THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING
I’m writing today from a strong and personal viewpoint on the topic I chose to talk about today. I usually don’t write things with a strong opinion, but this is one of the few moments where I’m actually going to express my thoughts and opinions.
As we all know, we are in a pandemic right now. It’s a scary time with the outbreak of COVID-19. While there are so many lives at risk right now, there is a specific group of people who are being targeted. For all of the wrong reasons. Asians, specifically Chinese people.
I was adopted at 13 months old from China. I’m very privileged to say that I don’t usually think about my race (as some would say I’m whitewashed), I never really have until I came to college. Yes. I did grow up in a very diverse community, while I was one of the only Asians, my high-school student body was 46% African-American, 27% Latinx, 20% White, and 3% Asian (I was 1/10 in my graduating class). While there was a lack of Asian representation, only on the rarest occasions would I have anything racist said to me. When I was much younger I’d had the typical stereotypical jokes made about me, at first I was really upset. I hated the way I looked, I was embarrassed. Over time, I grew a thick skin and started to stand up for myself. Thankfully, this has not happened to me in a while.
However, that doesn’t mean people still make unconscious (or maybe conscious) stereotypes about me. Asians are said to be shy, quiet, introverted, and good at math. That’s about it. When people met me, I was always told that I broke the Asian stereotype for them. I would like to think I have a loud, extroverted, outgoing personality, and also being good at math. Being the way I am with my personality, I like to hear what stereotypes people have about me.
For example, when I’m giving a tour, families are always surprised by how talkative I am and how I can project my voice for a crowd to hear me. Or when professors have this shocked look when I speak up in class with the right answer, or give a presentation in which I’m very interactive with my classmates. It’s interesting how people say they don’t make stereotypes and generalizations, but then I see it first hand. They assume I speak only Chinese, or can understand the language automatically. They’re shocked when they hear me speaking English without a stutter. People need to stop making generalizations, because they just might be surprised.
Over time I’ve learned to love where I came from, in the past, I used to shy away from it because personally I am friends with a lot of white people. It was who I was surrounded by. However, recently white people have been starting to stereotype Asians, and it’s f*@#-ed up.
Xenophobia. If you don’t know what that means, it means the fear of people from another country. In this case, the fear of Asians. The reason?
COVID-19 originates from China. In the beginning, a 32-year-old Chinese doctor back in December had the virus and he was trying to warn people this was just the beginning. He was trying to post videos to make it go viral, but unfortunately, the way the Chinese government works, nothing leaves the country. The government took him into their own hands and he unfortunately died. The video eventually got around to the US and by that time it was too late. The COVID-19 pandemic began and is still happening.
In the beginning, most of the cases were in China. It was horrifying to see their numbers and then see the numbers eventually spread to the rest of the world. It was inevitable for this virus to spread. Donald Trump has been having these daily briefings about the latest updates on what our government is going to do to slow the curve of this virus. However, if you haven’t seen on television or any type of media platform, you would see that Trump is NOT calling the coronavirus the coronavirus. Instead, it’s the Chinese virus. He is ACTIVELY targeting a specific group of people, and the actions coming from that are people targeting Asians while they’re out in public. There have been fights, people spit on them, give awful looks, boycott the Asian restaurants, and much more. It’s horrific. As if we are not dealing with enough, we are having our own President reinforcing this term by having it written in his speeches that he gives on national television.
This should absolutely not be happening. I should not have to be worried about going grocery shopping for my family (because they’re in the direct age range of getting COVID). I shouldn’t have to worry about having to come home from university and someone hurting me in Union Station. While my thoughts are a bit extreme, that’s the reality of the world we’re living in today.
No one should be racist, ever. No one should target a specific group of people, ever. This may be 2020, but some things I guess just don’t change.
Down below are photographs of Donald Trump’s binder showing coronavirus crossed off and replaced by Chinese. This photograph was taken by a Washington Post Photographer, and he posted these photos on his Instagram as well.
Some articles discussing more about this:
