While we are looking at various modeling to assess the damage caused by Covid19, we inadvertently create longer term damage with labels like Kungflu and Chinese flu etc…From Harlem to Houston the nearly forgotten Yellow Peril’s 1982 Vincent Chin somehow get a new re-mix. This time, it’s not because of Detroit slip and slide (Japanese small vehicle invasion), but Airlines and Cruise lines’.
Every decade or so, we face new threats and new enemies. It’s always convenient to rally the troops if we can put a face and a name to the enemy. Like my good neighbor Fred Rogers put it “what is mentionable is manageable”.
In Stone Age, to appease the gods of fire and fertility, we offered up virgins for sacrifice. Let’s not forget early American History, and how the Irish and Chinese workmen (Chinese Exclusion Act) built the backbone of this nation (railways) while their spouses were not allowed to join them -eunuchs by design.
Later, during WWII, Japanese-American were locked up in intern camps.
And lately, Boat People, many of whom fought along side “American advisors”, were “processed” in the Philippines for decades, after escaping or releasing from Re-education camps in Cambodia and Vietnam.
People who bought into the promise of America, “a thousand points of light”, a beacon to the huddle mass etc..
Let’s not the ideal of America be our newest sacrifice at the altar to appease the gods of viruses and ensued prejudice – those shadow pandemics of psychological and social undertow.
Let’s face up to our real enemy. You may find it’s not the Mexican in Long Island, the Chinese-American in San Francisco/Seattle, or the Korean in Los Angeles (or Vincent Chin in Detroit, who happened to be a young Chinese-American groom-to-be out on his bachelor party – not Japanese as thought). We have looked for the enemies, and the enemies are us.
Yellow peril will produce damaging and long-term backlash. And we cannot afford long-term backlash while solving hopefully short-term ( given the long arc of history) pandemic.
What’s out there can soon get fixed. What happened inside our heads is hard to purge. We need honest self-examination and historical facts before passing judgments.
Had China kept up with its technological development centuries ago, where would we be today? It’s true Covid19 had its origin in Wuhan. So did SARS and Spanish flu somewhere else. Are we to “nuke” every country and region where new diseases sprung up. Or should we concentrate on finding the cure that benefits all mankind, like past Pasteurs and penicillin scientists?
One thing I am certain of: people who succumb to assign blame in difficult times, are not the same people who intelligently study the size, scope and source of a problem before seeking long- term solution and cure.
It’s much easy to shift blames, to stereotype, to secure status-quo. Fortunately, this is our unique and teachable moment to dis-infect our muddle heads and dirty hands from years of bad habits: of “us-them” mentality, of “We’re Number One, they are number 10”.
We need everyone, our seniors and our STEM graduates, of all stripes and male/female. We need one another to get through this crisis and beyond without inciting hate crime and prejudice. Covid19 itself has done all the harm we can ever imagine. Stay clear- headed and warm- hearted. See you on the other side of this colorless Covid19.
Thang Nguyen 555 