Prejudice Plays Part in COVID-19 Pandemic
POTUS calls it ‘Chinese Virus’, causes further divide among people
April 16, 2020
Upon viewing many videos and articles, I realized that Coronavirus affects far more than we originally believed it to: it divides people.
These sources introduced the effect that the virus holds on Asian-Americans and people of Asian descent in general. Prejudice in the form of bigotry affects them much more widely now, with people believing that the virus remains rooted in anyone of Asian descent. The sources also revealed the racism that Asian Americans experienced as a child due to their descent and displayed the way in which COVID-19 heightened this.
It all starts with connotation, and the connotation that the term “Chinese Virus” that President Donald Trump continues to use in his addresses to the public holds remains divisive. The term becomes a scapegoat for racism solely because of the lack of knowledge people hold for different Asian cultures and heritages. It becomes an umbrella term that labels all Asian people as one general thing: sickly, misfortuned and the cause of the worldwide problem. This gross generalization remains unproductive. Instead, people need to call it the scientific name: COVID-19, or Coronavirus. Without this, people learn to believe that Asian people caused this problem and that they remain the reason for why this virus transmitted and became a global pandemic. Already, while President Trump called it the “Chinese Virus”, people experienced hate crimes just for the way in which they looked and to make people feel ashamed of their race like this remains criminal.
Furthering this, everything surrounding the origin of the virus still remains elusive. Instead of the story that originated, saying that someone ate a bat in Wuhan, China and contracted the Coronavirus, researchers contrasted this by showing that an intermediate host remains likely, solely because pre-existing documented cases that show human-to-bat contact sparked sickness remain absent.
So, for this to become some sort of insult toward Asian societies and their different cultural cuisine interests, remains divisive. Instead, just like Americans eat veal or livestock in general, Asians hold a contrasting cuisine. They feel that American cuisine differs from their own, but they keep from rubbing it in the face of Americans and say that their cuisine caused diseases.
Instead of this divisive culture people already delved into, people need to remain strong together and realize that division only pushes the global community further from the answers. Despite the inclination human nature holds to find one person or group of persons responsible, we need to avoid that and become unified in finding solutions to the problems we face. With all of this and so much at stake, one lesson needs to remain: be kind and learn the true facts.