JOIN USVirus panic causes racism to rear its head
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) may have given rise to a number of theories (both fantastical and plausible) about its possible origins but it has also given birth to a wave of racism, the panic turning some of the most developed countries into hostile, xenophobic centres.
People of Chinese ethnicity have been at the receiving end of abuses, racial slurs and in some cases, even physical violence. For example, The Guardian recently reported how students and restaurant workers in Southampton in England were targeted with abuse. They were called as “carriers of the virus” and were told to go back to their country. A student had a stone thrown at him.
“A Chinese restaurant worker in the city was also shouted at by a man who cited coronavirus, while a passenger in a public bus was reported to have been ordered off by the driver because he was wearing a face mask,” the report says.
In California’s San Fernando Valley, high school students physically assaulted a 16-year-old boy and accused him of carrying the virus. In Leicestershire, two students, mistakenly thought to be Chinese, were pelted with eggs on the street.
These are just a few examples of the many shocking incidents that people of Asian descent are experiencing. (Yes, Asian descent, not Chinese, because bullies are seemingly unable to distinguish between Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese and Korean people. A vitriolic cocktail of ignorance, insensitivity and xenophobia, if ever there was one!) People are avoiding sitting next to them in buses and libraries and shielding their noses and mouths as they walk past. Cab drivers are cancelling trips of people with Asian sounding names while Chinese restaurants in the UK have lost almost 70 per cent of their business.
The repercussions of social isolation and being associated with a deadly disease are being keenly felt by the Chinese student community overseas. A social media user shared a heartfelt post about how, when he sat next to a Chinese girl in a university library, she nervously passed him a note in broken English which “thanked him for sitting next to her and assured him that she did not have the virus”. Other users shared posts from Chinese takeaway places in their area, which explained how their staff hadn’t been to China in years and were, therefore, in no danger of contracting the virus. The messages would usually end with impassioned pleas asking customers to return to them, since “business had been badly hit”.
India doesn’t fare too well in this regard either. Many here are sharing videos and messages on social media which declare that the Chinese deserve this fate, for their extremely non-vegetarian culinary preferences. These are accompanied by graphic videos of animals being slaughtered and a group of people nonchalantly digging into their meal some time later.
Yet others are sharing memes and jokes based on Chinese people and their culture on social media. While the virus doesn’t distinguish between ethnicities, people evidently can — and very virulently at that.