COVID-19 Effects on Community

Submitted by Carrie Ho, Isabella Tokarz, and Vivien Zhang

We are three Asian-American women taking Asian American studies at UC Berkeley, hoping to understand in this frightening time. We have summarized the impact of COVID-19 on our communities and the implications of utilizing media to shape race relations.

Carrie:

“The outbreak of COVID-19 has caused racial incidents against Asian Americans to increase at an unprecedented amount, sometimes beginning online. Since the beginning of the pandemic, hashtags such as the “China Virus” or the “Kungflu” have gone viral. The spread of messages like these further exacerbates anti-Asian sentiment and contributes to acts of direct violence against Asians.

One incident that struck me was when a gunman targeted massage parlors in Atlanta, killing 8 people (6 of whom were Asian women). The white gunman, 21 year old Robert Aaron Long, confessed to the shootings, and told authorities that he suffered from a “sexual addiction” with the spas as a temptation that he wanted to eliminate. I was particularly shocked when the authorities did not regard the incident as a hate crime, but stated that Long just had a “very bad day.” Rhetoric like this further reinforces of Asian women being fetishized. I think that anti-Asian sentiment and violent attacks like these need to be addressed.”

Isabella:

“As reports of Asian-American attacks surfaced, it became obvious that the struggles of Asian-Americans were eclipsed by the efforts of certain news commentators to scapegoat Asians for the virus. Furthermore, the blame was being applied strategically along the contours of a geopolitical agenda. The Chinese-American community in particular faced consistently negative treatment in the media, ranging from news shaming the Chinese government to flat-out degradation of the Chinese people in some conservative outlets.

There seems to be an inability among most American media commentators to separate the actions of a government from an ethnicity. Born out of the same “forever foreigner” myth was the internment of Japanese-American citizens (a majority of which were born in the US). This time, it’s Chinese-Americans. Instead of being as American as anyone else, Chinese-Americans have been painted as an foreign virus in the body of America, a yellow peril bent on destroying white America.”

Vivien:

“The media's role in propagandizing the virus as a "Chinese virus" has led to an unprecedented rise in anti-Asian sentiments and, more concerningly, hate crimes against all Asian communities. During this past spring semester, I vividly remember waking up and checking my social media feed only to see frequent--almost daily--news articles reporting yet another hate crime.

While I am grateful for the media for its role in keeping the masses informed, it cannot be ignored that much of the anti-Asian sentiments across the nation stemmed from news outlets sensationalizing and mislabeling the virus as a "Chinese" one. In the past, we’ve already seen that the media plays an immense role in influencing public opinion through cartoons and headlines. However, with the advent of social media and digital news, this influence is more prevalent than ever. In what ways does the media promote wellbeing and/or harm in minority communities? How, if at all, can we maximize one and minimize the other?”

All three of us identified the tremendous influence that the media has in shaping public opinion regarding the Asian American community. We noticed that the rise in anti-Asian sentiments correlated directly with news/social media rhetoric scapegoating the community. However, the rise of Asian American youth activism has left us hopeful. By galvanizing a media-literate generation able to think critically about the anti-Asian media paradigms and challenge them, we hope to be a part of the new generation of Asian American activism.

Tags: Asian, COVID-19, Media, Social Justice, Social Media, News, Race Relations