The Perception of Race
These are certainly interesting times to be living in.
At the expense of getting carried away with talking about all the current events taking place, I feel that it is safe to assume that everyone is aware of what's going on right now in regards to the COVID-19 virus. Everyone's life has been impacted to some degree by social distancing and generally increased hygienic awareness, but the Coronavirus disease has rather unexpectedly been tapping into a darker vein of the world's psyche. Discrimination, intimidation, and outright attacks directed towards Asian people worldwide have increased dramatically, especially in the United States. But why?
Well, it's really no secret why its happening. The outbreak of the COVID-19 virus as we know it started in the Chinese city of Wuhan and, due to many different factors, has spread across eastern Asia and ultimately internationally. Because of this, many people irrationally place the blame on people of Chinese heritage or Asian people in general for the pandemic. However, the often violent interactions that are produced from this blame aren't some bizarre, isolated symptom of acute stress -- it's a part of a deep-seated racist and xenophobic perception of east Asia and its population. Whether it's assaulting a pedestrian or hearing a classmate mutter "f---ing Chinese people won't stay in their f---ing country" under their breath, this racist discrimination seems to be conceived from a stereotype of uncleanliness in China.
It's true that the commonplace open-air markets in China led to the contamination of products in Wuhan and that many people live in densely populated cities where disease can spread easily - however -that doesn't mean that Chinese people are at fault or the only ones who can transmit the virus. Italy saw an even steeper curve of new cases, but little is being said about how Italians are at fault. Asian people are often stereotyped as being impoverished and living in very unsanitary conditions, an image that rose in popularity during America's involvement in the Pacific War. Pop culture and mass media only aided this racist trope in being baked into the common conception of eastern Asian countries, despite large infrastructure changes in the decades since.
But going back to the point about the disease being spread in Italy -- why haven't we seen that level of discrimination directed towards this demographic? The shortest and most direct answer is simply Perception. Capital-p Perception concerns how people can easily pick out a person from China, South Korea, or Vietnam with relative ease but would struggle much more to pick out a person from a specific region of Europe. And I use Europe for this example for a very specific reason; I discussed an image from a 19th-century book that attempted to separate black people from white people the way one would animal species in my last blog post. The image compared a rather cartoonish engraving of an African slave to that of a greek sculpture of Apollo - both are caricatures, but a marble statue of the god of the sun is going to have a very different connotation that of an exaggerated depiction of an enslaved man to individuals in the 1800s.
But what does Apollo have to do with 21st-century racism? Well, my point concerns that of how Europeans have cultivated an image for themselves to make themselves appear to be more upstanding and proper - to be perceived as the most civil race. On top of this, the way that America earned its nickname of "the Melting Pot" of ethnicities and cultures during the industrial revolution allowed a more homogenous image of the "proper" white person. East Asia is fairly genetically uniform as compared to America, but the average person slinging epithets and spewing bodily fluids isn't taking the moment to consider their victim's genetic makeup. All they care about is the fact that the person that they're targeting doesn't look like them (I.e. fair skin, light hair) and instead is perceived as an ethnicity associated with some sort of threat (I.e. the COVID-19 virus.)
One of the main themes in Aronson's book Race concerns the way that humans, for all of history, have separated each other based on perceived differences, whether those be religious, political, or racial. The world has not been able to escape this deeply engrained perception that we have of people from East Asia, and the violence surrounding the current pandemic only brings the fact to the surface where everyone can see. We perceive these people, either consciously or unconsciously, as different from our idea of 'safe', and that innate sense of fear for the unknown takes over in us.
The silver lining to this is the fact that people are talking about it in the first place. The topic of racism has often focused on the most extreme case, that of the oppression of black people, but we are becoming more aware of the other ways that racial supremacy has been baked into European culture and its derivatives. Now that we are forced to confront this issue, we can expand the discussion that it deserves to those who need to hear it, which is everyone.
At the expense of getting carried away with talking about all the current events taking place, I feel that it is safe to assume that everyone is aware of what's going on right now in regards to the COVID-19 virus. Everyone's life has been impacted to some degree by social distancing and generally increased hygienic awareness, but the Coronavirus disease has rather unexpectedly been tapping into a darker vein of the world's psyche. Discrimination, intimidation, and outright attacks directed towards Asian people worldwide have increased dramatically, especially in the United States. But why?
Well, it's really no secret why its happening. The outbreak of the COVID-19 virus as we know it started in the Chinese city of Wuhan and, due to many different factors, has spread across eastern Asia and ultimately internationally. Because of this, many people irrationally place the blame on people of Chinese heritage or Asian people in general for the pandemic. However, the often violent interactions that are produced from this blame aren't some bizarre, isolated symptom of acute stress -- it's a part of a deep-seated racist and xenophobic perception of east Asia and its population. Whether it's assaulting a pedestrian or hearing a classmate mutter "f---ing Chinese people won't stay in their f---ing country" under their breath, this racist discrimination seems to be conceived from a stereotype of uncleanliness in China.
It's true that the commonplace open-air markets in China led to the contamination of products in Wuhan and that many people live in densely populated cities where disease can spread easily - however -that doesn't mean that Chinese people are at fault or the only ones who can transmit the virus. Italy saw an even steeper curve of new cases, but little is being said about how Italians are at fault. Asian people are often stereotyped as being impoverished and living in very unsanitary conditions, an image that rose in popularity during America's involvement in the Pacific War. Pop culture and mass media only aided this racist trope in being baked into the common conception of eastern Asian countries, despite large infrastructure changes in the decades since.
But going back to the point about the disease being spread in Italy -- why haven't we seen that level of discrimination directed towards this demographic? The shortest and most direct answer is simply Perception. Capital-p Perception concerns how people can easily pick out a person from China, South Korea, or Vietnam with relative ease but would struggle much more to pick out a person from a specific region of Europe. And I use Europe for this example for a very specific reason; I discussed an image from a 19th-century book that attempted to separate black people from white people the way one would animal species in my last blog post. The image compared a rather cartoonish engraving of an African slave to that of a greek sculpture of Apollo - both are caricatures, but a marble statue of the god of the sun is going to have a very different connotation that of an exaggerated depiction of an enslaved man to individuals in the 1800s.
But what does Apollo have to do with 21st-century racism? Well, my point concerns that of how Europeans have cultivated an image for themselves to make themselves appear to be more upstanding and proper - to be perceived as the most civil race. On top of this, the way that America earned its nickname of "the Melting Pot" of ethnicities and cultures during the industrial revolution allowed a more homogenous image of the "proper" white person. East Asia is fairly genetically uniform as compared to America, but the average person slinging epithets and spewing bodily fluids isn't taking the moment to consider their victim's genetic makeup. All they care about is the fact that the person that they're targeting doesn't look like them (I.e. fair skin, light hair) and instead is perceived as an ethnicity associated with some sort of threat (I.e. the COVID-19 virus.)
One of the main themes in Aronson's book Race concerns the way that humans, for all of history, have separated each other based on perceived differences, whether those be religious, political, or racial. The world has not been able to escape this deeply engrained perception that we have of people from East Asia, and the violence surrounding the current pandemic only brings the fact to the surface where everyone can see. We perceive these people, either consciously or unconsciously, as different from our idea of 'safe', and that innate sense of fear for the unknown takes over in us.
The silver lining to this is the fact that people are talking about it in the first place. The topic of racism has often focused on the most extreme case, that of the oppression of black people, but we are becoming more aware of the other ways that racial supremacy has been baked into European culture and its derivatives. Now that we are forced to confront this issue, we can expand the discussion that it deserves to those who need to hear it, which is everyone.
Hi Patrick,
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, your blog post captures the moment we're living in very well. As we have seen time and time again in history, a crisis is one of the most effective ways to expose the darkest and most prejudiced parts of America.
This issue is also complicated, because it's natural -- and good for our health -- to fear the coronavirus. The problem arises when that fear is taken out on innocent people. What do you think would be a more productive, and less racist, way to collectively process that fear?
A thoughtful blog post, Patrick, with a clear discussion of one of Aronson's main points in the book. Is that what you were trying to focus on, Aronson's argument? It could be a bit more clear to me what the focus of your posts is, just to make sure you're covering all of the required topics.
ReplyDeleteAlso, was there anything in this section of the reading that highlighted some of the ideas you're discussing, as Aronson gets more contemporary with his topic?
Hey Patrick,
ReplyDeleteI really liked seeing your side of this. It's always refreshing to see different sides of topics like these. I think, especially in times like this, people become angry and look for a scapegoat for this pandemic. It's extremely unacceptable that people are making this an issue about race, considering that it's important that people should come together in crumbling times like these. However, you raised the question "why haven't we seen that level of discrimination directed towards [Italy]?" I believe we haven't seen as much discrimination in Italy because that's not where the virus originated from. It originated in China, specifically in a market where they did extremely brutal things to not only bats, but dogs, cats, snakes, and many other animals. Therefore, people all over the world will develop this anger directed towards Chinese people. It's just very unfortunate that these people now have a negative racial bias towards the Chinese.