This is not a “reasonable” response.
, and many of those infected have shown mild symptoms similar to the average flu and have recovered at home.
Perhaps the most telling incident occurred last week at the University of California, Berkeley. Its student health center posted a list to Instagram of “normal” reactions to coronavirus including anxiety, hypervigilance, and xenophobia, which it defined as “fears about interacting with those who might be from Asia and guilt about those feelings.” After alumni complained that the post normalized racism, the university deleted the post and tweeted an apology.
It’s easy to read these incidents as the product of knee-jerk fear and ignorance. But that fear isn’t merely instinctive—it’s acculturated. “There’s a long history of thinking of Asians as disease carriers that’s at least 200 years old,” says Jason Oliver Chang, an associate professor of history and Asian American studies at the University of Connecticut.
That belief started in the 1800s, as colonial powers conscripted Chinese laborers into the coolie trade. These laborers were typically living in cramped, unsanitary conditions without access to medical care, an environment ripe for disease. When outbreaks inevitably struck in coolie camps or on boats carrying laborers, local communities grew paranoid and associated the Chinese workers with disease.
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