The Hidden Side Effect of the Coronavirus

While sitting on the colorful carpet of my first grade classroom during storytime, a young, white classmate dramatically pulled his eyelids up towards his temple and turned to me.

“Why do you look like this?” he inquired. Though I was well-aware of what he was mocking, I was taken aback by his question and quickly turned red.

One side of me was merely confused.

“But I’m only half asian!” I thought to myself, “And the other half is white just like him!”

However, deeper within me was a sense of shame and helplessness. Growing up in a predominantly white town where I was one of a small handful of non-white students in my elementary school, my differences were put into the spotlight. When comparing my life to my classmates whom all had white parents, little things would catch my eye. While their mothers packed them peanut-butter-jelly sandwiches, my mother packed me fried rice. When they went to Sunday school, I was at Chinese school. While their moms were chatting after picking us up, my mom was the only one with an accent. And most importantly, I didn’t look like my classmates. My eyes were smaller, my face was rounder, and my nose was fatter. Being a shallow child, I longed to look like my blonde-haired classmates.

Perhaps that’s why I was so shocked by the boys’ comment: not only was he pointing out an insecurity of mine, but because his mockery was insulting the Asian side of me I had no control over. It made Asian features seem humorous, like a silly cartoon character.

Racism and prejudice towards Asians (particularly East Asians) is often overlooked in society despite the fact that stereotypes about Asians eating dogs raid the internet and are constantly in the scripts of comedians. Studies have found that 61% of Asians report that they have been subject to slurs or jokes, with African Americans at 52% and Hispanics at 46%. Interestingly, African Americans and Hispanics reported to be much more likely to be treated unfairly in the workforce and have people act as though they are unintelligent or dangerous. The fact that Asians experience more racism in terms of slurs and jokes despite being treated significantly better than other minorities perpetuates the idea that racism towards Asians is brushed off as “not as bad.” This can possibly be attributed to the history and status of Asians in Western culture. Apart from the Chinese Exclusion Act in the late 1800s and Japanese Internment Camps during World War II, American history does not pose Asians as a group that has been heavily discriminated against. In addition, Asians are often seen as the “model immigrant” of America; they are the most rapidly growing minority, send their children to the most prestigious universities, and are the highest earning ethnic group in America. To be clear, I am in no way suggesting that discrimination of Asians is as severe as other minorities; I am merely pointing out how the mockery of Asians is not taken seriously and rarely makes headlines, as it is often on a smaller scale in the form of words rather than actions. Nevertheless, racism is racism.

However, recent events have begun to alter this “smaller scale.” In December of 2019, researchers in Wuhan, China identified a virus that was infecting dozens of people: the Coronavirus. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency warning people not to travel to China in order to prevent the spreading of the Coronavirus, now officially named COVID-19. Currently, around 72,400 people are infected and 1,800 have died. Although only two percent of those infected die from the disease (mostly the elderly and people with underlying health conditions), the world has gone into a frenzy over the virus due to its ability to spread rapidly. Travel bans have been put in place, events have been canceled, cruises have been quarantined, and production in China has come to a halt. Another thing that has spread is racism.

It wasn’t long before the Chinese community started seeing a shift in how the general public viewed them. Stories have been coming out regarding individuals being targeted and ostracized for their Chinese features, even when they had not been to China in recent years or are ethnically from another East Asian country. A young boy was called “virus boy” on his Vancouver playground. Two students were pelted with eggs in Leicester, England. A girl at Arizona State University reported people getting up and leaving whenever she sat down at a table. The list goes on and on.

Social media has also been a player in the issue, as hashtags and jokes have been circulating meme pages and eventually going viral. When two Vietnamese American girls posted a TikTok of themselves jokingly holding spoons with chopsticks, the comment section quickly turned into a war zone full of racist slurs and comments.

“Where is the bat in your soup?” One said.

“It’s corona time!” Said another.

Even though the original video had absolutely nothing to do with Coronavirus and despite the fact that the girls weren’t even Chinese, commenters fired away.

Their mindset?

“Asian = Coronavirus”

Evidently, the Coronavirus has brought the issue of Asian racism to the public's attention like never before. Could this possibly be because people are using the Coronavirus as an excuse to be racist?

The trend of diseases leading to xenophobia is not a new concept: we have seen it before.

In 2014, the world went into a Coronavirus-like panic due to Ebola, a virus that originated in western Africa. Can you guess what happened next?

Individuals started being mocked for being born in Africa, African immigrants were turned away from jobs and stores, people were hesitant to shake the hands of those with African descent, and a black high school soccer player was subject to chants of “Ebola” from the rivaling team before a game: all an echo of the recent discrimination towards Asians today.

There is no doubt that racism is an existing issue; 64% of Americans believe that it is a major problem, and 30% believe it exists but is not a major problem. In fact, there has been a spike in racist sentiments in hate crimes since Donald Trump took office in 2016. Nevertheless, education has been striving to lower the amount of prejudice and racism present in young generations through diversity in media and history.

The fact that people are aware that racism is wrong but are quick to generalize races when diseases arise in certain parts of the world introduces an interesting idea: perhaps people stop seeing racism as a harmful occurrence when it is backed up by a specific cause.

Many psychologists agree that one of the main causes of race-directed hate is fear. In the words of psychologist Dr. Renee Carr, “When one race of persons unconsciously feels fear in response to a different race group — fears that their own level of security, importance, or control is being threatened — they will develop these defensive thoughts and behaviors. They will create exaggerated and negative beliefs about the other race to justify their actions in [an] attempt to secure their own safety and survival.”

Discrimination against Asians and people of African descent during the Coronavirus and Ebola crises may be attempts for people who are not Asian or African to further distance themselves from the issue by blaming it on a group they are not a part of. After all, reading about new found diseases is quite scary, and no one wants it to enter their backyard. Therefore, making problematic jokes and generalizing races is no longer wrong to them because it is “factual.”

On the other hand (and a more negative one), this racism may be symbolic of a bigger issue regarding race in society. Maybe the reason we’re so quick to generalize races when it comes to diseases is because society still views races other than white as less?

Roger Keil, a professor at New York University studied the impact of the outbreak of SARS (another infectious disease originating in China) in Toronto. He found that not all outbreaks were racialized. Despite the fact that diseases like H1N1 mainly impacted people in North America, there was no rise in xenophobia against white people or North Americans in general. On the other hand, with the Coronavirus and Ebola mainly impacting groups of people who look similar, people found it easier to use ethnic groups as a scapegoat. Moreover, they began to paint the races as “dirty” or “impure.”

When looking at the history of race or even beauty standards today, whiteness has always been the ideal. Going as far back as the roots of religion, there has always been a tie between whiteness and cleanliness; white garments often symbolized religious purity. White eventually became a symbol of class and wealth, as it served as proof of being untainted. Once European colonists came into contact with other ethnic groups, the racial aspect of whiteness and cleanliness began to take place. Unfortunately, it seems as though it never left.

In the midst of the Coronavirus hysteria, a video surfaced of a Chinese woman holding a bat with her chopsticks in a bowl of soup. Immediately, people began to relate the Coronavirus to the eating habits of Chinese people, saying that it was their fault for eating such strange foods. Although it is not entirely misguided to make this claim since many viruses do come from animals, the video was proven to not be the cause of the virus. In fact, it wasn’t even filmed in Wuhan or even China. Nevertheless, the quick judgement of outsiders displayed how those who lack knowledge of China view the culture: they see it as weird and dirty. Thus, it becomes difficult for outsiders to empathize with those in China. Even worse, some people started to believe they deserved it.

On an Instagram post containing the video of the woman eating bat soup, I was sickened by the comment section.

“That’s what you get for eating bats!” one said.

“The Coronavirus is karma to Chinese people for eating cats and dogs.” said another.

When one commenter came to the defense of Chinese people saying, “the Coronavirus isn’t an excuse for you guys to be racist,” someone else replied: “yes it is.” The comment got over one hundred likes.

Although it is saddening to see such acts, sometimes issues need to worsen before they can be fixed. As racism towards Asians has increased, resilience has come with it. Activists have been calling out those using racist jokes and slurs, and hashtags such as #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus and #NoSoyUnVirus (#IAmNotAVirus) have been trending on twitter.

In an era where many countries, specifically America, pride themselves on the strives they have taken to end discrimination, we forget that hidden racism is still strong within our society. However, when an event occurs that sparks fear and points out the differences between us, it is often brought to light.