the new coronavirus has brought with it increased actions by local state and now federal government
that are meant to stop the spread of cope at 19 known to have originated in eastern China's Wuhan
province President Donald Trump is the most prominent American who's repeatedly used what
scholars and others say is inflammatory language such as the Kong flu or the China virus when
speaking of kovat 19 and now ABC News has reported that a new FBI analysis warns of an increase
in hate crimes against Asian Americans as this health crisis continues echoed a Mount Holyoke
College associate professor of English shares her perspective on the matter well I thought it
was really really disturbing and I think that may be another question that I had was why president
Trump would Stoke anti-chinese sentiment right now and so I started to think about it and I
think that there are probably two reasons that might help us make sense of this moment and why
he would use those words so the first is I think that you know President Trump's comment really is
trying to imply that the Chinese are culturally inferior and that we have this idea that the
Chinese are dirty diseased and breed contagion and that's really part of a larger repertoire
of anti-chinese sentiment in the US and it's been around for over a century so and actually in the
19th century that kind of language and those kinds of ideas and stereotypes were part of a
white nativist ideology that justified Chinese immigrant exclusion for over half a century so
I think that this is really just a standard move from trumps playbook though for him it's always
been easier to demonize the poor migrants and now the Chinese in order to deflect attention
away from the corruption and incompetence of our elected leaders and the second reason I think
that the more international or global context is that you know I think that trumps attempt
at scapegoating the Chinese is really symptomatic of the decline of u.s. global dominance and fears
that China will you know overtake the US as a global leader I've also heard the president
say though that he doesn't really view this using these phrases any different than fencing
chinese-food for him those are one in the same do you have that same perspective well obviously not
mainly because of what I mentioned before the this this notion that the Chinese flu or that
that Chinese people are associated with disease and contagion are part of a way of pathologizing
the Chinese that has been a part of the way in which white nativist fears have been expressed
in this country for a very long time have you heard other leaders use language similar to this
no but I heard that people have tried to make an equivalence between calling it the Chinese flu and
say the Spanish flu for example and I think that that's a misnomer because the only reason that the
Spanish flu of 1918 was called that is that the Spain was the first nation to actually report on
the existence of the pandemic and actually the first known cause was actually from Kansas in
the United States so you know and maybe another another counterpoint is the swine flu of 20 2009
and 2010 from 2009 to 2010 which also originated in the US but nobody called it the American swine
flu right so so I think that we have to be clear that viruses and pandemics do not really respect
national borders they don't they're not they're not ethnic or racial they actually originate in
animals and can pass on to anybody regardless of race ethnicity or nation who look at the history
of the way that Asian Americans have sometimes been treated in this country when you look at
Japanese internment during World War two how do you place this issue in sort of the larger broader
historical context that's a great question I think that I think that it I think that we really have
to put it into the context of the way in which xenophobia I mean how this is linked actually to
the sort of the border wall the the detention and detainment of small children the sort of
desire to place the blame on some sort of racial other for issues that are actually bred within
the United States that are part of you know our political economy I think that these are all ways
in which it's just a politics of deflection and scapegoating the president has sent mixed messages
recently in March 23rd he tweeted the following it's very important that we totally protect our
Asian American community in the United States and all around the world they're amazing people and
the spreading of the virus is not their fault in any way shape or form they're working closely with
us to get rid of it we will prevail together do tweets like that make amends I don't think so at
all I mean I think that one of the things that's important is that he did not actually say that the
Chinese are not responsible he said asian-american and so I often think of you know what do his words
mean for an international Chinese student in the United States the fact that his words did really
nothing to quell the specifically rising sign of phobia that impacts many Asian Americans is
really still you know it's still he hasn't actually addressed that and so I think that
you know he's actually what Trump is doing he's holding to the idea that Chinese are the viol
source of contagion but also saying that Asian Americans are so-called good people and you know
you really can't have it both ways you know it's sort of like saying that you know black people
are criminals and that he's not racist I mean you you they just you can't say they both don't hold
together do you think that the president should apologize to Chinese Americans I think what he
should do I think that there's a lot of things that he should do and yes I do think he should
apologize to Chinese Americans for spreading offer for spreading the this kind of misinformation and
stereotyping Chinese people in targeting them at the same time I don't think he ever would because
this is not the way this is not the way that he leads I mean he is basically a classic kind of
strong man figure who wants to deflect or who would like who would prefer to turn to breeding
kind of nativist hate rather than actually deal with the many social and political problems that
we have in the United States right so in that way he's very similar to other strongmen that
we're seeing that ever emerged on the world stage from Duterte to balsa narrow - you know Modi and
so these are just classic strongmen playbooks and and I actually recommend that people check out the
J Prasad's book which is called strongmen and it's about this very issue so I think
that he will not do that but I mean I there are other things I think that he could do but which
I doubt he would do that what about long term implications are you concerned that the use of
this language this type of rhetoric will have long term long term implications I think that
it's interesting that he actually never mentions the name she's in peace so he's um he's clearly
aware that you know he's aware of strategically trying to breed kind of a certain kind of sign
of phobia but at the same time not going so far as to actually insult the leader China's
leader and I think that again this is a lot a lot of this rhetoric is about you know the US
and China's competition for global dominance and you know while I think that it's really necessary
for us to call out failures in China's response to the outbreak at the same time we also have to
recognize that China's and far more to break the global chain of viral transmission first
by containing the virus in China and then also by sending doctors nurses and supplies around
the world you know recently Chinese billionaire Jack Ma actually sent like current coronavirus
test kits and masks to the United States which i think represents an interesting geopolitical
or symbolic geopolitical reversal where you know American survival is now in this pandemic
pandemic is now increasingly going to depend on on China's leadership so so I think that that's an
interesting so we're seeing a sort of interesting post like cold war kind of dynamic playing out one
last question as you look about the think about this issue more broadly is there a message you'd
like to send to Americans who might be fearful of Americans because of this language I think
that people need to recognize that like that by scapegoating a particular ethnic group is the
wrong way to think about a virus which again a virus isn't does not discriminate against race
ethnicity or nationality a virus is just a virus perhaps if we wanted to look at the sources the
true sources of these kinds of pandemics we should look at in particular the corona virus it has its
origins and the nights are those that strain viruses they come from bats and they originated
in the 1970s and they are the direct result of industrial the expansion of industrial and
agricultural production right which has radically disrupted the habitats of many species and that
has you know created the conditions for this kind of these kinds of disease outbreaks so
I think that that's what we really need to be thinking about and I also think we need to be
thinking about what are we doing to actually stop the chain of viral transmission both the United
States and to think about how our private health care you know we're all dependent on a private
health care industry that really cares more about generating profits and actually giving care to sex
people and because so many people have lost their jobs you know how many of them can afford to you
know they either have no insurance to get tested they have they don't have the money to pay for a
copay etc I mean these are the things they think we should be thinking about and returning to and
being outraged about the at the global in the global context you know the fact that the US has
sanctions against 50 nations you know arguably promotes again the spread of the of the true
of the virus you know because these nations cannot actually get the life-saving support
and supplies that they need to again to contain this pandemic and so I think that when we think
about the nations that are doing something it's China its Cuba it's the World Health Organization
that's sending doctors nurses and supplies to places like Iran that we have sanctions
against Venezuela and many other nations and so perhaps we do need to look to that leadership