For Asian Americans, There Are Two Pandemics: COVID-19 And Daily Bigotry

In early March, just before California put out a stay-at-home order, writer and educator Rachelle Cruzs parents were taking the BART train back to their home in Hayward in the San Francisco Bay area after a long day at work in the city.

The couple owns a small remittance business with a largely Filipino and migrant clientele who send a portion of their wages back to their home countries. To protect themselves from the growing threat of COVID-19 , the couple were wearing masks. It drew attention.

All of a sudden another passenger yelled at them, telling them to go back to their country, Cruz told HuffPost. The person called my Filipino mother a Chinese Coronavirus bitch and said that both of my parents are bearers of the virus.

They stopped taking the BART train last week, a day shy of the lockdown in San Francisco. When Cruz asked her mother if it was OK that she shared the story with HuffPost, she agreed with one request.

My mother wanted to clarify that this was the third racist incident shes personally experienced or witnessed on the train in the last few weeks, Cruz said. My parents are now working from home, where my mother misses her clients, but not the racists on the train.

Encounters like those experienced by Cruzs parents have become commonplace for Asian Americans in the wake of the current global public health emergency.

Because COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China, Asian Americans have been widely scapegoated, regardless of whether theyre Chinese or not. (Asian Americans Indonesians, Chinese, Koreans, Thai, Filipinos, and others arent a monolith, but for Americans with bigoted views, that hardly matters.)

Asian Americans of every descent are dealing not only with the virus itself, but verbal and physical violence from xenophobic neighbors. The choice to wear a mask or not is widely debated among friends and relatives do you wear one to protect yourself from the virus or does it draw unnecessary attention?

The encounters are not unlike what American Muslims and other Arabs and South Asians experienced after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

While President Trump finally called for Asian Americans to be protected on March 23, he failed to acknowledge the part hes played in their vilification. He continues to interchangeably call COVID-19 the Chinese virus, even as the World Health Organization warns against the shorthand . He even changed his own news conference script to reflect that (a viral photograph shows the word corona crossed out and replaced with Chinese in the presidents handwriting). At least one member of his staff reportedly joked that it was the Kung Flu.

Given all that, its not really surprising that a bipartisan pair of House lawmakers recently unveiled a resolution that blames China for causing a global pandemic and calls on the Chinese government to publicly declare that COVID-19 began there.

But words matter and have the potential to stoke an already racially charged American landscape.

A videotaped attack on an Asian man collecting recyclables in San Francisco in late February sparked outrage and gave a glimpse into what was to come.

On March 10, a Korean woman in midtown Manhattan was confronted on the street by somebody yelling, Where is your corona mask, you Asian bitch? before punching the woman and dislocating her jaw. A week later in Queens, New York, a father walking with his 10-year-old son was harassed by a person yelling, Where the fuck is your mask? You fucking Chinese before being struck over the head. And on March 14, a man was arrested after stabbing a Burmese man and his young son in a Sams Club in Midland, Texas. (Graphic photos on social media show the boy with a huge gash reaching from behind his ear all the way across to his eye.)

Stereotypes unfortunately [are] only intensified when President Trump uses terms like 'Chinese virus,' which indirectly suggest that Asians are to blame.
- Therese Mascardo, a psychologist who works within the Asian American community

There are no official numbers on hate crimes yet, but San Francisco State University found a 50% rise in the number of news articles related to the coronavirus and anti-Asian discrimination between Feb. 9 and March 7.

The anxiety triggered by stories like this has many Asian Americans glad to follow stay-at-home orders, given what could await them at their local supermarkets. In public, theyre fearful of what an errant cough or wearing a mask might do, said Therese Mascardo , a psychologist of Filipino descent who works within the Asian American community.

Asians are experiencing reluctance to seek medical care when they are ill, for fear that they will confirm stereotypes about Asians being more responsible for spreading the virus, she said.

This is called a stereotype threat, which refers to the risk of confirming a negative stereotype about ones social group.

This stereotype is unfortunately only intensified when President Trump uses terms like Chinese virus, which indirectly suggest that Asians are to blame, Mascardo said.

The H1N1 swine flu pandemic that infected up to 1.4 billion people and killed up to 575,000 originated in factory farmed pigs in the United States. Yet nobody ever calls it the American Pig Flu. Lets stop calling the coronavirus the Chinese Virus. Were all in this together.

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The H1N1 swine flu pandemic that infected up to 1.4 billion people and killed up to 575,000 originated in factory farmed pigs in the United States. Yet nobody ever calls it the American Pig Flu. Lets stop calling the coronavirus the Chinese Virus. Were all in this together.
Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) March 22, 2020

Vivian Shaw , a post-doctorate sociologist at Harvard University, is collecting stories documenting xenophobia and racism related to coronavirus. Looking at the uptick of stories shes received, she, too, believes Trumps rhetoric is fueling these racially charged encounters.

She also believes its a highly calculated move on the presidents part.

Trumps current stoking of xenophobic populism is his way of signaling that the lives of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are useful to the U.S. insofar as they provide a way for the administration to sidestep its utter mishandling of this disaster, she said.

The violent incidents against Asian Americans make headlines, but theres also heavy-handed microaggressions (sideways glances in the market, rushing out of an elevator when a person of Asian descent gets in) and verbal abuse to contend with. In interviews over the past week, readers told HuffPost that such experiences have become an everyday part of life.

On March 11, Filipinx poet Kay Ulanday Barrett, was taking a flight home from Denver, CO to Newark, NJ. Barrett, whos disabled and often wears a mask due to asthma, sat down early for pre-boarding given their disability.

While getting on the plane, a few white people looked at me with obvious disgust. There were eye rolls and exasperated Ughs, Barrett told HuffPost. One person even looked my way and called me gross.

It was degrading, the writer said. The comments I used to get about wearing a mask were ones of curiosity but in these cases, white people felt completely OK commenting on a total stranger. It was like my humanity or feelings didnt matter.