As I write this the novel Coronavirus has claimed 1115 lives, and over 45,000 confirmed cases have been reported from all over the world.
Coronavirus now induces the same fear and dread, like a ticking time bomb.
#CoronavirusOutbreak now tops Twitter’s trending topics.
This has led to sensationalized videos of East Asian people eating live rats, bats and frogs populating social media feed alongside images of long queues and conflict in Chinese hospitals.
Echoing the public discourse of recent Ebola virus outbreaks in West Africa, Nippa virus outbreak in Kerala a sense of chaos, fear and even disgust permeates every discussion on coronavirus.
Similar to how people asked ‘Why are all the confirmed cases of Coronavirus from Kerala alone?’ when it was reported that the first confirmed case of coronavirus was from Kerala, racism is another virus that’s spreading.
Harmful Stereotypes And Racism Are Spreading Around The Coronavirus
The New York Times reported that in Japan, the hashtag #ChineseDon’tComeToJapan has been trending on Twitter.
In Singapore, a petition calling for the government to ban Chinese nationals from entering the country has been signed by tens of thousands of residents.
In Hong Kong, South Korea and Vietnam, businesses have posted signs saying that mainland Chinese customers are not welcome.
In France, a front-page headline in a regional newspaper warned of a ‘Yellow Alert’ next to an image of a Chinese woman wearing a face mask.
ð«ð· Le Courrier Picard a présenté ses excuses pour le titre de sa Une dimanche « Alerte jaune » et pour le titre de l’éditorial « Péril Jaune » : « Il était à prendre au sens colorimétrique à savoir dans une gradation du jaune au rouge » https://t.co/JOF7NypGyD pic.twitter.com/6WG1eADBLQ
â Gilles Klein (@GillesKLEIN) January 28, 2020
Another headline in the same paper read ‘New Yellow Peril?’ above an article about the ongoing Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.
‘Alerte Jaune’, ‘nouveau péril jaune’ sérieusement ?#coronavirus #courrierpicard pic.twitter.com/R96AGgdKQv
â Mr. Propagande (@MrPropagande) January 26, 2020
‘Yellow Peril’ was an old racist ideology that targeted East Asians in Western countries. The phrase embodies the worst of anti-Asian fears and stereotypes, which have plagued immigrant communities since the first waves of Chinese immigration to the United States began in the 19th century.
In a suburb of Toronto, parents demanded that a school district keep children of a family that had recently returned from China out of classes for 17 days.
Harvey Norman, Australia’s leading retailer, is being criticised for a sign out the front of one store boasting that its mattresses are free from coronavirus because they’re made in Australia.
Despite no publicly recorded cases of someone catching the deadly virus after purchasing a brand new mattress, Harvey Norman Albury erected a sign this morning with the message ‘No Coronavirus in our mattresses as ours are Australian made!’.
Not helping @HarveyNormanAU pic.twitter.com/D1MtPmFiGs
â Michael Ryan (@theprovenance) February 8, 2020
Already, movements on social media have sprung up to counter racist stereotyping. For example, in France the hashtag #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus, meaning ‘I am not a virus’ is widely being used.
Let’s not use Corona virus pandemic as an excuse to hurl racist comments on Chinese or mistreat them.(Patient suffering from disease is a human, not an infection) #Jenesuispasunvirus (‘I am not a virus’) pic.twitter.com/x67EBHF87T
â Shram (@shramindia) February 8, 2020
University of California, Berkeley has faced backlash over a now-deleted Instagram post listing xenophobia along with other possible reactions to the virus spread.
‘Please recognize that experiencing any of these can be normal reactions and that over the next few days or weeks you may experience periods of⦠Xenophobia: fears about interacting with those who might be from Asia and guilt about these feelings,’ the post by the University Health Services’ Tang Center says.
Confused and honestly very angry about this Instagram post from an official @UCBerkeley Instagram account.When is xenophobia ever a ‘normal reaction’? pic.twitter.com/hH4AgQKluM
â Adrienne Shih (@adrienneshih) January 30, 2020
The New Coronavirus Is Not An Excuse To Be Racist
The hysteria surrounding the spread of coronavirus has exposed deep-seated xenophobia, and with it, a symptom of its own has surfaced: hostility toward East Asian people.
Historically, infectious disease has generated racist discourse that blames victim populations for the perceived threat, justifying political responses that threatened human rights.
The Chinese and by extension Asians have served as scapegoats for infectious disease outbreaks and sanitation failures in Western countries.
For example, between 1894 to 1911, countless newspapers depicted Chinese Americans eating rats and lodging in unsanitary, overcrowded spaces during the Third Plague Pandemic. In Honolulu, state officials…
