Racism during COVID-19
Some researchers point out that this phenomenon can even be regarded as a “double pandemic” - the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a lift in racial discrimination against non-citizerns and people of colour, especially people of Asian descent. In the United States, this phenomenon also exists, and may have been burst out in a more extreme way than other countries around the world, considering the history of the United States and itself as a huge immigration nation.
The statistic shows that only in two months, by the late April in 2020, the number of reports of incidents of racism received by STOP AAPI HATE – a reporting center created by a coalition of Asian-American groups – has reached over 1,500. Anti-immigrant, white supremacist, ultra-nationalist, anti-semitic, and xenophobic conspiracy theories have all been sprouted in such “rich” soil.
Moreover, In some instances, the government leaders and senior officials have even directly or indirectly encouraged racism, xenophobia, and hate crimes through their anti-Chinese rhetoric. For example, the former US President Donald Trump’s use of the term “Chinese virus”, the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s use of “Wuhan virus” both have influenced how the general public implicitly view the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, the policy changes on immigration and border controls in these two years also can reflect the government’s implicit attitude.
Dated back to the history of Asian immigration in the 19th century, The Page Act of 1875, which provided a blueprint for exclusion, and then The Chinese Exclusion Act were both put forward with its goal of protecting the “Nation”. In the second chapter of Entry Denied: controlling sexuality at the border, the author offered a detailed historical background, “(at that time) Laws established, not to protect Chinese girls and women, but to preserve the moral and racial purity of white men, white families, and a nation constructed as white”. This was what the “Nation” meant, given its authority by the laws - “a nation constructed as white - which finally led to the Immigration Act of 1882, also called Chinese Exclusion Act.
The attorney General of the time, Frank Pixley, argued that Chinese men interfered with the labor market by taking away the employment opportunities which should be occupied by white people; and Chinese women were responsible for disease and immoral behavior among white men. His testimony also accused Chinese prostitutes of spreading leprosy, syphilis, and 9/10 of venereal disease in the city.
The arrival of Chinese people at that time also coincided with the development of germ theory in the biological sphere. However, losing its original context and further filtered through the lens of racism and xenophobia, people at that time began to use the germ theory to suggest that different racial groups could carry distinct germs to which they were immune, but others were not. This germ theory of disease also was used to justify why an “inferior” racial group might be more likely to survive in an environment that the vulnerable “superior” one, regarding the natural laws of social Darwinism.
Back to the COVID-19 pandemic nowadays, this Germ Theory of Disease still unfortunately exists in this society. One thing that should always be remembered by us is that the meaning of a world-wide natural disease is never possible to only stay on a biological level - i.e. it will inevitably be politicized and weaponized.