Hatred against people who may be identified as “Asian” has come into the focus in the recent days. Sadly, this is not a new phenomenon, but the attacks seem to have increased in the recent years.
This surely may be influenced by the role China’s government has played in enabling the pandemic. But we need to distinguish between a specific government and people who have no relation at all to this government. Does this mean we should no longer call out governments who are bad actors? Of course not. But at the same time, we need to affirm that such criticism is aimed at a specific institution and the people directly involved in it, but not at random individuals who are completely innocent in such acts.
It is depressing that this seems to need saying. Human beings are very prolific in finding scapegoats and discriminating against those they see as “other.” We need to fight against those demons inside each one of us, and governments need to actively work against enabling those who only seek excuses to lash out against their fellow human beings.
Even assumedly positive stereotypes are not helpful. They too contribute to the fetishization of so-called “others” as essentially different from our so-called “own.” The more we understand – and the more we do our part to contribute such understanding – that our similarities are greater than our differences, and that we are all more connected than we think, the more we can work against the notion that there are essential differences in humanity between people from other areas of the world.
The long list of abuses within, for instance, the United States against immigrants from Asian countries is something that needs to be brought to attention. Such abuses range from limitations on immigration, historical massacres against railroad workers, sexualization of Asian women, exoticizing and negative stereotyping, to the continued oversimplification of a culturally diverse continent which is contained in the very term “Asian.” Hopefully, we will all be able to learn from this yet another moment in the long history of the human capacity for ignorance, xenophobia and othering.
Erratic Attempts 