Episode 7 – #HateIsAVirus
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Full Transcript (Note: Transcribed via AI, may contain errors)
Jesse Lin 0:09
Hi there. I’m Jesse Lin.
Angela Lin 0:09
And I’m Angela Lin and welcome back to another episode of but where are you really from?
Jesse Lin 0:16
Before we get started, we just wanted to let you guys know that we are discussing topics around racism this week. So if this is not comfortable for you, you’ve been warned.
Angela Lin 0:28
But if you are comfortable, we are about to get into it now. So yes, first we want to talk about the elephant in the room. It is Coronavirus right now, we’re all stuck in quarantine. And something that’s been popping up and headlines over and over again is the fact that there’s a ton of anti Asian racism happening as a result of COVID-19. So we wanted to talk a little bit about why this racism is happening now. why it should not be happening. And if it’s actually something that’s like, net new or if it’s based on a pretty strong foundation of historical racism against our community, in terms of the ladder, I think our hypothesis is that it’s not new. It’s just a new reason and kind of forum for people who are racist against our community to feel justified in kind of doubling down on that hatred, because there is a history behind keeping Asians out of the community and kept in this kind of other label. So looking back at like 100 plus years ago, when Chinese immigrants were first coming to America, at that point, there was a Chinese Exclusion Act because you know, our people are hard work and we’re willing to take up whatever jobs there are and make our way through and white people weren’t happy about that back then. So they were already trying to borrow Chinese immigrants from coming to the US back then. That was a long time ago, you could argue that things have gotten better since then. But then in the 1940s, Japanese people got the brunt of the hatred and they were forced into internment camps. That’s not that long ago. And then as you get further into modern day, you realize, wait, it didn’t stop at all the civil rights movement wasn’t just about black people. Obviously, that was a huge part of that movement. But it also had huge impacts on the quality of all people of color. So we’re definitely included in that. And then 911 was probably like the most recent case of anti Asian in the the kind of broader sense. But basically, if you had brown skin, you were racially profiled during that time and had a lot of hate towards you. So net net, not new.
Jesse Lin 2:56
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you look back at the history that you just walked us through. What I see basically is there’s a legacy of racism. But I think coming off of our episode last week where we talk about media representation, I think it’s also really important to take a look at things that are being really pushed by how the media or certain figures in the media, cough, cough, our president, are representing this pandemic to the public. And one of the things that we really want to talk about is why it’s problematic to present the virus as a Chinese virus or the Wu Han virus. You can see a lot of the reasons why from the who, but there are a number of problems with that. The first is that it really connects the illness to a specific group of people and creating that connection suggests or some kind of fault of the illness belonging to that region or that people and somehow that they caused it or they intended This Joker. It’s also problematic from the standpoint of people within here, because I think people can start to think about it. And of course, I think we all did through the lens of false security, because we were like, Oh, it’s simple on China, like, that’s so far away, like, there’s no way that’s gonna like get all the way here. It’s just like stars, it’s gonna die down. And I think that really gave a sense of false security to people where they should have been more more careful at the time. In a sense, it also scapegoats people, so people care less about what’s happening, where you’re talking about, oh, it’s, it’s a situation or it’s a disease, it’s happening over there. It doesn’t really matter to us. So I think there are things stemming out of the legacy of racism in the US, but there are also many, many things that are being instigated by, let’s say, exaggerated or miss information around the pandemic.
Angela Lin 4:52
Another challenge that’s been coming up and the reason behind a lot of the attacks that have been happening lately is that aside from the sense of have false security of like it it’s only happening in China. There’s also this misperception that like it’s in Chinese people’s blood or something that like if you’re Chinese you already have Coronavirus so like if you encounter a Chinese person on the street and they cough then like you’re gonna get Corona virus because they’re Chinese and they happen to be around you. I think that actually a huge portion of the attacks have been because they’re like, you Chinese person you have Coronavirus I don’t want and they’re like trying to they actually think that like ultra is love Coronavirus or something. So, that’s just like another form of stupidity but is like an association that we’ll have. Just because if you call it like the Chinese virus, especially, you know,
Jesse Lin 5:46
yeah, I definitely agree with you there. It’s a situation where immediately connects our community of people to this particular pandemic. And it eliminates all of the kind of critical thinking that happens in between Besides that, like all of that kind of is removed and replaced by this like terrible kind of gut reaction to the person based off of what they look like. Totally. Okay, so then to wrap up this kind of opening section to set up this topic, we want to talk a little bit about how it’s making this anti Asian movement right now is making us feel as Asian Americans. I mean, for me, it’s just kind of like getting a cold glass of water thrown in your face. Because, you know, part of the pursuit of my own personal life has been to go after all the things that will make me appear successful. And people always think that once you get to that level, you’re not touchable in a sense, like you’re above the lower layer of being able to be brought down by superficial things, and that people will see you for your merit and your contribution. And this is one of those situations where I mean by co glass of water, the phases you can see, it’s really not the case like there is really really deep seated hatred for other type people. And it really just comes roaring out and like that ugliness comes out and becomes a very visible in situations like this where it’s very extreme. There’s a very extreme circumstance. So for me, it’s literally like a cold glass of water to my face. I don’t know what to do. I’m a little bit in shock. I’m just kind of wondering what has happened because someone threw a cold glass of water in my face. So that’s how I’m feeling about seeing all this kind of new surface.
Angela Lin 7:45
Yeah, definitely for sure. For me also the I can relate to that cold glass of water feeling it also kind of like wakes you up to remind you that you’re different that you just from like an appearance standpoint, right? Like, that’s all they can base off of right now, especially when everyone’s wearing masks, right? It’s just like top half of your face pretty much, but they’re gonna judge you instantly based on that. So for me, it’s made me frankly scared and like paranoid to go outside because even though we both live in like, you know, super Metropolitan, multicultural cities, there’s still racism in both these cities. And certainly a lot of the attacks that have been happening have happened in both our cities. And so I don’t feel I don’t want to kid myself that just because I’m in San Francisco and not like Middle America that when I walk outside, there isn’t a chance that I’m going to get some negative attention. So when I do I really go outside now and when I do go for like grocery shopping or whatever, I’m super paranoid. I look all around me. I’m like expecting someone to yell at me at any moment. It’s just not a great way to live I hate it.
News Clip 9:04
Three Asian American family members, including a two year old and six year old were stabbed. The suspect indicated that he stabbed the family because he thought the family was Chinese and infecting people with the corona virus. It’s a
News Clip 9:18
disturbing video that has gotten worldwide attention. video posted to Instagram showing an older Asian man in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood, collecting empty cans being confronted, assaulted and humiliated by a man as others watch
News Clip 9:36
Sunday night in Decker heights. Police say this 51 year old resident was simply taking out her garbage when a man doused or with some kind of chemical which burned her face, neck, shoulders and back. The Asian American victim was rushed to the hospital while the man took off.
Jesse Lin 9:55
Wow. So these are pretty heavy stories and I’m sure they’re stories that you You guys have heard they’ve been around the news pretty heavily. But we also wanted to take some time to focus on some local stories, some stories that are kind of near and dear to our hearts in our local communities. So I’ll kick it off to Angela to feature her first story.
Angela Lin 10:19
This story came from the incident report that’s run by the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council. So because people are scared to report these attacks, these daily incidents are happening to them to the police. So this council, which is a nonprofit that you all should donate to, but they starting like a month ago or more, created this incident report that is translated into many, many different Asian languages, making it as accessible as possible to all the various Asian communities that are facing hatred right now for people to easily and anonymously report what’s happening to them. them in the streets and just want to throw out a stat so everyone knew like the degree to which this is happening per week. That Council is receiving 1100 reports every week, which is insane because if you think about it 1100 is way low balling it, because these are only the people that are willing to fill out this form work. Yeah, like think about how many people are just like taking these, especially the verbal assaults and just like trying to brush it off, but obviously it’s like impacting their lives, right? If 1100 is what’s documented, I can only imagine how many are actually happening per week. It’s just crazy. So I wanted to highlight one that is a bit untraditional and shows you that this racism is like pervading into all different channels, platforms like ways of community, and it is just harboring this feeling of like we’re not safe anywhere. So The story that I’m choosing here was written in by someone in a university. And they talked about how they were holding a zoom conference because everyone has to, you know, do everything over video call right now. And I’m sure most of you have heard that zoom has been under a lot of security breaches recently, because so many people are now using zoom. And it’s like fairly easy for people to hack into other people’s conference calls. So basically, the student organization was using zoom to hold board elections for their organization. And there were 40 or more people on the call of all different Asian American descent and then all of a sudden, the call was interrupted by a bunch of random anonymous hackers, who started flooding the call with all this hateful speech, racial slurs, they were using, like fake broken English to mock everyone because they could see that everyone’s using And one of them apparently yells like all y’all have Coronavirus every single one of you. So this just goes again to that like, first of all just blind hatred but like definitely points to that bullshit of like people just assuming that because you’re Asian you have Coronavirus like fuck is that?
Jesse Lin 13:20
I agree and situations like this I always find really strange in a sense because like, you must be going like way, way, way way out of your way I’m talking like you drove five hours in the wrong direction to piss somebody off to show how deeply I think racism against Asians and racism in general is ingrained in the American like society, the public that someone would go so far out of their way to really put a group of people down for no reason like these people were minding their own business they were doing their own activity that had nothing to do with it. Wasn’t even organizing or anything, you know, that really pisses me off because you’re basically just, you’re basically just going into someone’s activity, like flipping them off for no reason. And then like leaving, that’s awful. And I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do that.
Angela Lin 14:15
It also feels so invasive. Like, can you imagine if like, our FaceTime that we’re doing right now is someone randomly like hacked it and started yelling racial slurs at us? Like, I would be so shocked at like, you wouldn’t know how to react because that’s not what I expect within the context of like having this seemingly intimate conversation.
Jesse Lin 14:36
Yeah. And I also think it’s to what we were saying earlier, like, it’s not what you would expect from another person in general, right, like that level of hatred. Usually, people are like, you have to work to earn that hatred from somebody like you really got to work, but like to, for somebody to just come up into your private space, as you mentioned, and be so vile to you, you know, that’s really deep, deep. In great hatred, I think, as with all things like this, it hurts both you and the person that you’re trying to attack, right? Like, frankly, it’s a personal waste of time for a hacker, not because they’re just gonna reschedule their board meeting and they’re gonna move on,
Angela Lin 15:17
like, at
Jesse Lin 15:19
least so you’re really just wasting your own time. You know, twiddling and pissing other people off for no reason.
Angela Lin 15:26
It also makes me kind of sad because like, when hatred is directed towards young people, especially like these were University kids like they’re not even like full grown adults out in society, right? Like, I don’t know, part of me is like, I’d like to shield them from from all the hatred that’s happening outside and it makes me really sad that like they’re experiencing this there was like, No, there’s no shelter right now because everything’s happening over the internet. So it’s like all all bets are off. I have
Jesse Lin 15:59
to agree with with you on that point regarding, I think what you’re talking about in terms of their sense, although we know we’re not at innocence in college, right? I’m just saying, like, college for me was such a great couple of years because I found a group of people who like really treated me for me uplifted me and celebrated the person that I am. For that not to be the experience of someone else, I think is it is really, really sad and disheartening, something like that is just like, really, you just feel icky about it, and you feel gross, and you don’t feel nice, because you didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t like anything that you did, and there’s nothing you did to deserve it and nothing you can do to prevent it. And I think that both of those things are really hard for a person to swallow.
Angela Lin 16:48
So that was mine, and what did you want to share?
Jesse Lin 16:51
Yeah, so what I wanted to share was kind of just a very local incidents of basically something One being tact or looking Asian. And basically what happened was there was an attack of a woman on a New York City Bus by a bunch of teenage girls. And it happened up in the Bronx. I think in like, basically the middle of the day, she wasn’t doing anything. So this is one of those things that I wanted to feature. There are multiple things that go against the idea that racism doesn’t exist anymore. And the first thing is, it happened in a very visible place. The woman is riding on public bus. It happened during the day so it’s not like the woman was riding the bus at like a really late hour or an hour you might consider to be unsafe. So those are like the first two things like you know, people always blame the victim time in the place. Well, it’s not the situation for her. And the third thing is that there is always the kind of everybody loses scenario with these attacks because then people immediately Always minorities attacking minorities, look at how gross all of them are. And so I think that those are all, like huge problems that are like lumped up into this, this one attack. And what makes me feel really sad about it is that same with your situation, it’s unprovoked, like people are kind of going out of their way to make other people miserable. And in doing so harming themselves because if she got the Coronavirus, you have it now from attacking. You probably wouldn’t have had it. So, you know, like, it’s all these things where you’re kind of just like, you can slowly, slowly see people devolve into just the like, like the gross, emotional like nasty gut reaction. That is what racism basically is where you’re just kind of like, Oh, no, like, Oh, this other person. I don’t like that. with that. Really analyzing what’s driving those emotions. This story was just very upsetting for me.
Angela Lin 19:07
The minority against minority thing really troubles me because it’s interesting the way you put it up, like it puts all of us down when this kind of stuff happens. But the way I read it was more like, we should be standing up for each other, like, you know, every PRC has gone through some shit for, you know, each community has had its own struggles based on the way they look and the history that they’ve had with America and with white people. And so, especially during this kind of time, we should be banding together, not trying to like separate us apart even further. So that like really bothered me. And then the attackers were like 15 or something, right, like they were younger kids. And so to your point of like, hatred and racism, just being these like gut reactions, like you’re not even thinking about it. Kids also I, I feel kind of bad for them. But I’d also also not, but I’m kind of like, was it worth it for you to have to display that kind of act? Because you’ve now probably like ruined your life? Because if you didn’t already have a criminal record before you certainly do now and like, what implication does that have on your future?
Jesse Lin 20:24
Yeah, I think that really goes to the insidiousness of racism related to kind of what you were saying with age I it’s another it’s another thing that refutes the idea that racism is just extremism right. It’s only those crazy people who live in their you know, who live in the swamp and where kkk hats. It’s like a minority of people. It’s not, it can like you can anyone can have a racist reaction to something I can’t speak to you and be and tell you that I’ve never had a racist reaction. Just something I had tough. We have, I think Everybody does. But it really matters. What happens after you have that feeling like, are you going to think about what you’re feeling and try to diffuse that, or you’re just going to act with crazy. And I think that’s, that’s one of those. This is one of those situations that really highlights that racism is not like a pocket thing that lives in only areas that are not Metro, major metropolitan areas. It’s everywhere. It’s in everyone. And there’s always the potential that it can kind of pop out. The other thing that I wanted to talk about with age, and I think I feel particularly privileged about it is I personally feel like most of these I mean, anecdotally, I feel like most of these attacks happen against older Asian Americans, people who look like they might have immigrant immigrated here because I think that’s what people are seeing on the news stories when they see like oh, virus came from China cut just shot of Wu Han is like old people like people who look just like people here because They emigrated from there, right? They dress the same, they kind of maybe have some of the same mannerisms, versus like we don’t, we look very much like we’re westernized kids, basically. So that’s the other thing is that I feel in a way, privileged in a bad way because I don’t look like I’m from there. And as as a result of that, I don’t feel as I do feel like I need to be more careful as I go outside, but I don’t feel as pressured as I think I would if I looked like someone who just immigrated here.
Angela Lin 22:34
That’s a really interesting point of view. I would play devil’s advocate here in that when I was in Spain and you also studied abroad in Spain, we have very similar college lives, but I’m one of the thoughts that I kept having in my mind was like, I literally look nothing like these Chinese immigrants that are in Spain, because for those of you who Don’t know, in Spain, all of the people who own the kind of like corner stores delis, and like pawning things on the street are Chinese immigrants, and they are like straight from China Chinese people. So I didn’t feel like I looked anything like them. Like I’m very dark, they’re very light, I dress very differently. I obviously my like accent for when I speak Spanish would be very different because I’m basing it off an American accent, you know. So there are all these things in my head where I’m like, it’s so obvious that I’m like, different from those people. And yet, we talked about this before, but like, you know, I was getting called Cina like on this tree every fucking day every five seconds because in their minds, I didn’t look any different from from those people. So like, I do think there was a bit of like a narrow view when we’re thinking of like, I’m so different from that group, because to the point of before, we’re talking about us as an Asian community being seen as the other and itself. actually being carved out as other now during this like dividing time, I think it’s very easy for non Asian people to group us all together, whether you’re straight from Asia just moved here a month ago or you have you’re born here like sixth generation Asian American, I don’t think that line is necessarily there right now. And for me the age of like that woman being old and a lot of old people being attached for me, I see that more as like they are easy targets. Like these attackers have a lot of hate and they’re trying to find some scapegoat. And they know that old people are an easy target. Like you’re not going to fight back as much as a young person who’s fit and healthy. It’s easier to attack a helpless old person that makes me really sad. But that’s my perspective of why it’s happening a lot to old people not so much. I think there is definitely a point of like similarity that you could perceive of like, you know, they they act orange Press more like the people in hon. But I think it more has to do with like their fragility.
Jesse Lin 25:06
Wow. I mean, honestly, that just makes me feel worse about it like, person while they’re down like, yeah, Jesus. So we know that there are many, many reports of things that are not great that are happening across the country and in our communities. But we also want to highlight some really good shining, bright moments that have been happening through all of this and how members of our community are really coming together and making things happen in this crisis. So Angela, would you like to share your uplifting story of the week?
Angela Lin 25:45
Yes, for my uplifting story today, I wanted to kind of tie together our last few episodes and draw on something that is coming from our homeland, Taiwan. So for those who are not aware, Taiwan is one of the major success stories of the COVID outbreak right now because they opted super early like as soon as the first few cases were reported from Mohan they’re like shut the shut down because you know Taiwan’s very close to China so they were able to take super swift action make sure that they the cutoff travel they implemented the must wear masks or you’re going to be fined heavily rules and overall just did like really, really well to the point that now months after the first case was reported in hon like they are reporting some of the lowest numbers today. And that’s it’s just such a shining light. And so it’s already really awesome that like you know, our motherland is one of the shining examples of having really strong policy during this time. But not only that, they’re not just like gloating about their success. They’re doing something about trying to help the rest of the international community. So So my uplifting story is about how Taiwan in the last week or two announced that they are donating 10 million masks globally.
Jesse Lin 27:10
Wow.
Angela Lin 27:12
So they are donating 7 million to Europe because you know, Spain, Italy, etc are getting hit real hard. So they’re disproportionately donating a lot to Europe and 2 million to the US. This is just so uplifting because it’s like, it’s such a good show of leadership to you from the president because she has come out in a lot of speeches to be like, you know, this is not the time to just focus on our little community. This is the time to band together as the international community like we are one, you know, human race, so we need to help each other out and donating this much of your money and your resources to help out countries that are not your own is just like such an uplifting story for me, and I’m sure for a lot of people, so I’m very proud of our motherland. Oh, oh, this is such a cute story. By fact, the man who invented the at 95 respirators Peter Tsai is Taiwanese. I did not know that.
Jesse Lin 28:17
I actually was listening to NPR. And they were he’s retired now. But when all of this happened, they brought him out of retirement. They’re like, Can you figure out how we can reuse these masters? Because we don’t have enough of them.
Angela Lin 28:30
That’s amazing. Yeah, yeah, Taiwanese, I love it. All right. So what’s your story uplifting stories.
Jesse Lin 28:37
So my uplifting story is about a restaurant called Zen Ya. Here in my neighborhood in Sunnyside, Queens, maybe one or two miles away from one of the most hardest affected areas in the city, which is like the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens. So that hospital has been hit really hard with patients and not enough equipment. So they’ve been looking. I mean, they really been looking for like resources peepee like people to just help out. And I think what I’ve seen come out of the community in terms of like restaurants and people, volunteering their time and services, there has been phenomenal. And I just wanted to focus on this particular restaurant because I have eaten there before. And it’s really nice. And be actually the owners of this restaurant, their restaurant burned down last year. So they’re technically like, not even really in the community anymore. But they’re still helping to support the Elmhurst hospital by joining the community kind of push to have food made available for all the hospital workers during this time period. And I think that this is just it’s really it’s a small thing, but it’s small acts like these like small gestures like this that come from the local community that I really do think matter and are really important to kind of counterbalance the terrible things that we were just talking about earlier. So I really love that this effort is community driven. I really love that despite the hardships that this restaurant and restaurant or team has gone through, they still feel like they belong to the community and they want to give something back during a difficult time like this
Angela Lin 30:20
so selfless, especially after having a disastrous fire burning down your restaurant moment. So recently, it’s like going beyond your own personal troubles and focusing on the bigger picture.
Angela Lin 31:07
All right, so we are now in our fortune cookie closing section. And even though this episode has been quite heavy in a lot of ways, we wanted to make sure that we still end on a sweet treat. And Jesse will tell you more about what that is. Don’t worry, it’s tasteful. But before we get into that, we did want to plug our usual call to action to have you guys email us about your opinion on this topic. So we’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter if you have experienced any harassment during this time, or if you’ve seen some really uplifting stuff coming from the community or helping the community during this time. Those are all things that we’d love to hear from you. And we’d love to share on an upcoming episode. So feel free to email us. telluswhereyourefrom@gmail.com. And again that y-o-u-r-e
Jesse Lin 32:09
So speaking of uplifting things. We wanted to cap off our episode this week by giving you guys information to some local and national groups where you can donate if you’re interested to contribute to the fight against racism and empowerment of our communities. So, I’m going to feature the one that I picked for New York City, which is the Chinese American Planning Council. And their mission is to promote the social empowerment of Chinese American, American, immigrant and low income communities. And if you didn’t know this, you can donate directly to them through the link in our description, or you can set them as your default donation recipient it smiles.amazon.com
Angela Lin 33:00
Other groups nonprofits, Jesse covered off East Coast, I’m going to cover off West Coast. So earlier I mentioned the group that founded that incident report that’s helping give a voice to all of the people in the community that are experiencing harassment during this time. That is the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council. I think they’re playing a huge role right now in shining a light on what’s happening to our community and giving legitimacy and data to our policymakers to do something about it. And a fun fact they are la based so they are representing California and they are also a nonprofit. So you can either donate to them at the link that again is in our show notes, or you can set your amazon smile preference to them if you prefer to donate to California base one.
Jesse Lin 33:55
The final organization we wanted to plug tonight is a national organization, Southern Poverty Law Center. I think many of you guys might notice that from seeing various press releases that they put out. But this organization basically tracks and documents racist groups around the US and their focus is on addressing inequality both from the racist racism standpoint, Immigration Equality, LGBT equality. So once all this is over, and kind of the immediate in your face racism is gone. We hope that everyone will continue to donate to the organizations which is plugged before as well as national organizations like this to continue to empower our disenfranchised communities.
Angela Lin 34:43
Yeah, I just want to plug that like even though we focus this episode on what’s happening to the Asian community right now, under the context of the COVID-19 situation. Racism happens all the time and not just to our communities. So this is The time to band together for all people of color. So that’s why we wanted to highlight an organization that’s not just focused on the Asian community but helping to stop hatred of all of all communities.
Jesse Lin 35:13
Yeah. So link to SPL center will also be found in the description of the podcast episode. Yes.
Angela Lin 35:21
Yeah. All right. So, as always, if you liked this episode, we ask that you please like follow, subscribe, and share. I think that’s something that we share a lot. But please do if you’re enjoying this so that we can make sure that we keep coming out with new content each week. And with that said, Come back next week because we will have a new episode for you then.
Jesse Lin 35:46
Until then…
All 35:47
Zai jian, bitches!