Racism targets Asian food, business during COVID-19 pandemic
As the coronavirus spread throughout the U.S., bigotry toward Asian Americans was not far behind, fueled by the news that COVID-19 first appeared in China.
Some initial evidence suggested the virus began in bats, which infected another animal that may have spread it to people at one of Wuhan, China’s “wet markets.” Such markets sell fresh meat, fish and vegetables, and some also sell live animals, such as chickens, that are butchered on site to ensure freshness for consumers.
The information quickly got distorted in the U.S., spurring racist memes on social media that portrayed Chinese people as bat eaters responsible for spreading the virus, and reviving century-old tropes about Asian food being dirty. Fueling the fire, President Donald Trump repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as “the China virus.”
“That old-school rhetoric that we eat bats, dogs and rats — that racism is still alive and well," said Clarence Kwan, creator of the anti-racist cooking zine “Chinese Protest Recipes.” The speed with which such false stereotypes resurfaced during the pandemic is "a reflection of how little progress we’ve made,” Kwan said.
In the Wuhan market where the virus is believed to possibly have originated, vendors also advertised wildlife for sale. Of the 33 samples from the market that tested positive for the coronavirus, officials say 31 were from the area where wildlife booths were concentrated. But wildlife and other “exotic” animals are not part of the modern mainstream Asian diet, either in Asian countries or in the U.S.
All of the misinformation has had serious consequences.
Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition of Asian American advocacy groups, issued a report in August stating that it had received more than 2,500 reports of hate and discrimination across the country since the group was founded in March,...
