Yuwei Wang ASA 002 001 Week 1 Blog

As a Chinese international student, I have a lot of experiences on how Asian People are living in the Covid-19 situation. Covid-19 was first detected in Wuhan, a big city with more than ten million people. After the danger of the virus was reported, the government of China responded with polices to keep people from intense social activities, as well as several centered medical facilities to support the cure on the infected individuals. This year, Chinese people had a memorable Chinese New Year, in their own houses but not getting together to reduce the risk of infections due to social contacts. As Chinese students studying in the US, lots of Chinese students like me also did a lot to support our families, such as making donations and sending materials for self-protection against the virus. After the outbreak, people paid a lot of effort to stop the spread of the virus.

However, nowadays, the virus has already spread to many countries around the world. Resisting the spread of coronavirus has already became the responsibility of the whole world. But sadly, at least in the US, some of the people refuse to take this responsibility and blame Asian, as well as Asian Americans, for the happening of all those stuffs; and of course, some of them still don’t wear masks until today. This volatility towards Asian faces results in violence: except the body violence we often see in news, but what is more common is language violence, happening anywhere. Here is an excerpt from an article I saw on the internet.

Jay Koo is a simple Asian American living in New York. On March 24, after dropping his brother in the hospital, he found that he was followed by two men. They yelled to him: “You got the virus. We have to kill you.” Luckily, he finally escaped by protecting himself and doing fake-coughing. Koo thinks the hidden reason of this incident is the “weak and nonconfrontational” stereotype on Asians, and when he describes the detail on the behaviors of the two men, he says: “The men acted out of reflex in quoting President Donald Trump and Stated that I have the ‘Chinese virus’, which propped up the Chinese as the scapegoat.” (Kambhampaty & Sakaguchi, 2020)

Note that Koo mentioned “stereotype” and “President Donald Trump.” When the word “stereotype” is used, it means this impression is kept for years, or even centuries. In the course professor mentioned the history of how Asian people were discriminated throughout history. When the first Asian immigrants came to America, their home country maybe still undeveloped, and maybe this is the reason why they are discriminated at that time. But time changes. Through the history from late 19^th century to now, we can see the dramatic change- or development- of Asian countries, China, Japan, South Korea, and more. More people became educated, and they began to know more about the “outer world”. And indeed, it can be hard for those Asian faces to accept the traditions in the US, but at least they are different from maybe 100 years ago. But some of the people fail to see those changes as those Asian faces accommodating better to the life in US, passing those old thoughts, which has finally became racism and discrimination for those “weak” minority, to the younger generations. Political leaders, especially the president, have the responsibility to guide people, but obviously this time the President put the guidelight into a wrong path of stereotype and discrimination. Guidelights are needed, and the one who provides the guidelight can be Asian American themselves. I read Fight the Tower by Kieu Linh Caroline Valverde and Wei Ming Dariotis. In the prologue of that book, the “misguided stereotype” is also mentioned: Asian Americans were often identified as “successful hard workers and achievers” as well as “quiet and docile people”, as a result, their rights as a citizen are harassed. (Valverde & Dariotis, 2020) That is remarkably similar to what Koo has experienced. Also, in search of the correct guidelight, the author used the college examples to illustrate how Asian Americans had their contribution, but being mistreated, then bravely called the oppressed to resist. There was an old saying, a college is a mini society. Begin from college, if Asian American people starts to fight against the stereotype, I believe the guidelight can be brighter and brighter to change the whole society.

People resisting racism on Asian Americans in the Chinatown of San Francisco.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/we-have-been-through-this-before-why-anti-asian-hate-crimes-are-rising-amid-coronavirus

References

Valverde, K.-L. C., & Dariotis, W. M. (2020). Fight the tower: Asian American women scholars resistance and renewal in the academy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Kambhampaty, P. A. & Sakaguchi, Haruka. (2020). 'I Will Not Stand Silent.' 10 Asian Americans Reflect on Racism During the Pandemic and the Need for Equality. https://time.com/5858649/racism-coronavirus/