Below is a letter to the editor that I sent to a couple papers. I got the info about unemployment rates here. (UPDATE 4/2/21 The unemployment rates I looked at are not OFFICIAL figures, they are adjusted by Pew Research and I assume they're more accurate than the official figures) UPDATE 8/23/24 this was published April 25th 2021 in the Daily Camera and March 25th in the Boulder Weekly.
Editor,
Even if the recent shootings of Asian-Americans in Atlanta, GA were
not racially motivated, there is a serious problem with violence
towards and harassment of that part of our population in the last year.
And it’s not just violence- economically Asian-America has been in
decline, more so than the general population (they went from having an
unemployment rate roughly the same as that of white people, to having
one in May of 2020 that was more than 1.5 times the white one.
This hostile environment is largely the product of Donald Trump’s
insistence on blaming China for COVID-19. He insists on calling it the
China virus, the Wuhan Virus, or the “Kung Flu.” A lot of Trump
supporters probably would say that objecting to use of that last one is
evidence that one doesn’t have a sense of humor. But it’s very
offensive. It goes further than calling it the China virus. It implies
that there’s is something culturally Chinese about the virus. Going back
to the less offensive terms, I don’t think anyone called “Mad Cow
Disease” the “English disease” (I don’t think that even Irish
republicans called it that).
Some people who call it “Kung Flu” might say that the absolutely
serious nature of this public health emergency justifies the hostility
towards Asian-Americans, but it’s the opposite. I’m sure it’s very
upsetting for Asian-Americans to think about how so many Americans blame
part of their community for COVID-19 deaths.
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