Xenophobia in the Age of COVID-19

ARCHIVAL (ABC, 2020):
NEWS REPORT: An Asian American minding his own business as a total stranger berates him before spraying him with Febreze.

NARRATION: As fear spreads about the coronavirus, reports of physical and verbal attacks against Asian and Chinese Americans are rising as well.

ARCHIVAL (CNN, 2020):
NEWS REPORT: The person who recorded this says before the camera started rolling, the man had hit the woman on the head, used expletives and called her diseased. On the LA subway line, this man was ranting.
MAN: Every disease has come from China, everything comes from China.

NARRATION: There is a long history of targeting immigrant communities during disease outbreaks, including in 1900, when the bubonic plague hit North America for the first time.

San Francisco was hard hit by the disease which was carried by rats. But officials quarantined only one area – Chinatown – scapegoating the immigrant population there for starting the outbreak.

After two weeks, a court lifted the quarantine saying that the officials had imposed it with an “evil eye and unequal hand.”

ARCHIVAL (WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION, 2020):
DR. TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS (WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION DIRECTOR): The pandemic is accelerating…

NARRATION: Today, with coronavirus, the World Health Organization is cautioning that terms like “Chinese Virus” unfairly stigmatize Asian Americans. And the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has issued guidelines clarifying that people of Asian descent are not at greater risk of spreading COVID-19 than other Americans.

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