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Breakout of Deadly Corona Virus -
December 2019 marked the outbreak of a dreadful disease, namely COVID-19 or coronavirus, particularly in Wuhan, china. As it intensified among the Chinese residents due to it's highly contagious nature, it led to the death of 3,000 people according to the Chinese government records.This has indeed instigated a global anxiety, and conjoined with the declaration of the World Health Organization that Coronavirus is global pandemic and an international emergency, the world went into uproar.
Growing Stereotypes -
This global misfortune sprung a new wave of racism and xenophobia against people from East Asia. Social media and news prompted the panic even further, which created an atmosphere of stereotypes against Chinese people in particular.
This international health disaster led to exposing a racial segregation that was unsubtly imbedded within various communities, including USA, which was especially laid bare when President Donald Trump referred to the disease as “the Chinese virus”.
More alarmingly, this has developed into verbal and physical attacks toward the Chinese, from workers to students, as people started referring to them using insensitive and discriminatory words such as “corona”, “virus”, or “dirty Chinese”. However, there were some attempts to curb the stigmatization, labialization and even the criminalization of Asians as the main reason behind the spread of the virus, and all the allegations encouraged by the misinformation and prejudice of News media.
The name given to the virus by the World Health Organization is racially neutral. Some students sought to provide moral support for those who experience racial segregation because of the pandemic, but it didn’t seem to stop people from pointing fingers. This brings into question the core values of mankind, which seems to have grown congruent to a set of subtly imbedded stereotypes regarding other races, and people from different cultural backgrounds.
To what extent is it legitimate to name a disease after a group of people with no regard to what such conduct might engender and encourage in the near future only because the disease emerged in that specific region? Is it legitimate at all? Are people willing to accept that no race should be blamed for this pandemic in this helpless time where all they can do is put blame? Would people care for intercultural communication objectives when the world seems to be at rest until further notice? But isn’t international and intercultural support the thing we need the most right now?
How This Atmosphere of Racism Is Affecting People?
This chaotic situation that we are witnessing is a threat for everyone, but it is particularly hard on people who suffer from anxiety, hypochondria and general obsessive-compulsive disorders. Mental health is often particularly threatened by bullies and insensitive people. It is bad to have to deal with what can occasionally be a mental health patient’s worst enemy, a deadly virus, but it is a hundred times worse to be personally attacked for the widespread of your worst enemy.
People’s insensitivity can be damaging for others. This can only prove that at some point while marching towards where we are right now, we preserved the one propensity that dehumanized our attitudes and thoughts, the brutal egotistical belief that we are better than the other.
After China started healing, as people in some cities, were no longer quarantined, there was still a propagation of negative and misleading information regarding the possibility of another “Chinese pandemic”, the Hantavirus, another reason to point fingers at China and it's people. Moreover, the fact that Chinese people and their eating habits became substantial for current jokes, such as what is now known as “memes”, all while being portrayed as abnormal and disgusting people, helped encourage more violence and discrimination towards the Chinese.
These prejudices came from people who took their own “strange traditional food” different from other cultures. For instance, French people eat frogs, Muslims eat animal all kinds of animals along with their guts and genitalia. If we start comparing diets according to how weird some dishes are, everyone would lose.
The Need of the Hour -
This new phase of fear induced racism and xenophobia inspire the need for new goals to better humanity and global values: solid intercultural communication for the purpose of reinforcing dialogue among nations, decreasing the amount of prejudice and mostly eliminating fear mongering as an instrument to encourage discrimination and segregation.
Not so long ago, it is Ebola, now Covid-19 and tomorrow, it will be just another name the same need to justify or willingness to hate each other so openly and ardently, unless we learn to communicate our actual fear and reluctance about one another. This is perhaps where civil societies, and NGOs with the help of social media platforms can prove most valuable.
Conclusion -
It is imperative to raise awareness about a much-needed authentic dialogue and calls for action at such a critical time, all by focusing on the brighter side of the time we spend quarantined as an opportunity to sharpen our skills and talents. Hope is all we have now, but communication should be an essence in our march towards a brighter future.
Written by - Syrine Landolsi
Edited by - Nidhi Verma
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