How the Media Used Racism to Divide Americans During Covid-19

Media Narratives of Racism and Division During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Good evening. My name is John Harris. I'm the host of the conversations that matter podcast and in this short video I'd like to express a concern. I have regarding the current situation in the United States of America regarding the coronavirus pandemic and quarantine.

Oftentimes in cases of national emergency the media comes to us with a message of unification and tightening our belts. Sacrificing getting the job done. And I could not agree more. I lived outside of New York City during 9 -11 and I saw the local community as well as the state as well as our Country come together and it was a beautiful thing.

And it's something Americans have been known for over the years. However, since the election of Donald Trump, especially there has been a message coming from the media about the threat of division caused by right-wing nationalism xenophobic racism, etc and All mainstream Americans understand the threat that can come from division.

We don't want division coming from the right or the left when it comes to national priorities things that actually matter and need to get done. We might differ on what those priorities are in certain situations.

But in general over the years Americans in times of national emergency have come together broadly speaking. In the current situation we're in though. It seems to me that division is being caused. But it's not by the usual suspects the media would have us believe caused division.

Since January we've been hearing of the threats posed by xenophobic racism against Chinese.

Along with a growing number of infections the corona virus is spreading fear and discrimination against Asian Americans.

It's not just in the u .s. Asians around the world have reported discrimination linked to corona virus. Well, the community feels like you know, they're fighting two diseases exactly the disease of corona.

But also bigotry the corona virus is impacting communities across the globe, but here at home. It's also leading to some disturbing occurrences. Many in our Asian American neighborhoods are reporting that foot traffic is down and business has slowed to slow.

To a halt even more troubling. We're seeing a disturbing rise in hate-filled attacks the CDC also weighing in now saying that being of Asian descent does not increase the chance of getting or spreading kovat 19.

This was the first time that I've ever felt I was being treated differently for being Asian.

The American media was not alone in pushing this narrative.

Heidi Chao was on a train in London last week with her husband and children when she noticed a man leave the empty carriage. To move to another one. The rejection that this whole house demonstrates to any racism and Insensitivity towards the Chinese community.

Focus is on containing this deadly disease. But thousands of miles away even those with no symptoms are feeling the effects.

You essentially tweeted about your fears of the racism. That's related to the coverage and what people are saying about the coronavirus. There was a statement that was sent out by the York District School Board and York region is just north of Toronto.

There is right now petition. Circulated in York on social media where where some people are asking that the board tell students who've been to China not to go to school for 17 days essentially Self-isolate and this is about their concerns regarding the corona virus, but look at this response.

This is from the school board. They said to these individuals. Individuals who make assumptions even with positive intentions of safety about the risk of others. Request or demand quarantine can be seen as demonstrating bias and racism.

What's your reaction to to that message from the York District School Board good for them?

The Media’s Role in Downplaying the Virus to Fight Anti-Chinese Bias

Panic about the corona virus outbreak is fueling a global rise in anti-asian sentiment. But is kovat 19 really to blame for people's racism?

Inevitably to fight anti-chinese racism and xenophobia which could cause division both media and global elites decided to downplay the.

Seriousness of the virus. If you look at the United States, we have had a flu epidemic here since October 1st and the media does not report report on it. 10 ,000 people over 10 ,000 Americans have died between October and January.

5 million cases of our influenza a and B have been reported since October 1st of 1999. Children elderly have died 60 ,000 people have been hospitalized. This is the moral virus.

We're having right now, which is even probably more dangerous than the corona virus itself. Corona virus is spreading infection. But is it also spreading racism. A French newspaper? Just call the virus yellow peril.

While corona virus is a health emergency so far. It seems to have low fatality rates. Some people without compromised immune systems have actually recovered. In fact if you live in the US the common flu kills between 12 and 61 thousand Americans each year and It's actually a much bigger threat than corona virus.

This doesn't underplay how serious the outbreak is in China. But it also certainly isn't an excuse for racism and fear-mongering.

Videos like this one in New York City in which Chinese attempted to disassociate themselves with the virus by hugging pedestrians were given a platform on mainstream media outlets. We all pop. Then President Trump put in travel restrictions from China on January 31st and from Europe on March 12th taking early intense action.

We have seen dramatically fewer cases of the virus in the United States that are now present in Europe. The European Union failed to take the same precautions and restrict travel from China and other hotspots.

As A result a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe. After consulting with our top government health professionals I have decided to take several strong but necessary actions to protect the health and well-being of all Americans.

To keep new cases from entering our shores We will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days. The new rules will go into effect Friday at midnight.

When President Trump initially banned travel from China the reaction from the media was what one might expect. Liberals accused Trump of being nuts and agitating racism. The World Health Organization and Chinese officials portrayed the decision as.

Unnecessary. Well, he has basically banned or not only a travel ban on people from coming from China to the United States. But he's conflated our immigration policy with a travel issue. So that if you're a Chinese citizen now, you can't come to the United States.

One of the outcomes of that Which is just incredibly nuts is that almost all of the active pharmaceutical ingredients used in the formulation of medicines in America Frankly for the whole world Come from China.

There's no answer there's no solution. And now the tension between the United States and China has gotten so high you may feed a kind of racial response a kind of xenophobia that is always in America just You know this close to the surface.

Give it a little scratch and boom. Outcomes. The racism. At an executive meeting of the World Health Organization in Geneva China condemned what it said were excessive restrictions.

Well health organizations temporary recommendations do not recommend any travel and trade restrictions.

We are all in this together. If it weren't for China's efforts The number of cases out China outside China would have been very much higher.

Chinese officials and media personnel went even an extra step a March 12th under the headline What is he afraid of Trump's European travel ban prompts scorn in China. Time magazine reported that as a result of President Trump referring to kovat 19 as a foreign virus and senior officials in the administration doing the same as well as Conservative media in the United States referring to it as China virus and Wuhan virus.

China's Foreign Ministry Called such labels despicable and said that there is no conclusion regarding the origins of the virus. The piece goes on to claim that the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo Reportedly sent a message to its nationals who are residing in Japan last week on how to deal with the Japanese coronavirus.

That's right. The Japanese coronavirus the peace stated state media has also taken to highlighting the number of new kovat 19 cases that have arrived in China from overseas and Welcoming Beijing's own travel restrictions as essential measures even as countries that have closed borders with China are denounced.

The piece also states that Beijing is trying to spin its Unprecedented containment measures as evidence that its political system is superior to Western style democracy. It would be impossible for European countries to adopt the extreme measures that China has implemented to fight the virus.

The Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece Global Times argued in a recent editorial. Many of the sources the piece refers to actually predate Donald Trump's European ban. However, so this has been the talking point in China now for at least the last few weeks at minimum.

The same day March 12th AFP reported that the Foreign Ministry spokesman for China had tweeted out It might be US Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent make public your data US owe us an explanation.

The piece goes on to state that US officials have angered China by linking the virus with the country. Of course as the virus worsened media and global elites changed their tune just a little bit in the past two weeks.

The number of cases of kovat 19 outside China has increased 13 fold and The number of affected countries has tripled. There are now more than 118 ,000 cases in 114 countries and Four thousand two hundred ninety-one people have lost their lives.

WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we're deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction. We have therefore made the assessment that kovat 19 can be.

Characterized as a pandemic and that brings us to where we are today. Almost overnight the narrative switched from Donald Trump overreacted because of paranoia and potential racism to The administration fumbled early on and President Trump didn't do enough to protect Americans.

The one thing that has remained though is the accusation of racism.

President Trump, the Chinese Virus, and Accusations of Xenophobia

Why do you keep calling this the Chinese virus? There are reports of dozens of incidents of bias against Chinese Americans in this country. Your own aid. Secretary Azar says he does not use this term.

He says ethnicity does not cause the virus. Why do you keep using this?

It's not racist at all. No, not at all. It comes from China. That's why it comes from China. I want to be accurate I have great love for all of the people from our country. But as you know China tried to say at one point maybe they stopped now that it was caused by American soldiers that can't happen.

It's not gonna happen. Not as long as I'm president. It comes from China, do you think using the term Chinese virus that puts Asian Americans at risk that people might target? I don't know. I think they probably Would agree with it a hundred percent it comes from China, but then you get that his anger at China.

Leading him to he's almost deliberately Using the term in his tweets and in the briefing as if to poke. But some people take great offense now.

It's truly amazing about all this to me is how far this narrative is penetrated outside of the mainstream. For example, I focus a lot of my attention on Evangelical sources and within the last few days Christianity Today on the 17th put out a story in which it was stated Covid -19 and the fear it generates must not be exploited as a means to marginalize and mistreat.

It is not a foreign virus But endemic to our common nature as humans and thus a means of drawing us together for the good of all on the website Coronavirus and the church which has trusted resources from churches from leading experts so it claims.

The PDF they have available for churches to download states people of Asian descent have faced Stigmatization and discrimination because of Covid -19 outbreak and because it has its origins in China your church has an important role in promoting faithful awareness and also in renouncing fearful panic and Prejudice.

And maybe you're not an evangelical Christian but perhaps your community groups are saying the same thing. And my concern in all of this is if we get our Microscopes out and examine each other and our government and our health care system and our churches and our businesses.

By the standard of whether or not we are adequately fighting xenophobia and racism in our response to Covid -19. Then we will inevitably disrupt the harmony that we are trying to create right now in the context of this pandemic I mean think about it.

If you're accused of something that you didn't do or didn't think simply because you correctly Identified the country of origin from which the virus came from then you're gonna be sensitive and if we get our eyes off the mark of trying to defeat this virus and instead we're looking at each other and whether or not we're Adequately anti racist enough then we can make other mistakes.

And perhaps those who are causing this wedge in Communist China, especially are aware of that fact. They're not necessarily our friends, but perhaps the script we're seeing play out right now isn't actually new.

In epidemics the damage comes from other people and the microbes spreading through their blood and breath. Natural disasters bring communities together, but outbreaks tear them apart. They make people frightened of their neighbors to counter that.

Communities need clear-headed leaders reliable information and a unifying spirit. Mary T Bassett, New York City's Health Commissioner Exemplifies those skills in October 2014 when physician Craig Spencer was diagnosed with Ebola after Returning to New York from Guinea Bassett stood out as a voice of calm.

She appeared on the news assuring New Yorkers that they had nothing to fear from the virus. She held town hall meetings with the Liberian community to ensure that they weren't being discriminated against.

She joined the mayor and his wife in eating meatballs at the restaurant that Spencer had visited in the days before he was admitted to Hospital and tweeted a photo of the meal. There were people lined up around the block.

She told me that was part of tamping down public panic and speaking out against stigma. Meanwhile television personality Donald Trump had also taken to Twitter. He called Spencer a very selfish man. He described Barack Obama as a psycho for not banning flights from the Ebola afflicted countries, even though no direct flights existed.

Counterintuitively such bans actually increase the odds that outbreaks will spread in part because they discourage health workers from helping in foreign Outbreaks for fear that they will be denied re-entry and Trump clearly felt that such Americans should be denied re-entry.

Keep them out of here. He tweeted. They are great, but must suffer the consequences. Trump is now president when he faces his first major epidemic. As his predecessors have he will likely project his impulsivity xenophobia and cavalier attitude towards facts to over 52 million followers with a speed that no virus could match the president's readiness to buy into Conspiracy theories could sway a populace that during the time of Ebola were already prone to disproportionate paranoia.

His tendency to label what he disagrees with as fake news will zip through social media networks that are already struggling to stop malicious parties from seeding inaccurate information to vulnerable people.

And his Isolationist rhetoric will spread among an America already polarized by extreme partisanship and a world increasingly given to nationalism. Such nationalism could be Catastrophic because diseases demand global cooperation.

Viruses spread too easily. No, travel ban will stop them. No wall. No matter how big or beautiful will hold them back. So the best way of preventing pandemics is to contain outbreaks before they get a chance to spread the u .s Cannot possibly consider itself protected if other nations are not.

America first cannot mean America alone.

Now that video from the Atlantic put out in 2018 seems almost prophetic at this point even down to the exact talking points being used currently against President Donald Trump. And I can't help but wondering whether or not there were some media elites who are waiting for an opportunity like the current coronavirus Catastrophe in order to undermine Donald Trump's nationalist policies his administration and perhaps his election possibilities.

But one thing's for certain even if that's the case as the media keeps reminding us Isn't this the time to come together and haven't Americans traditionally come together during times of national crisis?

It's time to defeat this virus and get the country back to work. So we don't defeat our economy in the meantime. But if we're accusing the president and each other of racism and xenophobia and not being adequately Anti-racist enough during this time We're certainly taking our eyes off the goal and we're not helping in the real battle, which is to defeat this enemy the coronavirus.

I don't know about you. But I am a traditional American who believes that we should go back to coming together in the time of national crisis. Putting politics aside as much as possible in order to defeat a common enemy.

God bless you.