statement continues. “Nonetheless, the school would like to express its apologies publicly and explicitly through this statement. We did not estimate the consequences of publishing this picture correctly and we regret having offended certain population groups by it.”
An FBI report has predicted the surge of these types of attacks in America, with the stabbing of an Asian American man and his two children at a Sam’s Club in Texas last month, ABC News reported. According to the report, the 19-year-old suspect said he thought they were “infecting people.” The victims have now recovered. This should not be a reflection of how Americans should treat each other, no matter what background one may have. President Trump himself retracted a statement about referring to COVID-19 as “the Chinese virus” after being alerted by WHO officials of the potential effects of this terminology on Asian-Americans around the country and facing backlash online. Instead, he educated himself by calling on us to protect these communities as we work with global partners that are helping us fight the pandemic. But the damage may have already been done. Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang turned himself away from the limelight by urging his fellow Asian Americans to display “more American-ness” in these times. Many news stations have been flocking to Flushing, Queens to make photos of Asian people the headlines for their articles concerning COVID-19.
As an Asian-American currently holed up in my childhood bedroom in Queens, it hurts to live in fear of being treated badly because of who I am. I have learned to hold my tongue in these past few weeks in fear of creating a problem bigger than I am. But I think it’s time to realize that we are not the problem. Human nature tells us to point fingers when there is no one that can be blamed. But the levels of social awareness that this pandemic has brought made me realize that not only is COVID-19 one of our biggest enemies, but so is hatred.