Xenophobia, the Other Virus We Should Be Worried About

Chinatown, San Francisco. Photo courtesy of Ed Schipul.

Just last month in Australia, a group of bystanders refused to perform CPR on a Chinese man for fear of being infected with coronavirus. In Los Angeles, flyers with fake World Health Organization seals urged neighbors to stay away from Asian-American businesses. Sadly, Columbia is no exception to this. Over the past few weeks, students of East Asian descent have experienced an increase in racial bias and attacks, including a hostile message stating “Wuhan Virus Isolation Area,” which was written in Chinese and left in Butler Library. In the face of this uncertainty, the fear of contagion has trumped any responsibility to give accurate medical information and empathy.

These harsh reactions to coronavirus are neither new nor specific to the virus itself—in fact, there is a long history of pinning contamination and illness on marginalized communities. Communities affected by cholera during the 19th century accused Irish immigrants of spreading the disease, and consequently, these immigrants were quarantined, secretly massacred, and buried in mass graves. In the 1980s, HIV was determined to be the “gay plague,” which inaccurately oversimplified the disease to be one that only gay men were victim to and contributed to worsening homophobia. 

The depiction of diseased Chinese-Americans contributed significantly to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited immigration to the United States from China between 1882-1943. During this time, Chinese-Americans were portrayed as filthy, immoral, threats to the white laborer, as a system of contract labor allowed American employees to pay Chinese immigrants very low wages. This image justified a wave of hatred and violence against Asian communities that remains rampant today. Last week, a man on the Los Angeles subway berated an Asian woman, stating: “Every disease has ever came from China, homie. Everything comes from China because they’re f****** disgusting.” Another similar incident occurred in New York City, where a man began physically attacking an Asian woman while calling her a “diseased b****.” Chinese restaurants in New York City are also suffering from these stereotypes, with some reporting a 70% to 80% decrease in business, even though coronavirus has not reached New York state yet.

A Picture for Employers (1878). Archived by the Library of Congress.

Xenophobia of this kind has especially been distilled and communicated to us recently through President Trump and right-leaning news organizations, who often depict foreigners as the sole carriers of disease and are quick to use issues of public concern to justify xenophobia. In a statement during his campaign trail, Trump declared that “tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border,” even though numerous studies have debunked the myth that migrant “caravans” bring unwanted diseases to new countries, and tweeted “KEEP THEM OUT OF HERE!” in response to evacuating an American medic during the Ebola outbreak in 2014. 

Dangerous nationalism and misinformation aren’t just being spread by the right-wing government--the media is doing it too. They use language such as “viral invasion” to describe coronavirus, perpetuating panic and hatred against immigrants of East Asian descent. The rhetoric surrounding coronavirus has become so divisive and dangerous that health experts advised the World Health Organization to officially name the disease, first labeled as the “Wuhan” virus, in order to limit “further stigmatization of Chinese people due to disparaging unofficial titles used by news outlets and social media.” Even the initial name of the disease was meant to emphasize its foreignness. We have seen this before in the “Ebola” virus, named after a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the “Spanish” flu, which did not actually originate in Spain.

The xenophobic framing of coronavirus builds into the systemic exclusion of Asians from immigration and aid from Western countries in times of crisis. Last month, the Australian government announced plans to quarantine evacuees from Wuhan in immigration detention centers. The United States imposed temporary bans on the entry of foreign nationals arriving within 14 days of visiting China, an act which will have devastating effects on the economy. These actions are dangerously reminiscent of the bans on Chinese immigration during the Exclusion Era. During this dark period, Asian immigrants, many of whom came to the United States through Angel Island, faced quarantine and extensive examinations without consent or visible symptoms. Even when public health experts such as Tedros Adhanom, director of the World Health Organisation, warned that travel bans are ineffective in controlling the spread of disease, world leaders and nationalists choose to disregard scientific research in favor of using national security to justify blatant hatred and lack of empathy towards suffering minority communities.

Natural crises such as coronavirus, which has taken over 1,770 lives and infected 70,000 in China, should not be manipulated to serve political agendas advancing bias and intolerance. If we perpetuate xenophobia and “yellow peril,” we will be repeating the violence and fear that marked the Exclusion Era. During this time of mourning and distress, individuals affected by coronavirus need allyship from their political leaders, local communities, and classmates. We need unbiased research on how to protect against infection and how to treat individuals suffering from coronavirus; what we do not need is more inhumane excuses for abandoning communities that require our aid. 

Annie Tan is a staff writer at CPR and a first-year in Columbia College studying Political Science. She is from New York City and loves to explore different cuisines.