WARNING: this article contains strong language.
Updated April 29, 2020.
THE INCIDENT
We have been on a strict lockdown in Colombia, where I live, so I only leave to buy groceries or medicine.
The other day, I was walking back home from the store, carrying two large grocery bags, when a man half a block ahead of me looked back and yelled something indistinguishable. He was visibly angry and looked like he was going to attack someone. I thought that he had gotten into a fight with someone behind me, and not wanting to get into the middle of it, I crossed the street. As I caught up to where he was standing and walked past him from the other side of the road, he pointed at me and continuously yelled: “HIJA DE PUTA! HIJA DE PUTA! HIJA DE PUTA!” (“MOTHERFUCKER! MOTHERFUCKER! MOTHERFUCKER!”) I looked around and saw a few other people around me, but after a while, it sunk in that he was pointing and yelling at me. When I finally grasped what was happening, I just got away as fast as I could. This continued on for what seemed like an eternity until I was finally out of earshot.
After the initial shock, I sobbed all the way home, not wanting to touch my face, but feeling suffocated by the mask I was wearing.
No one around me had reacted at all. They just went about their normal business and turned away when I looked in their directions. I thought it might be for the Colombian mentality that you shouldn’t get involved with other people’s business—no seas sapo. But I couldn’t help but wonder if they felt this way about me, too.
I thought back to when I was in the grocery store. I remembered being at the cashier and seeing someone glaring at me so uncomfortably that I walked to the back of the store until he left. I wondered if it might be the same man.
I believed the incident was related to my race (I am ethnically Vietnamese), and confided in a few people afterward.
But was he mentally unstable? they ask. Perhaps, but he looked sane to me. He looked like he was working—doing deliveries on a bicycle. But maybe the encounter wasn’t related to your race, some of them said. Maybe you had done something else to offend him, they said. Because racism just doesn’t exist here. It’s not like in the US. People are just getting crazier these days anyway, they said.
I thought long and hard about it, but couldn’t think of any other reason I could have offended this stranger—other than for my appearance.
BACKGROUND
Three weeks ago, I wrote about a different incident I encountered in How It Feels to Be a Problem that I also believe was related to my race. I received similar responses then—you’re making something out of nothing. Maybe you’re just paranoid. Maybe I am. But what I do know is this: it is the first time I have experienced incidents like these in the 3.5 years I’ve lived in Colombia, and they have both occurred since COVID-19 arrived in the country.
I know that racism and violence against Afro-Colombians and indigenous people has long existed and been ignored in this country. There is also a lot of anti-immigration sentiment in Colombia. Most of it is directed at Venezuelans, and Asians are right behind them, according to this poll taken in April of 2020. Since publishing this article, several Asian friends in Colombia have reached out to share with me similar encounters and attacks they’ve experienced.
I know that xenophobia and anti-Asian racism is rising around the world.
I also know that Stop AAPI Hate was created specifically in response to the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans and received over 1,100 incident reports in just the first two weeks. Furthermore, the FBI warns that “hate crime incidents against Asian Americans likely will surge across the United States, due to the spread of coronavirus disease … endangering Asian American communities.”
During these times, the Asian community is being hit with another crisis in addition to the others that we are all experiencing due to the virus. It is a deeper and more dangerous form of racism, and it takes shape in verbal, psychological, and physical attacks.
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SAFETY CONCERNS
A Chinese friend in New York has been warned by her mother-in-law to not speak Chinese in public and to leave the house without a mask. While she understands that this may put herself and others at greater risk, she is more afraid of the risk of a discriminatory attack, like this one:
Chinese woman gets attacked for wearing a mask in nyc.
Or this one: an Asian American woman was attacked with acid while taking out the trash. She has second-degree burns on her face, hands, and body.
Asian friends around the world have been sharing stories of discrimination and of rising fears, and some will no longer leave their houses without mace or pepper spray. Gun sales have surged in some Asian communities as people react to the rise in hate crimes and are looking for ways to defend themselves. Dozens of stories about discrimination against Asians from around the world are posted daily in Facebook groups like this one.
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RACISM AGAINST ASIANS DIDN’T APPEAR OVERNIGHT—MAYBE YOU JUST DIDN’T SEE IT.
Because of coronavirus, the world is changing rapidly in ways we have never seen — with the economy, healthcare systems, our personal philosophies, and much more.
But many individuals’ mindsets about diversity and race are not changing.
Video: Asians facing discrimination, violence amid coronavirus outbreak
Though some people may not have noticed discrimination against Asians before, it has existed for centuries. And the idea of the model minority is just a perception—but a harmful one.
I am Asian American. I was born and raised in Iowa in a community that was 99% white and homogeneous in many ways. I’ve mostly lived in places where I have been seen as an outsider, including my hometown in Iowa, and Bogotá, where I live today. Throughout my life, most of the racism I’ve experienced has been in the form of ignorant comments and jokes related to my ethnicity or culture, and the perception that I represent the model minority. Though, I have also experienced some verbal attacks related to my race. Generally when I experience microaggressions or racism, I can let myself feel the pain, anger, or annoyance in these moments and just walk away.
But this time it’s different. People are angry about the virus and all the uncertainty it brings, and it is easier to point the finger at a group of people than it is to try to understand something they can’t see or resolve. The issue gets worse when people in positions of influence condone, or even encourage, this behavior. It may make these people feel powerful, or perhaps it deflects the blame from them for their own mishandling of crises. But there is a big price to to be paid for it. It gives people the perceived right to take out that anger on innocent people who look like me.
I love Colombia and the life I have built here, but I am afraid of how life will look when Bogotá opens up again. I might be ostracized, or I might lose work. What I am most afraid of, though, is that I might be physically attacked and that no one will stand up to defend me when it happens.
HOW MUCH DO WORDS MATTER?
For those of you who don’t believe it’s harmful to refer to COVID-19 with an ethnic name, Cynthia Choi, co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, states in an interview with PBS NewsHour: “We think that [President Trump’s] insistence in the past in using or referencing the Chinese virus or other administration officials referring to it as the Wuhan virus certainly exacerbates the situation. And we know from our firsthand accounts on this tracker (Stop AAPI Hate) that we have individuals who are mimicking the president’s words, parroting them, I should say, and that they’re also individuals who’ve reported their interactions of defending the president’s words.”
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Words matter to your friends who are people of color, too. Please. Don’t tell me you don’t see color. If you can see, then you can see the color of my skin. By saying that you don’t see color, you diminish my experiences related to it, and in this case, the discrimination and prejudices I might face because of it. See and recognize that people with my skin color are facing a new and difficult challenge due to coronavirus.
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Here’s the thing about racism: like a virus, it mutates and develops into different strains, finding new victims or new ways to attack the old ones.
Referring to COVID-19 as a virus that has an ethnicity has developed a new strain of racism; it has emboldened people in their racism. It empowers people who were already racist against Asians to act out on those feelings in a harmful way.
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SO WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP?
First, consider your actions. Think about the people you influence — your children, siblings, partners, friends, nieces and nephews, students, colleagues, employees, tenants, constituents — what conscious or unconscious messages are you showing or teaching them about their identities? Are you passively allowing aggressions to happen around you? Or are you being standing up for people who are more vulnerable when you see discrimination happening?
Next: educate yourself and others about coronavirus-related racism. Speak up. Immediately take action when you see incidents happening. Record and report incidents so that we can take aggressors off our streets and push policymakers to see this data, step up, and take action in a serious manner.
Here are several ways you can report incidents:
- Speak to your local police.
- If you are in the US, you can report anti-Asian incidents here and additionally submit a tip to the FBI here or by calling an FBI field office.
- If you are in Australia, you can report incidents here.
- If you are in the UK, you can report incidents here.
If you would like to add other education or country-specific reporting resources, please add them in the comments section.
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Read my first article about racism against Asians related to COVID-19 here.
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Previously published on “Equality Includes You”, a Medium publication.
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Photo credit: Free-Photos from Pixabay