When Words Matter: Xenophobia’s re-emergence in America
By Janice Lee, shades Magazine
I remember the first time I heard those four words … it’s like it was yesterday.
“Go back to China!”
It was an odd remark for a boy to snap at me since I had never been to that country. When I was in elementary school in my native San Francisco, everyone in my class looked different from one another, so I had not given much thought to where everyone came from. I only knew that America was everyone’s home.
Although that comment was made to me at a schoolyard in 1970, every Asian American of my generation and earlier has heard this targeted at them. I was set to prove that I could speak and write better English than any of the kids who wanted to categorize and taunt me. I didn’t know that it didn’t matter.
When I was in college in the 1980s, three of the issues that shaped my larger view of how people are treated in the world were the apartheid in South Africa, the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic and the murder of a Chinese American man named Vincent Chin, whose life was taken during a time when the American auto industry was facing manufacturing plant closures and worker layoffs due to weakened sales when imported Japanese cars entered the market.
“Asian Invasion” was a common proclamation used in headlines across the country. And in 1982, on the night of his bachelor party, Chin was beaten with a baseball bat by two auto workers, one unemployed. Witnesses heard one yell, “It’s because of you little mother****ers that we’re out of work!” We all “look alike” so it didn’t matter that Chin was American – Chinese American, in fact – and didn’t work in their industry.
What arose in the decades that followed were the Asian American community’s most outspoken and inspiring civil rights champions. Among them: Helen Zia on justice for Asian Americans; Angela Oh on intercommunity relations; and Yvonne Lee on hate crimes across the country. Badass Women, to use a term for today’s generation.
At a time when Asian American women were commonly used as the pretty face on television and advertising, these women who kind of looked like me gave women like me power and credibility. I didn’t have a Tiger Mom. I was a shy child, too afraid to ask questions in a classroom. But I could write.
So I wrote press releases, stories and speeches at first. Then, taglines, marketing materials, manuals and eventually funding proposals. Get the money in the hands of the people fighting discrimination and promoting diversity was my way of defeating racism. In 2008, a Millennial colleague from Southern California said he never experienced anti-Asian language directed at him. Good, I thought, maybe the world is changing.
The “what?” flu
Fifty years since that first incident in the schoolyard, there are now 22 million Asian Americans in this country, almost 6 percent of the U.S. population. We are the fastest growing population in the country, whether or not the upcoming U.S. Census will show it. Our country has made so much progress that we had an Asian American candidate for U.S. President make it to the final debate rounds on a national stage with mass appeal to people from all walks of life and all colors. Yet, a virus that originated from China has sparked schoolyard insults by adults in leadership positions that have led to attacks around the world on people who look like me.
Americans of Chinese ancestry are leading the call for all of our leaders to not use the terms “Chinese virus” and “Kung Flu” because they are demeaning. Period. History has shown us that xenophobia and hate violence increase when jobs and resources are perceived to be threatened.
For those preoccupied with taking care of loved ones in their household during the pandemic lockdowns across the country, we’ve seen the following:
- In March 2020, CBS News’ Weijia Jiang tweeted that a White House official referred to COVID-19 as the “Kung-Flu.” At the White House press briefing the next morning, PBS NewsHour’s Yamiche Alcindor was one of two women reporters who questioned the President and his Administration’s use of “Chinese virus” and “Kung Flu,” but the President denies that the terms are racist.
- At the press briefing the next day, a biracial conservative news reporter was called upon to ask her questions – one comparing use of the words “Chinese food” and “Chinese virus,” referring to things originating in China. In his response, the President wanted to take credit for the new virus name saying, “I think I came up with the term. I hope I came up with the term.” He defended use of the term, explaining that it counters misinformation that China was spreading about American military having brought about the disease.
- The following morning at the press briefing, the Secretary of State was given the second speaking position after the President and enunciated the words “Chinese virus” at the beginning of his speech. During the March 21 press briefing, the President continued to use the offensive phrase.
- By March 23, he finally changed his tune tweeting, “It is very important that we totally protect our Asian American community in the United States, and all around the world” and that the spread of the virus “is NOT their fault in any way, shape or form.”
In case you think it’s just a few in the White House who don’t get it, note that 24,616 people signed a change.org petition to change the name of the coronavirus to “Kung Flu” before it was taken down almost two days later due to the platform’s decision makers determining it violated their community standards.
While the President may or may not use the phrases, how about all the other people who mimic the language they heard yesterday and day after day?
What to do, what to do
Hatred is not good for the heart. We cannot prevent people from using insensitive language, as we know a new phrase will just come up tomorrow that we have to fight. Instead, we need to teach children and young people what a healthy society looks like: Violence free, supportive and compassionate.
Everyone has the responsibility to take action.
When Helen Zia was asked years later what her involvement with the Asian American civil rights movement and the Vincent Chin case meant to her, she said it “really was about the power of people coming together – of ordinary people coming together – to make something happen for the good of all people.”
Words do matter.
“Viruses know no borders and they don’t care about your ethnicity, the color of your skin or the money you have in the bank,” Dr. Mike Ryan of the World Health Organization said at a news conference this week. “So, it’s really important we be careful in the language we use lest it lead to the profiling of individuals associated with the virus.”
Read more on responsible actions you can take HERE.
Janice Lee is managing editor of shades Magazine. She served on the board of directors of the Break the Silence Coalition Against Anti-Asian Violence where she reported on hate crimes nationally and was Deputy Executive Director of the national Asian American Journalists Association where she promoted fair and accurate media coverage of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans. A fourth-generation San Francisco Chinese American, she currently provides strategic management and communications consulting to organizations and businesses.
Updated: 6/27/23
Original post date: 3/23/20