Spit on, yelled at, attacked: Chinese Americans fear for their safety
Category: News & Politics
Via: buzz-of-the-orient • 4 years ago • 32 commentsBy: Sabrina Tavernise and Richard A. Oppel Jr.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Spit on, yelled at, attacked: Chinese Americans fear for their safety
“We’ve never received this many news tips about racism against Asians."
A masked woman walks a street in the Chinatown district of San Francisco. –AP Photo/Ben Margot
Yuanyuan Zhu was walking to her gym in San Francisco on March 9, thinking the workout could be her last for a while, when she noticed that a man was shouting at her. He was yelling an expletive about China. Then a bus passed, she recalled, and he screamed after it, “Run them over.”
She tried to keep her distance, but when the light changed, she was stuck waiting with him at the crosswalk. She could feel him staring at her. And then, suddenly, she felt it: his saliva hitting her face and her favorite sweater.
In shock, Zhu, who is 26 and moved to the United States from China five years ago, hurried the rest of the way to the gym. She found a corner where no one could see her, and she cried quietly.
“That person didn’t look strange or angry or anything, you know?” she said of her tormentor. “He just looked like a normal person.”
As the coronavirus upends American life, Chinese Americans face a double threat. Not only are they grappling like everyone else with how to avoid the virus itself, they are also contending with growing racism in the form of verbal and physical attacks. Other Asian Americans — with families from Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar and other places — are facing threats, too, lumped together with Chinese Americans by a bigotry that does not know the difference.
In interviews over the past week, nearly two dozen Asian Americans across the country said they were afraid — to go grocery shopping, to travel alone on subways or buses, to let their children go outside. Many described being yelled at in public — a sudden spasm of hate that is reminiscent of the kind faced by Muslim Americans after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
But unlike 2001, when President George W. Bush urged tolerance of Muslim Americans, this time President Donald Trump is using language that Asian Americans say is inciting racist attacks.
Trump and his Republican allies are intent on calling the coronavirus “the Chinese virus,” rejecting the World Health Organization’s guidance against using geographic locations when naming illnesses, since past names have provoked a backlash.
Trump told reporters Tuesday that he was calling the virus “Chinese” to combat a disinformation campaign by Beijing officials saying the U.S. military was the source of the outbreak. He dismissed concerns that his language would lead to any harm.
“If they keep using these terms, the kids are going to pick it up,” said Tony Du, an epidemiologist in Howard County, Maryland, who fears for his son, Larry, 8. “They are going to call my 8-year-old son a Chinese virus. It’s serious.”
Du said he posted on Facebook that “this is the darkest day in my 20-plus years of life in the United States,” referring to Trump’s doubling down on use of the term.
While no firm numbers exist yet, Asian American advocacy groups and researchers say there has been a surge of verbal and physical assaults reported in newspapers and to tip lines.
San Francisco State University found a 50% rise in the number of news articles related to the coronavirus and anti-Asian discrimination between Feb. 9 and March 7. The lead researcher, Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American studies, said the figures represented “just the tip of the iceberg” because only the most egregious cases that would be likely to be reported by the media.
Jeung has helped set up a website in six Asian languages, to gather firsthand accounts; some 150 cases have been reported on the site since it started last Thursday.
Benny Luo, founder and chief executive of NextShark, a website focused on Asian American news, said the site used to get a few tips a day. Now it is dozens.
“We’ve never received this many news tips about racism against Asians,” he said. “It’s crazy. My staff is pulling double duty just to keep up.” He said he was hiring two more people to help.
No one is immune to being targeted. Dr. Edward Chew, head of the emergency department at a large Manhattan hospital, is on the front lines of fighting the coronavirus. He said that over the past few weeks, he has noticed people trying to cover their nose and mouth with their shirts when they are near him.
Chew has been using his free time to buy protective gear, like goggles and face shields, for his staff, in case his hospital runs out. On Wednesday night at a Home Depot, with his cart filled with face shields, masks and Tyvek suits, he said he was harassed by three men in their 20s, who then followed him out into the parking lot.
“I heard of other Asians being assaulted over this, but when you are actually ridiculed yourself, you really feel it,” he said the following day.
A writer for The New Yorker, Jiayang Fan, said she was taking out her trash last week when a man walking by began cursing at her for being Chinese.
“I’ve never felt like this in my 27 years in this country,” she wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “I’ve never felt afraid to leave my home to take out the trash because of my face.”
Attacks have also gotten physical.
In the San Fernando Valley in California, a 16-year old Asian American boy was attacked in school by bullies who accused him of having the coronavirus. He was sent to the emergency room to see whether he had suffered a concussion.
In New York City a woman wearing a mask was kicked and punched in a Manhattan subway station, and a man in Queens was followed to a bus stop, shouted at and then hit over the head in front of his 10-year-old son.
People have rushed to protect themselves. One man started a buddy-system Facebook group for Asians in New York who are afraid to take the subway by themselves. Gun shop owners in the Washington, D.C., area said they were seeing a surge of first-time Chinese American buyers.
At Engage Armament in Rockville, Maryland, most gun buyers in the first two weeks of March have been Chinese American or Chinese, according to the owner, Andy Raymond.
More than a fifth of Rockville’s residents are of Asian ethnicity, and Raymond said buyers from Korean and Vietnamese backgrounds were not unusual. But Raymond said he was stunned by the flow of Chinese customers — in particular green-card holders from mainland China — that began earlier this month, a group that rarely patronized his shop before.
“It was just nonstop, something I’ve never seen,” he said.
Raymond said that few of the Asian customers wanted to talk about why they were there, but when one of his employees asked a woman about it, she teared up. “To protect my daughter,” she replied.
For recent immigrants like Du who are in close touch with friends and family in China, the virus has been a screaming danger for weeks that most Americans seemed oblivious to.
Du is trying to remain hopeful. He spends his weekends training to become a volunteer with Maryland’s emergency medical workers. He is part of a group of Chinese American scientists who organized a GoFundMe account to raise money for protective gear for hospital workers in the area. In three days, they raised more than $55,000, nearly all in small donations.
But he said he was afraid of the chaos that could be unleashed if the U.S. death toll rises significantly.
Already a gun owner, Du, 48, said he was in the process of buying an AR-15 style rifle.
“Katrina is not far away,” he said, alluding to the unrest in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “And when all these bad things come, I am a minority. People can see my face is Chinese clearly. My son, when he goes out, they will know his parents are Chinese.”
For American-born Asians, there is a sudden sense of being watched that is as unsettling as it is unfamiliar.
“It’s a look of disdain,” said Chil Kong, a Korean American theater director in Maryland. “It’s just: ‘How dare you exist in my world? You are a reminder of this disease, and you don’t belong in my world.’ ”
He added: “It’s especially hard when you grow up here and expect this world to be yours equally. But we do not live in that world anymore. That world does not exist.”
One debate among Asian Americans has been over whether to wear a mask in public. Wearing one risks drawing unwanted attention; but not wearing one does, too. Zhu said her parents, who live in China, offered to ship her some.
“I’m like, ‘Oh please, don’t,’ ” she said. She said she was afraid of getting physically attacked if she wore one. “Lots of my friends, their social media posts are all about this: We don’t wear masks. It’s kind of more dangerous than the virus.”
A 30-year-old videographer in Syracuse said he was still shaken from a trip to the grocery store Monday, when the man ahead of him in the checkout line shouted at him, “It’s you people who brought the disease,” and other customers just stared at him, without offering to help. That same day, he said, two different couples verbally abused him at Costco.
“I feel like I’m being invaded by this hatred,” said the man, Edward, who asked that his last name not be used because he feared attracting more attention. “It’s everywhere. It’s silent. It’s as deadly as this disease.”
He said he had tried to hide the details of what happened from his mother, who moved to the United States from China in the 1970s. But there was one thing he did tell her.
“I told her, whatever you do, you can’t go shopping,” he said. “She needed to know there’s a problem, and we can’t act like it’s normal anymore.”
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Welcome to America...
Trump has made racism 'fashionable' again, gee,
i'll bet his hair smells terrific though !
U weren't expecting to take N E Responsibility For ANYTHING that EVER went wrong were ya ?
TDS is rampant hear
about it lately ?
Truth Denial Sindrum on a roll, & has been ,
blatantly rampant here since Trump decided he is the one, that decides what is and what isn't,
the truth,
that he, obviously can't handle, as his hands must be all slippery, from running Moose through his heir apparent
Lee nobody, including Trump, doesn't like Sara,
Saral Lee in General, asz i Generally think Trump knows more than his Generals, especially on General Custards pie eye on the bake sale burning from the LIEZ iii'z despise, as he is a full of it, n a whopper of a tale of Two Cities too often, being like so many other cities...suffering!
...the enlightened, liberal, beacon cities of America.
Greenville Mississippi or Jacksonville Florida?
I live in Jacksonville and have not seen any reports of attacks, physical or otherwise, on Asians associated with this virus. My wife is Asian and has not experienced any type of racism in quite some time. The last time was about 10 years ago when an African American told her to go back to her country (she has been an American citizen since 1981).
Every one of the cities cited in this article are from liberal cities...San Francisco, New York, Seattle, etc.
[deleted]
But if you listen to the liberal media, they want you to believe it is happening on every street corner in the country all day, every day.
It’s pretty fucking sad that some would argue the fact that this is happening. Asians are being attacked, and it is because of prejudice. These are the same sorta people that would turn a blind-eye or participate.
Sad isn't it. Instead of people coming together and condemning such things out comes denial and attacking another country.
I have read stories of it happening in Britain as well.
The guy that spit on her needs to have his ass beat. In this day and age that could be considered a life threatening action.
Actually it is considered terrorism.
"Jews will NOT Replace US" comes to mind, but only because i like pork egg role and cheese sand
which is a new course not in fine n Y it will not register or be even noticed by Trumprrrz,, cause when or cause way.
N asz F they can accept that "there are good people on BOTH Sides" after the Neo-Nazis' marched and chanted, Trump felt
enchanted, and defended the skin
on their bald little noggins.
The GOP,
the wrongfully named 'right',
and Trump supporters and defenders,
in general ,
were just Fine with it....?
Trump sets new highs on being low, and if you disagree, he'll show you so.
His example, being more than ample, has created a new norm that should be Abbey, and the Abbey Normal weighs greatly, making America UN-Greatly
Again !
Trump's leadership, has lead US to the bottom of the 'Deep State' known as denial by approval and acceptance of Ignorance, so vile, it is hard to accept,
but when he exampulls US down,
it has bin proven to his constituency that sum how it is OKAY
to act Discriminatory
unfortunately, The New American Weigh
to Make America HATE Again !
.
Know Won Should be Proud,
Cause eye Sea many have gone DEEP !
Pass....? B 4 it runz over the New Russian
It’s REALLY sad that some people would try to push a narrative for something that happens every day in this country, to virtually every nationality. Even so, these are random occurrences. Not how the majority in the country would act but noooooo ..... some would rather highlight this type of minority behavior rather than the multitudes more people doing good for each other every day.
And make no mistake, there are a shitload more people who do good each day than act in a xenophobic manner like this douche bag.
So yeah, that is the really sick thing. Pointing to a few random acts of violence and intimating that it is somehow “America.”. Nothing could be further from the truth. [deleted]
“We’ve Never Received This Many News Tips About Racism Against Asians."
News tips eh?
Sounds very serious. /S
The bitching and criticisms I've now seen in the comments to this article indicate the very reason why this scourge will cause more problems in the USA than elsewhere. The USA already leads the world with the greatest number of cases. However, if cooperation and collective safety would start to prevail instead of swaggering and demanding devil-may-care individual rights there will be light at the end of the tunnel, as there has been for me. In Chongqing, a city-state with a population of 32 million, 540 miles from Wuhan, there were 578 cases, 6 deaths (1% +/- mortality rate), at this time only a couple remain in hospital the rest having recovered, and no new cases for weeks, things are slowly returning to normal. Although schools are still closed, stores and restaurants are reopening and many people are out and about. My information is gleaned from many sources, both local and international but mostly I rely on what I am told by my doctor good friend who works in the local medical-school connected major hospital, and of course he knows what has been happening on the front lines. He is the man who has taken me to the last two expat thanksgiving dinners, gave us a supply of the correct surgical masks, and whose daughter I have been helping with her English, and I trust him and what he has told me. So don't try to be cavalier, self-isolate, maintain social distances, ignore the false news, exaggerations and conspiracy theories, and realize that blaming others will not be any help at all.
Buzz,
You do realize that Italy and Spain are leading in cases and deaths, right?
The issue is that the US has a constitution and it keeps us free, just like your beloved Canada and where ever you have freedom, sometimes you get chaos.
Yes, Perrie, and you have the freedom to curtail that freedom to prevent chaos - that's the choice so I believe one should choose wisely.
Is this info from the internet way off? I had only referred to cases.
USA 142,537 cases 2,510 deaths 4,707 recovered
Italy 97,689 10,779 13,030
Spain 80,100 6,803 14,709
not sure, but i also thought we had, since Trump wants US to be #1, surpassed those countries with infections, but i'm not positive.
,
Yea, with Trump denying the severity of virus till almost 3 weeks ago, the F up on testing availability, and the lack of protective gear/ventilators, we have screwed this pooch up. Hopefully we and he, get it together in a hurry.
A/noon Perrie..Umm that is not quite right..Italy and Spains death rate is but no longer infection rate..The USA is now the worlds number 1..Even our government and the NZ government keeps saying we do not want to be in the United States position...So not sure what you mob have been told but in this the USA is now number one...We are in Stage 3 lock down only go out if we really have to..No more than 2 people can gather at a time outside. Keeping 1.5 metres away from each other..and self isolate for 2 weeks if you have been overseas..To enforce that the cops are knocking on doors and if you are not home and you are meant to be, there is a fine or you can be jailed. 17 souls have been lost here and 1 in NZ...our infection rate is dropping but it is to early to tell if it really is going down or stopped for breath...As we have been told..."The virus cannot move..it takes a human to do it"...You stop moving around and socialising the virus dies..NZ is in 4 weeks lock down and that is coming for us to...if people do not do the right thing and stop spreading it around. It is not hard but you get the minority that stuff it up for the majourity...Stay well all...
Thank you, shona. I hope that you and yours fare as well as I and mine have, by following the dictates of what it takes to stay healthy.
Good Evening..Yes so far so good...But..Looks like I will be having my stem cell transplant down Melbourne next week...They are saying the virus peak may not reach here to May/June so we running with it..And as they say "it is in the hands of the Gods" and can only wait and see..But at this stage it is all systems go...Stay well and stay safe...
Please stop spreading propaganda. No one believes the numbers reported by the Chinese government have any basis in reality. British scientists estimate that the actual numbers are up to 40 times greater than the government reported.
This is like Saddam claiming he got 99.9% support in Iraqi elections.
Okay, you can believe that marijuana cures the virus too if you want, but I'm in China and a doctor friend here has verified for me the numbers stated and that there have been no new cases in our City-State for 3 weeks, and the national numbers are fairly accurate, and I believe him. If the numbers were as your hysteria says, the Who would have announced it and I would have heard about it from multiple sources here. Now you'll probably tell me that the WHO is a Chinese puppet. LOL
The WHO knows what China wants them to know. Which isn’t much with the way they restricted access to anyone or any country looking for data on this.
Control the narrative. Classic Communist strategy.
When will China apoligize for lying about and down playing the virus?
Are you upset that China disappeared a doctor for criticizing it's response to the virus? Does Ai Fen's fate bother you at all?
I've said that at least 5 times on this site. Now I know why you're comments are so full of misinformation.
Experiences range from socially awkward to xenophobic. An American walking with a group of foreigners in a park in Beijing saw a woman grab her child and run the other way. Others have described being called “ foreign trash ”. A recent online article , under an image of ship stacked with refuse being pushed away from China’s coast, was headlined: “Beware of a second outbreak started by foreign garbage.”
Welcome to China...
THERE HAVE BEEN SO MANY INSULTING AND IGNORANT COMMENTS ON THIS ARTICLE I SEE NO USE INTO ALLOWING IT TO CONTINUE, SO I AM LOCKING IT FOR GOOD.