Since February 2020, the coronavirus started to come to people's attention. It first started in Wuhan, and people believed if they could control the people flow in Wuhan, they were able to ease this virus. However, this didn't happen. The coronavirus started to appear not only in Wuhan but also in every province of China. This led to a shutdown of all businesses, such as malls, movie theaters, and also restaurants. Because of the shutdown, China's retail sales plunged 20.5% during January and February over the same period in 2019, industrial output declined 13.5%, and fixed asset investment fell 25%, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Starting March, Coronavirus spread all over the world; now we can also see its impacts on the US economy, such as the plunge of stocks.
Besides the economy strike, coronavirus also leads to some discrimination around the world. Before the virus spread to other countries, many Chinese blamed people in Wuhan and started to post negative comments and dislikes against them. Later on, as the virus widely spread among other countries, the racism of Asians has started. Last week Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, launched a website called Stop AAPI Hate to track the attacks. In the first eight days, it received more than 650 reports of discrimination, largely against the Asian American community. The most common type of report it received is name-calling and verbal harassment; There are also people having bottles and cans thrown at them, their homes being vandalized, and being physically attacked, assaulted, being hit or punched, pushed on subways. I don’t understand why people are blaming each other for the virus rather than doing something useful to reduce the transition risk. It the racism continues; I am afraid that this would become as serious as the article “Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia” states.
From this course, I expect to explore the Asian American community and also the current issues in the Asian American community. My question this week is how we can stop people from discriminating against others. When the coronavirus would stop.
References
He, L. (2020, March 16). Coronavirus devastates China's economy and the 'nightmare' is not over. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/16/economy/china-economy coronavirus/index.html
Mullis, S., & Glenn, H. (2020, March 27). New Site Collects Reports Of Racism Against Asian Americans Amid Coronavirus Pandemic. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/27/822187627/new-site-collects-reports-of-anti-asian-american-sentiment-amid-coronavirus-pand
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