Jiayang Fan: I've Been Mocked More And Been The Target Of Racial Slurs; Jiayang Fan: Asian-Americans Are Avoiding Speaking Their Native Languages And Are Covering Their Faces; Anti-Asian Racism In The Age Of COVID-19; Erika Lee: Xenophobia And Racism Can Get Activated During The Times Of Crisis.
ZAKARIA: At the end of March the foreign ministers of the G-7 countries met to discuss how to handle the Coronavirus? These meetings usually result in a final joint statement from the ministers. But at this meeting there was no such thing because the United States reportedly insisted that the statement call it the Wuhan virus after the Chinese city where the pandemic began. It's part of its pattern. Trump and his allies are intent on demonizing the Chinese. How does that feel if you're a Chinese American? Joining me now is Jiayang Fan a Staff Writer for "The New Yorker," and Erika Lee, the Author for "America for Americans: History of xenophobia in the United States." Jiayang Fan, let me ask you what your sense of what the connection is between this kind of rhetoric and what - the way Chinese Americans perceive it you report on this a lot but also I wondered personally, has it affected you?</s>JIAYANG FAN, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Right. So as an Asian American who has lived in this country for more than two decades, I don't think that racism is new both you know the very older variety and the somewhat subtle variety. But what I have noticed in the last few months is how pronounced that has become? For me personally, I live in New York City, one of the most cosmopolitan and diverse cities in America, in the world, I'm not Pollyannaish about not looking like majority of citizens in this city, but in the last few months I have experienced a very definite uptick of being mocked or thrown racial slurs for being Chinese. The most egregious incident was one night when I was taking out the trash, after days of being cooped in as so many of us are, and being called a Chinese bitch. That was actually, I think, hours after President Trump referred to the new Coronavirus as the Wuhan - as the Chinese virus.</s>ZAKARIA: Professor Lee, is this the kind of big shift in recent decades between - from Asian Americans as being seen as kind of the model minority? How - what does this look like in history?</s>ERIKA LEE, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: Unfortunately it's nothing new. What the President and many of his allies and many other Americans are doing is really building on a very long history of anti-Chinese and also anti-Asian racism.</s>LEE: Some rhetoric and narrative that has long associated Asian peoples no matter how long they've been in this country as foreigners, as threats as well.</s>ZAKARIA: In fact, I suppose one could go back to the Exclusion Act, which is the first time the United States had an immigration ban specifically aimed at a country or an ethnicity, right?</s>LEE: Right. So the - to Chinese Exclusion Act is the first federal law that singles out an entire immigrant group for exclusion based on race and class. It was interestingly enough, it was considered a temporary measure, much like many of the executive orders that President Trump has signed into law, but it actually ended up lasting for 61-year years it had generational consequences. It legitimized anti-Asian violence. They see an uptick and hate violence and massacres and wholesale driving out of Chinese Americans from little towns as well as big cities. So this kind of rhetoric, xenophobia and racism that is coming out from our leaders has really direct consequences. We've seen this in the past as a part of history and we're seeing it today in the number of rising hate crimes.</s>ZAKARIA: Jiayang, do you think this is something that seems to affect all Asian Americans? The President and his allies often talk about the Chinese; the Chinese Americans you may be perhaps most people would not be able to distinguish as easily between the Chinese and Koreans and Japanese-Americans. Do you think there is kind of a solidarity growing among all Asian Americans?</s>FAN: I think that for me, I do sense that it is not affecting only Chinese Americans. As you said, it's hard to distinguish between Korean Americans, Vietnamese Americans, and Japanese-Americans. It's unsettling for me to hear the number of friends and co-workers who have said who are not Chinese but who look - who are of Asian ethnicity who have said, oh, I no longer speak my native language in public or I feel compelled to wear sunglasses or to cover my face to disguise the fact that I am ethnically Chinese. I think that there is this growing sense of solidarity - solidarity is great but it's very unfortunate it's coming from this moment when we feel united by the - by this looming threat that being out in public, speaking a language that is not English might make us victims.</s>ZAKARIA: Professor Lee, how lasting are these kinds of attitudes?</s>LEE: It's absolutely very similar to that rise of hate crimes after 9/11 where Muslim, Arab-Americans, people who were mistook to be Muslim and Arab appearing was targeted with growing hate crimes. What is interesting about the way in which xenophobia and racism works is it certainly can be activated during times of crisis, like the situation we're experiencing now, but it also needs to work with active promotion, with politicians and others really, you know, using this rhetoric very often and casting blame, creating certain racial scapegoats. So in fact, many years after 9/11 and during the 2016 Presidential Election, the FBI and other organizations actually recorded a historic rise in the number of Islamophobic acts and hate crimes and that is totally connected to the Islamophobic statements of the President.</s>ZAKARIA: Erika Lee and Jiayang Fan, thank you fascinating conversation.</s>FAN: Thank you.</s>ZAKARIA: Next on "GPS," how do you protest in the age of social distancing? As it turns out very differently, I'll bring you examples from around the globe when we come back.