Something struck me over the weekend as I was reading about the increase in violence towards Asian-Americans. There has always been some level of bigotry and discrimination against Asian-Americans going all the way back to when they worked on the railroads and in the mines as ‘cheap labor.’ However, the level of discrimination has certainly escalated over the past year since the pandemic started and the COVID virus was traced back to China.
We were all witnesses to the unrelenting verbal attacks by our former president and the use of such terms as ‘Kung Flu’, ‘China virus’, etc. When the pandemic hit the US with a vengeance (as all of the experts said it would) after the administration initially downplayed its severity, the administration needed someone to blame for its own incompetence and China was an easy target. All of a sudden, attacks against Asian-Americans increased dramatically.
And the attacks were not just against Chinese Asian-Americans but against all types of Asian-Americans. I would venture a guess that the large majority of Americans cannot distinguish the difference between different types of Asian-Americans so it was basically a shotgun approach. Anyone who looked the least bit Asian was suddenly a target whether they were Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino or Chinese. All of those cultures and people are different. It makes about as much sense as saying that Americans, Scots, Australians, Irishmen, and Germans are all exactly the same.
Of course, this is just exacerbated by Americans’ abysmal lack of knowledge about world geography. “Why have Americans become so geographically ignorant about the world around them? Myriad polls and surveys leave no doubt that Americans are among the most geographically illiterate of all developed societies. The ranks of Americans who have ever taken a geography class in high school or university are small. Indeed, an entire generation of business executives, politicians, policy makers, captains of industry, and movers and shakers has grown up with nary a hint of geographic literacy on their résumés.”2
If you think that bigotry and racism aren’t alive and well in this country, think about this. There is now a variant of the COVID virus that is making huge inroads across the United States. This is the B.1.1.7 variant originally identified in the United Kingdom. And this variant is more contagious and potentially more lethal than the original virus coming out of China. Have there been any attacks on English people in the United States because of this? So, why aren’t people all up in arms and attacking anyone with a British accent? Based upon the anti-Asian logic that seems to be the root behind the current wave of attacks, anyone who is from Australia, New Zealand, Canada or the UK would be subject to verbal abuses and attacks. They are all part of the Commonwealth so they must all be responsible for this insidious UK variant.
Why don’t we hear terms like ‘CO-Brit’ virus or hear the Republican party talking about the ‘English virus’? The answer is very simple. People tend to associate the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand with being white – they look like us. They don’t look so ‘foreign.’ If Trump were still in office, I would bet huge sums of money that you would never hear disparaging names for the variant identified first in the UK, which is now predicted to possibly become the most prevalent strain in the US in a few weeks. There is no other explanation other than wide spread bigotry and xenophobia. It’s just easier to target people who look different and, in this case, that means anyone who is non-white.
There are three other variants that are currently worrying the health experts. One from Brazil, one from South Africa and now, a home-grown version from New York. So, what will become of these variants? It’s hard to imagine that if the New York variant were to begin spreading widely that Americans would start beating up New Yorkers! And most Americans tend to think of South Africans as white (even though the country is populated with a majority of Black Africans), so it is unlikely that there will be a huge backlash against South Africans within the United States.
However, since Brazilians are Latin American, perhaps they would suffer a different fate if the Brazilian variant were to begin spreading widely in the US. Can you imagine what would happen if a variant were to emerge in Mexico?? If you think there has been an escalation in violence against Asian-Americans, given the four years of hostile and inflammatory rhetoric from the former president about Hispanics, one can only imagine how ugly things would get if a “Mexican virus” or “Mexican variant” were identified.
Make no mistake about it – hypocrisy, xenophobia and bigotry are very much alive in this country. If only there was a vaccine for ignorance!