Racism

Hate crimes directed at Asian Americans in the US is nothing new. Asian Americans have been the targets of racist micro aggressions to violent pograms designed to run them out of town or kill whoever remained. Throughout American history large macro racist racial projects like the Anti Chinese Movement of the 1870’s to the forced relocation of Japanese Americans of the 1940’s are sanctioned by the government and socially acceptable in that historical moment. Racist legislation has sought to segregate and oppress them includes Alien Land Laws, The Page Law, Anti Miscegenation laws, and ultimately the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

It’s important to note, that these macro racist racial projects take place during economic recessions, depressions, and times of war. They sought to oppress Asians who were doing well economically, a threat to the white working class.

Racism is a unifying political strategy often used since it can clearly demarcate an “us” versus “them.” If them can be identified phenotypically, culturally, linguistically and by country of origin, all facilitate their identification, segregation, and oppression.

There is a new specter haunting Asian America in 2020. It is the perfect storm of:

  1. A pandemic that can be traced to China.
  2. A national emergency declared on March 13, 2020. – whitehouse.gov
  3. Sudden and mass unemployment. Unemployment that may reach Great Depression levels of 25% nationwide and up to 50% in communities of color. In the span of a month, workers in retail, restaurants, manufacturing, sales, are all suddenly laid off or furloughed.
  4. A convenient people to blame. Though Asians in America are no more culpable than any other American for spreading the virus, they are the target for blame by the President of the United States when he refers to COVAD-19 as the, “Chinese Virus.” Seeking to deflect criticism of how his administration has bungled the response to this pandemic from disbanding the pandemic task force established by the Obama Administration to deal with the Ebola crisis, to most recently blaming WHO by saying “They really called, I would say, every aspect of it wrong,”(CNBC, CNN, The Guardian, youtube) this gives Americans an easy target since 
  1. Anti Asian American racism and hate crimes will increase exponentially and be tolerated by the federal and local governments. I would say Anti Chinese American, but you know that Americans cannot tell the difference and will direct hate at any Asian American they see lumping then all into one group to hate. This will take the form of micro-aggressions to violent hate crimes. Lisa Ling and Andrew Yang discuss hate crimes targeting Asian Americans. 100 assaults on Asian Americans are being reported every day since the pandemic started. An example: Stabbing of Asian-American 2-Year-Old and Her Family Was a Virus-Fueled Hate Crime
  2. RMVE’s or “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” are gearing up so be careful if you are Asian.
  3. Gun sales will skyrocket. The problem is that lots of novices will buy guns and there will be a spike in accidental shootings and deaths in the months ahead.
  4. Asian Americans will buy the more guns per capita than they have in history. This will lead to the Trump Administration to consider limiting their firearm purchases, but will quickly realize it will violate the 2nd and 14th amendment and will quickly back off seeing as it was Trump’s own statement about the “foreign virus” and “Chinese virus” and the subsequent rise in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans that produced the problem and demand to buy guns in the first place. Trump will ask his advisors, “What’s the 14th amendment say?”
  5. The crime rate will initially drop dramatically. However, as time goes on, the crime rate will rise sharply and stay up unless something is done to intervene. The people living paycheck to paycheck will run out of money in 2-4 weeks. They will then run out of food in another 2-4 weeks. So 1-2 months after the shelter in place was ordered 3.17.20, we will start to see a rise in crime, mainly robbing grocery stores and then it will escalate to robbing the closed stores. Police will be called initially but then the national guard will be called in if the local police cannot handle the crowds. Chaos will ensue unless the governor figures out what to do. Yes, I know some will get unemployment but the system will be overwhelmed and checks will be delayed for a good percentage. Things could get real bad. Prepare…

Articles to read:

  1. As Coronavirus Spreads, So Does Anti-Chinese Sentiment NY Times Jan 30, 2020
  2. Fears of coronavirus fuel anti-Chinese racism Boston Globe Jan 30, 2020

 

Youtube clips to view:

  1. ‘I don’t take responsibility at all‘ Trump says on lag in COVID-19 testing