Talking to My Seven-Year-Old Asian-American Son About Coronavirus Discrimination
“You can get away with looking Latino,” I told my husband. “I don’t look anything but Asian. It’s just safer for you to go.”
It was the third week of our COVID-19 quarantine and we were discussing who should go to the grocery store. My logic was based on news reports and a recent grocery shopping experience.
My husband and I are both Filipino-American, born and raised in Los Angeles. I’m usually mistaken for being Chinese or Korean while people sometimes mistake my husband for being Latinx.
During the first week of quarantine, I visited our regular Trader Joe’s in Pasadena, three blocks from Colorado Blvd. where every year, the flower-covered floats line up for the Rose Bowl Parade.
At that time, Trader Joe’s was implementing its new system: single-file lines outside the store, six feet apart. I lined up with other shoppers waiting for our turn to be let inside.
Directly in front of me was a Black man, bald, in his late 30s. In front of him was a woman in her late 60s, brown hair, White.
The guy was on his phone so we didn’t make eye contact. The woman turned around once to look at me. We caught eyes and I smiled at her as if to say, “This is weird, right? But we’re in this…
