obvert
Posts: 14050
Joined: 1/17/2011 From: PDX (and now) London, UK Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: RangerJoe quote:
ORIGINAL: obvert quote:
ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake Can we change the name of the thread to China Virus? "Hall monitor" Words matter. This isn't funny. I see the intended humour, but you may not realise that for people of any asian decent that has dire consequences. You're a reasonable person (mostly) and can understand that the government of China is the issue, not the people. Using this phrase though, for people who already have some bias or overt racism, enforces those beliefs and is causing them to act on them. Here in Britain and from reports around the world, East Asians, whether Chinese or not, have been verbally abused, ostracised and physically attacked after the Corona Virus began moving out from China. This is from yesterday in NYC https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/woman-needs-stitches-after-anti-asian-hate-crime-attack-city-n1177146 Here is another. The anxiety of moving through an environment that is turning against you is also damaging. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/us/chinese-coronavirus-racist-attacks.html As bigots blame them for the coronavirus and President Trump labels it the “Chinese virus,” many Chinese-Americans say they are terrified of what could come next. 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 London a student from Singapore was beaten so badly by thugs in the middle of the biggest shopping area in London, Oxford St, in the middle of the afternoon, that he may require facial reconstruction. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/03/uk/coronavirus-assault-student-london-scli-intl-gbr/index.html None of this is funny. It is not funny but there are bullies and blowhards every where. Are you going to rename the Spanish flu? There are many other examples as well throughout history. As I'm sure you know well, the generally accepted term for this viruses has been Coronavirus, technically SARS-CoV2, and it is now more often referred to as Covid-19. We were all raised during an era when humour was different. I am no exception. I love Rodney Dangerfield. He made fun of every culture, equally, for the most part. And himself. This is not the same thing. In this time, (and probably in times past when racism was much more a common thread of humour and much more dangerous to minorities even than it is now, but was often institutionalised like in the US) using this kind of language normalises the implied blame for the pain, anger, confusion and difficulty people are feeling now. Especially now we have to be more careful about how we speak about others. There are bullies and blowhards everywhere, but the difference is that since this crisis has begun, they have been targeting asians with increasing frequency and violence. That is the problem. The language and the attitude are all intertwined, and it for some reason makes some people respond in ways they haven't been until now, and targeting people they haven't been until now.
< Message edited by obvert -- 4/7/2020 10:01:16 AM >
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"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill
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