Anti-Asian Racism and COVID-19


This morning I read this article titled "Anti-Asian Harassment Is Surging. Can Ads and Hashtags Help? With more than 2,000 incidents and little action from the federal government, efforts to curtail pandemic-related racism have fallen to P.S.A.s and social media campaigns."

I am livid.

I am afraid.

When this began back in March (and still in a recent tweet) with the words of the current US president calling COVID-19 the "China Virus," I was more worried about being harassed and possibly harmed due to my being AAPI than I was contracting the virus. When I brought this up during an on-line gathering at my current workplace, not one person offered a word of comfort and not one person followed up with an email saying, "Hey, I heard what you said and I'm so sorry..."

When colleges and universities like to tout that they are a "family" and a "community," they forget that there are those of us that have not been welcomed into the family, and if we are, we're more like the scapegoat. We don't really belong and it's on us to make it different rather than the family system.

I'm not sure what the coming weeks will hold as I ready myself to return to campus. What I am doing is the self-care necessary to mitigate the racism, the hatred, and the micro- and macro-aggressions of being a BIPOC born and raised in this country.

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