As the COVID19 disease spreads, so does the fear and anxiety of people afraid of getting this horrible sickness. Frightening statistics flash on TV screens day after day causing people to panic buy, hoard and yes, also blame Asians for this virus. It is scary to see nations on lockdown, empty grocery shelves, high unemployment as jobs disappear, yes, and it is easy to blame Asians for the virus.
When calamity strikes, people retreat to their basest instincts of tribalism, we against them. People become ultra conservative and retreat back to their own families and they fear what is different from them. Retreating back to what's familiar breeds safety--it is human nature to want to retreat to what is familiar and associate that familiarity with safety--the safety of the family, the safety of one's hometown, the safety of one's childhood before you ventured out into the world with all its dangers and all its differences.
Asians have always been associated with the exotic, with the Other, with differences. The fact that this virus originated in China just adds to the exoticism, the Otherness and the sense of difference when a non-Asian encounters an Asian on the street. In the beginning, many media outlets called COVID19 'the Chinese virus,', 'the Wuhan virus' and then they showed pictures of frightened Chinese people in masks or sick Chinese people crowded into makeshift hospitals just heightened the fear of this virus.
Pretty soon, any Asian American walking down the street is now blamed for this virus. When people are scared, they don't think rationally. They think with fear and that's what's dangerous. Associating this virus with an ethnic group puts Asian Americans in danger from hate crimes and from fearful people who feel their world and their lives are not only upended, but now put in danger. When people feel threatened, they become dangerous just like the saying, 'a lion is most dangerous when it is wounded'.
Many Asians are afraid to wear a mask to protect themselves from COVID19 on the street because the mask accentuates the Otherness of the Asian face and frightens people even more just like when a African American male walks into a department store, non-African Americans will instinctively walk away from him. Now, when I walk down the street, I get dirty looks and I no longer feel safe going to my own grocery store alone.
When I went to get an envelope from a nearby store when I was wearing my mask, the lady did not let me into the store for fear that I would spread the virus. I saw the look of naked fear on her face as she looked at a masked Asian (me). When my white friend went to that same store with her mask on, that store lady let her in right away.
I then just seek refuge in my house because that's where I feel the most safe. I not only have to contend with the fear of contagion, but as an Asian American, I have to deal with the fear of the hatred of racism. It is not safe to be Asian American during the COVID19 pandemic.
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