Throughout history, pandemics often need a scapegoat to blame. In the 1300s, when the Black Plague spread through Europe, a third of Europe’s population was killed. Without a good understanding of science, people quickly blamed Jews for the pandemic as a scapegoat. Genocide and persecutions of Jews in Europe became commonplace throughout the 14th century., and would continue in centuries to come.
The scapegoating of minorities in pandemics spread to America as well. During the cholera outbreak in the 19th century, Irish immigrants were blamed. In the early 20th century, Italians were blamed for the spread of polio.
Now, Asian-Americans are being scapegoated for the Coronavirus. As a first-generation Chinese-American and the first person in my family to be born in the United States, this scapegoating is affecting me personally.
President Trump has used the moniker of the “Chinese virus”. I have frequently seen videos of anti-Asian attacks on social media as people have blamed Asians for the origins and spread of the disease. Even health care professionals have seen instances of anti-Asian discrimination, with Dr. Chen Fu of NYU’s Langone Medical Center having someone yell racial slurs at him in the subway. I have had a friend ask why “my people” decided to eat bats and decide to bring the Coronavirus over from China.
I’ve heard these stories, seen them, and even had jokes, and to be honest, I’ve thought that these attacks and discrimination have been bad, but haven’t thought much deeper than that. In fact, I am more likely in most situations to just lean the other way. I don’t like China as much as the average American. I don’t stand tall with many “saving face” aspects of traditional Asian cultures I have been brought up with, and I have always thought that Asians are a lot more privileged as a whole than other minorities, and that we should be grateful to be in the United States.
I have even laughed along with and made jokes about Asians myself with my friends, and have even laughed along when people used the word “chink”.
All of this isn’t to say that I don’t take Asian-American discrimination seriously. There is no place for hate-related violence in a civil society, but I have always wondered whether my complicity with Asian-American racism is hurting the cause. I never would ask someone else to be a representative for their ethnicity, so how I choose to handle my own ethnicity, whether with humor or just being a “good sport”, is my own business.
I am a pretty whitewashed Asian-American who was born and grew up in the United States, and would proudly embrace the label of “banana”. I don’t like speaking Chinese. I have always felt justified feeling the way I did, because I always saw the alternative as embracing the toxic conservatism, extreme image-consciousness, and materialism of my Chinese family members as much worse. I never had anything to feel sorry for, nothing to feel ashamed of.
I felt that way until last night, when I watched the season finale of “The Plot Against America”, a show created by David Simon and Ed Burns about a dystopian American history if Charles Lindbergh, an isolationist anti-Semite, won the 1940 presidential election against Franklin D. Roosevelt. An adaptation of the 2004 Phillip Roth novel, the show quickly makes a turn supporting Lindbergh as a national hero to a dystopian reality where Jews are attacked and killed openly without any intervention from law enforcement or Lindbergh himself.
Some people watching the show may think that such a reality could never happen. However, you and I both know that such a reality absolutely could happen is happening to some degree. In “The Plot Against America,” a high-profile radio personality campaigning in an election against Lindbergh is assassinated in Kentucky. Lindbergh, the aviator who famously flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean, flies to Louisville and makes no public statement against the assassination and no denunciation against the violence and hate Jews face across the country.
The main family, the Levins, a working-middle class Jewish family living in Newark, are divided on Lindbergh. While Bess and Herman, the patriarch and matriarch of the family, stand tall against Lindbergh and his silence on antisemitism, the feelings of the rest of the family are more complicated. Sandy, the oldest son, sees Lindbergh as a hero and calls his parents “ghetto Jews” for their staunch opposition to them and their outspoken alarm to emboldened antisemitism. Bess’s sister, Evelyn, marries a rabbi named Bengelsdorf who openly supports who pushed Jews to assimilate more and openly supports Lindbergh. Before the Election of 1940, Bengelsdorf campaigns for Lindbergh and his support and loyalty become so strong that he and Evelyn end up becoming the token Jewish spokespeople for Lindbergh’s administration.
Like the Levin family depicted in “The Plot Against America,” each minority group has a very diverse range of views on how to handle racism, discrimination, and hate. For my entire life, Asian-Americans have had no paucity of ideological diversity. I have had many friends lament how college admissions have been racist against Asians, something I have spoken openly against. The same conversations have been had about supposedly biased medical school admissions.
I have never thought Asians have had it as badly as other minorities. We can walk down the street with almost no fear of being treated unfairly by law enforcement, and the cultural assumption of Asians is that we are “model minorities” who occupy the highest echelons of society through a fierce devotion to education and an unparalleled work ethic. As much as these assumptions may be limiting, we don’t have to worry about our safety. We don’t have to worry about our lives.
It wasn’t until this period that those assumptions finally went challenged. And it wasn’t until I watched “The Plot Against America” that those assumptions went seriously challenged.
In the show, Bengelsdorf is so much of a Lindbergh sympathizer that he introduces a bill through Congress named “Homestead 42,” a bill advocating for the relocation of Jews to the heartland of America. He constantly reassures people that Lindbergh does not stand by attacks against Jews and violence against Jewish-owned businesses, even though Lindbergh has made no such declaration himself. In one particularly frightening scene in the last episode, Herman and Sandy are driving through a part of the Midwest when a Klansman steps in front of their car, and slowly walks in front of it while staring Herman down. Sandy is shaking and Herman is reaching for his gun, before thankfully nothing happens. Even then, Bengelsdorf stood by Lindbergh.
I wondered whether my attitudes made me a Bengelsdorf. No, I don’t openly endorse Trump’s comments about the Coronavirus being a “Chinese virus,” but I also don’t speak out too openly against them because it’s not a priority. When violence is being committed against a lot of Asians in this country, when many a lot Asians can’t walk across the street without fearing an ethnic slur or even violence being lodged against them, why am I still silent?
The onus should lie on our leadership to speak out against hate and protect our civil liberties, but Trump, like Lindbergh in “The Plot Against America,” has made no public declaration against anti-Asian racism, and we can’t expect him to either. If there are any heroes in “The Plot Against America,” it was the ordinary people who refused to accept anti-Jewish rhetoric and hate. It was a tour guide who told someone making an antisemitic comment to stop. It was a family in Kentucky that housed an orphaned Jewish child after his mother was killed by the KKK.
Likewise, this historic moment will rely on ordinary people to stop racism and hate, Asian or not. It will require me to stop being so silent and keeping my disgust private when seeing an instance of anti-Asian violence, and for me, as much as I may stand against the toxic nature of traditional Asian values, I love my family and the people in America who look like me struggling to find their place in American society.
The least I can do, personally, is to confront the hate and speak out against anti-Asian racism during this pandemic. In “The Plot Against America,” the German American Bund is empowered to gather and raise swastikas after Lindbergh’s election. The silence of our leadership in denouncing anti-Asian hate has empowered more people to not feel accountable for their actions. That silence comes from Asians like me as much as it comes from non-Asians.
No matter where we stand, violence and hate have no place in America.
It didn’t when Muslim and Arab-Americans in the United States were discriminated against after 9/11, and it doesn’t now when hate crimes against Asians are on the rise.
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