Growing up I never saw a face like mine or my family’s in the media. Although the UK, through its status as the metropolitan core to the British Empire, is a very diverse place, media has never reflected this reality. In particular, British East Asians and their stories and issues have been ignored.
This is despite the fact that the first British East Asian arrived on UK shores in the late 1700s. Following this, the demographic has grown to be the third-largest and fastest-growing in the UK. Although there have been recent improvements in terms of representation, look to any recent mainstream British media and you’ll be hard-pressed to find us.
That is until now. Click on any newspaper article, report or even UK government-backed advertisements and it’s likely you’ll see our faces. Yet now we are continually shown alongside headlines concerning the pandemic and coronavirus. This is despite the fact that the pandemic media item in question has nothing to do with East Asian bodies.
Such depiction of us serves to perpetuate the idea that East Asian people are inherently carriers of the virus. Such a link to a virus that has killed many lives results in hate crimes, discrimination and assaults. This has resulted in hate crimes towards East Asians increasing by 21% during the crisis in the UK. Whilst it is widely inferred that COVID-19 was first sighted in Wuhan, there has been recent evidence to suggest that it was found in the water in Barcelona in March 2019. Therefore, such an association with COVID-19 is not only outright racist but also factually wrong.
Moreover, it seems that even publications known for their progressive views are failing us as British-born Chinese podcaster and influencer agency founder Viv Yau discovered. For example, after noticing how The Guardian used an image of East Asians to discuss the pandemic Yau wrote to the publication. Yet she received a response saying that publishing a photo of someone from a particular background is not discriminatory.
This not only gaslights Yau for pointing out evidence of racial stereotypes but also fails to see itself within a structured narrative of the pandemic that has centred East Asians as its key protagonists. Ever since that fateful month in February when the virus started spreading in America and Europe, discourse and imagery surrounding the pandemic have centred on East Asian faces.
It is a discourse that both sides of the political spectrum share. For example, it can be seen in Fox News’s coverage of the virus as the “China threat“. Conversely, in the usually progressive Der Spiegel magazine’s “Made in China” February cover recruited an East Asian person to act as the face of the pandemic. Such association with a virus dehumanised Asian bodies and may have led to assaults and hate crimes that occurred in February. And here I am, again, writing about the same thing five months later as the Guardian adorns their coronavirus coverages with Asian faces once again.
As people who have suffered discrimination during the pandemic, East Asians in the West are well placed to inform you of how you may be unwittingly participating in racist narratives. The fact that this Guardian editor reacted in the way he did, speaks volumes as to how much they truly value anti-racism.
We didn’t create this. The majority-white Media did and it’s their job to help unravel the narratives that have been forced on Asian bodies in the west. Next time you see a picture of East Asians used alongside corona coverage, stop and take a look. Acknowledge how harmful the narrative that this imagery propels might be for East Asians in the West.
We didn’t ask for this kind of representation. It was unwittingly thrown onto us. And we need your voice, along with ours, to help quell this pandemic of racism that was unleashed onto us.
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This post was previously published on Equality Includes You and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: Unsplash