With public fear and its intentional abuse as the main reasons, Asian discrimination received a disturbing level of support after the coronavirus outbreak, which is, in my opinion, unacceptable. The coronavirus disease pandemic shook the world and brought changes on all possible levels – social, political, economic, financial, cultural, and even ecological. The sheer scale of its impact was enough to foster numerous conspiracy theories, rumors, and prejudices. The reputation damage that the Asian community received during the pandemic is comparable to the damage this pandemic inflicted on human society. Particularly in the U.S., a rise in xenophobia led to a significant surge of anti-immigrant attitudes, despite the rational reasoning to shut down such harmful and detrimental ideas.
Xenophobia by itself has deep roots in human nature. Since the tribal times, people tend to mistrust anyone who does not belong in their usual surroundings. This tendency is further strengthened if the division between “we” and “them” finds support at the state level. The U.S. has come a long way in learning tolerance and empathy, but the vision of immigrants being categorized by law as aliens and a threat might still linger (Lejeune et al., 2021). Such ideas are often revived in people’s minds when they find themselves endangered.
COVID-19, apart from the real danger it poses to people’s well-being, brings feelings of anxiety, insecurity, and lack of control over the situation. According to Esses and Hamilton (2021), the spread of infectious disease shared first place along with climate change as the top perceived national threat in 2020. Although these factors are not directly connected to immigrants, the anxiety they produce is, which might dig up previously latent feelings.
The state’s actions also play a significant role in human perception. The declaration of a national emergency over the coronavirus outbreak is by itself disturbing, at the very least. However, some politicians poured more oil on the flames, referring to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus” (Reny & Barreto, 2020). Such demonization of foreigners supports the aforementioned division of “we” and “them” and is sometimes called “othering” (Reny & Barreto, 2020). Not only does this breed xenophobic anti-migrant attitudes, but it also endangers the internal country’s communities of people who share the racial features but were born and raised in the U.S.
Asian Americans took the brunt of the reputation hit during the pandemic. Countless reports of people being verbally or physically abused, despite the absence of any disease symptoms, only prove the toxicity of the state’s policies and the population’s fears and prejudices (Huang & Liu, 2020). It affected even the medical field, where racism and xenophobia are supposed to be utterly neglected. The legal medical institutions comforted people, supporting the idea that xenophobia toward Asian people is a normal reaction to the coronavirus outbreak (Huang & Liu, 2020). Thus, the mass hysteria fostered the belief that COVID-19 is a race-specific disease.
Unfortunately, there are numerous precedents of such situations surrounding pandemics. With the Black Death outbreak in the 14th century, Jews were chosen as the blame targets, which provoked countless public violence (Reny & Barreto, 2020). Another example would be the aggression toward L.Q.B.T.Q. Americans during the A.I.D.S. epidemic in the second half of the 19th century (Reny & Barreto, 2020). Such tendency only proves that fear forces people to shut down critical thinking, making them vulnerable to manipulation.
In addition to the politics referring to COVID-19 as a “Chinese virus,” the mass media also played its role in framing public opinion. In the research conducted on media coverage by Reny & Barreto (2020), it is shown that the coronavirus was often paired with the mention of China. This framing leads to the corresponding mass behavior in terms of search results in Google. The search results for coronavirus and COVID-19 rose at the same speed as the “Chinese virus” and others of the same fashion (Reny & Barreto, 2020). This disturbing relation points out the significance of the state’s possible influence on its people’s opinions.
Thankfully, not every individual is affected by the COVID-19 hysteria. They share the knowledge that the disease spreads through direct contact, so it is a travel history, not the ethnicity behind the pandemic (Huang & Liu, 2020). On behalf of Chinese-American healthcare providers, they state it is their “duty to dissuade the current wave of fear-induced xenophobia” as they are “the most knowledgable and up to date with the science of epidemics” (Huang & Liu, 2020, p.1188). They hope to defeat rumors and deception surrounding this topic by spreading thoughtful knowledge and facts.
The COVID-19 outbreak resulted in a wave of discrimination toward Asian people in the U.S. due to the population’s overall anxiety and the government and mass media’s actions. Rationality and reasoning can fight these unfortunate pandemic byproducts over time since there is no better weapon against rumors than objective truth. As the pandemic lasts, xenophobia might still be present, not only in the U.S. but worldwide. Nevertheless, with the dissipation of the initial chaos and uncertainty, its level is slowly decreasing, which leaves hope for a better future.
References
Esses, V. M., & Hamilton, L. K. (2021). Xenophobia and anti-immigrant attitudes in the time of COVID-19. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 24(2), 253-259. Web.
Huang, J., & Liu, R. (2020). Xenophobia in America in the age of Coronavirus and beyond. Journal of vascular and interventional radiology: JVIR, 31(7), 1187–1188. Web.
Lejeune, C., Schmoll, C., & Thiollet, H. (2021). Migration, Urbanity and Cosmopolitanism in a Globalized World. Springer Nature.
Reny, T. T., & Barreto, M. A. (2020). Xenophobia in the time of pandemic: othering, anti-Asian attitudes, and COVID-19. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 10(2), 209-232. Web.