“If this virus is going to kill me I want to die on a vacation in Italy”
As the deadly coronavirus makes its mark all round the globe, affecting most countries and exhausting healthcare systems, it’s beginning to raise some important questions.
The disease was first identified in late December last year when China alerted the World Health Organisation (WHO) of cases of an unknown virus. As health experts worked to identify the virus the number of cases grew in East Asia and began to rip through Europe and affect us closer to home.
When the virus first hit Europe, Italy was one of the first to drastically suffer. It then became a common joke on social media within millennials and Gen Z saying they are going to take advantage of the cheap plane fares for a spring getaway trip to Europe and going to Italy.
By mid-March, Italy’s toll had overtaken China’s with their deadliest day being on 28 March with 971 deaths, and Spain’s on 3 April with 950 fatalities, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. These soaring statistics have reportedly dropped since their peak on these dates. With these fatalities came mutual support from the rest of the world and on all social media platforms we saw people sending their encouragement and prayers to Italy, followed with #WeStandWithItaly trending on Twitter. No longer was the threat of the virus a million miles away for the Western world. No longer did we make a joke out of the affected countries’ cultures. No longer were we pinning blame onto the affected countries. We quickly got rid of the ‘not affecting us so why should we care’ attitude and started to ask what we could do to help and some countries began donating to the WHO.
Now the internet is being flooded with posts and articles saying we need to stand with Italy and learn from their mistakes with lax measures. Not that this isn’t the right attitude, that’s not what I’m saying – but where was this energy and enthusiasm when many Asian countries needed it when they were the first to be affected?
In the early days of the coronavirus threat, the general attitudes towards the Chinese community were disgraceful. Previous months have seen a rise in racist incidents and comments directed toward Asian people tied to fears of coronavirus. Online they were made a target for people to laugh at and be the punchline of many racist jokes.
But these attitudes can’t really come as a surprise when the President of the United States called the coronavirus the ‘Chinese virus’ during a news conference months after it had been given an official name, defending himself saying, “It comes from China, that’s why.” Not only did this statement increase tensions between countries but also didn’t shy away from encouraging xenophobia and ignorism.
Meanwhile, over here in the UK, we are none the wiser. Normally for the Chinese community in the UK, a study found that they are the community least likely to not report incidents of racially motivated attacks because of a significant lack of confidence in the police. However, in 2017 it was discovered to be the group with the country’s highest level of racial harassment in a report by the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex. This ignorance and misinformation has caused a rapid increase in racist and xenophobic attacks against anyone in Britain who looks East Asian. These catastrophic effects of this virus for Asians living here range from verbal to physical to financial.
A 23-year-old Singapore man who was studying at the University College London has spoken out about the racism linked to the coronavirus. After suffering facial injuries in a ‘racially aggravated assault’, he recalls his attackers shouting at him saying, “I don’t want your coronavirus in my country”. These consequences of the virus’ threat shows that combined with the increased media attention and our underlying prejudices have only exacerbated and worsened the situation.
With all this going on in our country for our Asian community, Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, has failed to address the rise in racist attacks in his several TV appearances and statements. How, as a nation, are we meant to improve from this if we don’t confront the current surge in discrimination? This leaves us unable to tackle this serious yet hidden and unreported problem within British society if our own leader dismisses such a crisis, especially for the UK’s Chinese population.
Since many of us have held a whole race responsible for this disease and have exposed our preconceptions towards Chinese people or at least anyone who looks Chinese. Our underlying prejudices exposed by the coronavirus have come from a long history of demonising Chinese people and accepting the stereotypes of Asians being submissive and non-aggressive.
The contradicting standpoints of people’s willingness to purchase food from Italian establishments compared to our reluctance towards Asian establishments in recent months shows our inherited racism and bigotry as it’ll be the ‘little men’ who suffer. In this day and age this blatant racism is starting to go unnoticed – even in times of a global crisis when all we need is to stand in unity. We need to stick together just now as this virus doesn’t know wealth, age or race.
By MEREDITH RAE
