Since the beginning of the times when Asians immigrants went to other countries to try to get a better life, the prejudice has always been around them. People making jokes about their eyes, the food they eat, culture, and costumes. But still, Asians never spoke of it, because it’s always “just a joke”. However, this is not a joke, this is pure prejudice, it’s been overlooked by almost everyone, including even the Asian Community itself.
The older generation of Asians consistently have been put in these “stereotyped boxes” of “I’m A+ student”, “I always follow the rules”, “I’m good at Math”, these are technically “nice compliments” so the majority of Asians didn’t really cared about it. But things have changed a lot since the newest generation, and the outbreak of Covid-19.
When the virus spread around the world, everybody started getting insensitive and irrational about everything, but one major problem is getting out of hands, and it is the racism and prejudice against Asians. They are being threatened and blamed for the pandemic which we all know it is not appropriated and scientifically unproportional.
- I’m Not a Virus
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Many people thought that Asians could not be victims of racism and prejudice but from all we are seeing in the media, this issue is way more serious than we thought. The outbreak of Coronavirus brought not only pain to those who are infect, and lost loved ones, however, people are afraid of the uncommon, atypical, different cultures and faces, but the Covid-19 did not bring this kind of behaviors, many people already had in them, the fear and hate are speaking louder than common sense and respect.
Chenta Tsai Tseng is an East Asian artist who started the “I’m Not a Virus” at a fashion show in Madrid, Spain. His goals were to fight against the racism, surrounding Coronavirus and Asians. After that, many artists and youtubers shared about the “I’m Not a Virus”.
- America’s way of dealing with Covid-19
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In the United States, the President Donald Trump has called Covid-19 as the “Chinese Virus” because it came from China.
This is one of the many reasons why we need to talk about the prejudice against Asians have been dealing with it. It is not right or even professional to make this kind of statement because he is a leader in the world community, and his speeches and actions can cause a lot of damage and trigger more hate towards the Asian Community.
An Ipsos survey conduct for the Center for Public Integrity has shown that more than 30% of Americans have witness someone blaming the Asians for the Covid-19 pandemic. Asians Americans are preparing for the worst cases scenarios with all this violence they have been handling it, such as we seen in the article, “Three teens have been arrested in Minnesota for allegedly kicking an elderly woman of Asian descent in the face”.
Asians Americans have become targets for verbal and physical assaults. They even created a website called “Racism is Contagious”. It can be checked where these assaults took places, also it is possible to report one. There is been 1,497 reports submitted in the website (data finding from 04/23/2020 report) and there is a high chance the numbers have increased since the last data. Indeed, the virus is very contagious, but the prejudice and racism are even more.
- Brazil vs Asians
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Brazil is the home to many Asian-Brazilians such as Japanese, Chinese, Korean and many other ethnicities. According to IBGE, in 2010, 2,084 million of Brazilians considered themselves Yellow. So, you must think, in Brazil should not have prejudice and racism against Asians, right? Wrong.
The immigrants that came from Asia faced a lot of prejudice, injustice, and racism. Just like in America, people make fun of their culture, food, eyes and roughly everything but we all know it is not a joke. The outbreak of Coronavirus started in February in Brazil, but Brazilians already started their racism against Asians a long time ago. The pandemic only brought out the true about the self-called “jokes” by manifesting the truth about their racism.
Talking to some Asian-Brazilians, there is been a lot of verbal abuse against Asians since the Coronavirus started here and even some physically abuse such as in this tweet, Yumi, explains the racism she dealt at work. Her colleague sprayed alcohol, that is used to clean their hands, in her face while yelling “Coronavirus” as she was walking by and kept saying that Yumi was infected by Covid-19 during her work hours. The colleague even said some racist and stereotyped phrases such as “Japanese and Chinese are the same”, “You have corona because you eat weird stuff”. Unfortunately, Yumi is not the only one, there is been cases of people saying “Don’t get close to her, she is Chinese and probably has Covid-19” or Asians being afraid of coughing or sneezing on the subway because people get freak out and get as far as possible from them.
As many young and new generation of Asians, they raised their voices about the racism, prejudice, and injustice. Many Youtubers have talked about the subject and in this video, Leonardo Hwan explains how most of Asian-Brazilians felt with this Coronavirus pandemic.
We can see in the video, it’s not very easy to be treated like a foreigner in your own country and even have to listen to stuff like “I don’t know why you eat dogs” or “Go away with your coronavirus”. So, it’s not that Asian people never been through prejudice and racism but in reality, people always wore this mask when talking to them to disguise the real feeling of disgust and racism by once again, the “it is a joke” card or “I just want to know your culture” but people changed since the pandemic and they don’t seem to care about this anymore. However, this intolerant and hateful comments have always been in the back of their heads.
- Life After Covid-19
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After all the news and reports of violence, disrespect, racism, and prejudice against the Asian Community, what can we learn from this situation?
This problem is not new, or it is not going to be solved any time soon, however, the society should learn from their mistakes and not create a new one. Asian people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. The Coronavirus alone is enough to make a lot of damage and sorrow, so we should be careful with the way we act.
Let’s fight this virus together, but remember that hate is also contagious, so the society should put their differences aside and try creating a new environment, free of hateful acts and racism comments.
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The article above was edited by Gabriela Sartorato.
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