One systemic injustice that has been seen around the United States is related to Chinese/Asian people and the Corona virus. Ever since the Corona virus became a huge pandemic around the world, people have been blaming Chinese/Asian people. People have been doing this for multiple reason, one of which is because of social media. In social media, people have been making up various memes and tweets that have been blaming the Chinese. Former President Donald Trump was going around calling it “The Chinese Virus” across news press conferences and across his twitter account. This resulted in a lot of hate and backlash against Asian-Americans because of this rumor, that had been debunked and proven wrong several times, that China created this virus. Now that more strains of the Corona virus have come to light, the more that the United States have engaged in xenophobia, prejudice against people from other countries. Another reason why people have latched on to the idea that Chinese/Asian people are to blame is because people find the need to blame someone or something to cope. The problem with this is that it has created a negative effect on Chinese/Asian people. Many of the Chinese/Asian youth is even facing hate that could have a huge negative impact on how they view themselves and their country. They are all scared for their lives while we as a society try to make jokes and throw hate at them. They had no control of this virus and it’s been proven that they did not create this virus, yet we still latch on to the hate and backlash against Chinese/Asian people. This can be related to the Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern speak”. Spivak states that a subaltern is “fragmented groups of marginalized people who are without power”. Chinese/Asian people are becoming a subaltern because they are being marginalized and they are struggling to have any power over white Americans. Asian people are being targeted and killed by white Americans over something they have had no involvement with. Chinese/Asian Americans are left with little to no power and are scared for their families and their own lives.
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/racial-prejudice/96112/
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/covid-19-fueling-anti-asian-racism-and-xenophobia-worldwide
Xenophobia is a great way to put it and your explanation is spot on. The current injustices happening against the Asian American community has a lot to do with ignorance and the lack of education. An entire is being targeted for no reasons and it is becoming an extreme public safety issue. You should not fear for your life because of someone else’s anger. Connecting the pandemic and origin of a virus to an entire culture is ignorant and cruel. The two do not have correlation and lives are in danger because of it.
This is such an important issue. The xenophobia and racism incited by political leaders, social media trends, and influential individuals is devastating. I wrote a diary of systemic injustice similar to this one in which I highlighted a podcast from NPR in which they explained the history the United States has with linking disease to race and ethnicity. Throughout history, society has been constantly associating and basically “blaming” diseases on immigrant groups. For example, SARS was associated with Chinese individuals, Ebola was associated with Africans, even typhus was associated with the Irish. The podcast explains that already existing, systemic prejudices are getting medicalized.
I think the xenophobia we have seen recently towards the Asian community repeats a pattern of racism that we have seen towards other minorities in cases of pandemics or other events. I like how you connected this to Spivak’s Can the Subaltern speak since that concept can illustrate what is happening to the Asian Community.