COVID & COVID Racism

Masks, social distancing, six/three feet apart, quarantine, and isolating. This is a new life. I would have never thought that the world we would be living in would come down, to wearing a different colored mask every day, quarantining from our families, not standing less than three feet away from someone. I said it’s a new life in the beginning but to be fair it’s not new anymore this became something everyone got used to very quickly once March of 2020 came along. It’s honestly quite sad that I can’t remember how it used to be without masks. How I can’t remember what some people in my classes’ noses and mouths look like because I’ve never seen them without masks. It’s crazy that when March of 2020 came along, I didn’t see my grandma, aunts, or uncles for over a year till the vaccination came along. It’s crazy to me and probably most of the world out there.  

There was an article we read during a class called, “On Virality, Corona or Otherwise.” It talked about how the author Travis Chi Wing Lau was given a dirty look in an elevator because he cleared his throat while in there. He tweeted about his experience on Twitter and went viral overnight, but not in a good way. In just a few hours while he was sleeping, he was receiving backlash, hate comments, and comments that were straight-up telling him that they wish he would contract coronavirus. Deep down after reading this story I think it might have little to do with COVID (COVID is still a part of why the dirty look happened) but more so COVID racism in a way because he was Asian. 

Ever since COVID first started there have been stories going around about how people in China eat bats and that’s how COVID first originated. Then someone who was in China brought it to the United States when they came back then so on and so forth it went around the whole world because of how contagious it was. I never believed that the whole China rumor was true, honestly to me the people who believed it were racists in a way. The people who believed this would go around calling it the “China Disease” not realizing how racist it is and how it might hurt people’s feelings around them. This might be the reason that Travis got a dirty look in the elevator. Some of it might be because he cleared his throat, but another big reason might be how COVID racism is a thing and people act on it. I bet if it was anyone else that was another ethnicity that person in the elevator wouldn’t have given that dirty look. They would have just said something to themselves in their mind because to me if someone has their mask on it’s okay because their cough or sneeze is covered in a way so if something was to bother me, I will just say it to myself in my mind. Back to my point of Travis getting a dirty look. In my opinion, he had his mask on, was just taking the elevator as any other human being would do, and had to clear his throat. There was no other reason for the cough, he wasn’t sick in any way, actually, he was perfectly healthy. To me, Travis did absolutely nothing wrong, nothing to harm people around him, and nothing to infect people around him so there shouldn’t have been any reason for all the hate he got.  

This relates back to campus in a way because we have been getting a lot of hate crimes these past few weeks. It’s sickening and saddening that our campus has come to this. Those people go out wanting to enjoy themselves and have fun, but they have to always be careful in case someone has something to say, or someone wants to pick a fight. Imagine if this was to happen during the day when people had their masks on. People walk around with their masks on, sit in class, hang out with friends, etc… There’s no reason for someone to go up to someone and say something or give someone a dirty look because they have their masks down when they are able to if they cough while in class or sneeze but it’s something that we’ve gotten used to. We’ve gotten used to not going to class when we have allergies because we are afraid we’ll get kicked out of class or another peer will say something. It’s come to COVID racism in the whole world, that’s what our world has come to not just for Asian Americans but for everyone. Asian Americans do get the brunt of it because of the rumor people created and I hope someday soon it stops because they don’t deserve it.