The racism that has spread as a result of the corona virus is quite stunning to me personally. Sure, the virus was first discovered in China, but that does not mean that the virus is “Chinese”, as some people would like to put it. There has been a big push in America to label this virus as something foreign, or alien when that is simply not the case, it is a virus, it has no national allegiances. A great majority if not all of the people trying to brand this the “Chinese” corona virus are on the right side of the aisle politically, most notable among those is obviously President Trump. Recently President Trump did a press conference in which he was directly asked why he called Covid-19 the “Chinese” corona virus and he flatly answered because it “came from China”. Calling this virus the “Chinese” or “foreign” corona virus only seeks to deflect the attention away from the job that the administration has done to mitigate the outbreak, and it could seriously stoke racist tensions among a public that is already in panic due to the virus. I fear that it could have a very negative impact on the well being of Asian Americans in this country.
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