by Samantha Caracoza, Staff Reporter
Since officials have speculated COVID-19 originated from animals in China, many have taken it upon themselves to choose to hate all Asians in response to these rumors. When the rumor that the virus had originated from falsified photos of a man eating “bat soup”, many had chosen to ridicule Chinese individuals. While it was confirmed the bat soup had no play in the coronavirus after all, this did not change people's opinions.
"The United States will be powerfully supporting those industries, like Airlines and others, that are particularly affected by the Chinese Virus,” President Donald Trump tweeted. “We will be stronger than ever before!"
On March 16, 2020 ex-president Donald Trump talked about COVID-19 but using his own term, “Chinese virus” in a turn considered by some to be racist to Chinese individuals. Coincidently a year later on March 16, 2021, eight Asian-Americans were killed in three Atlanta-area shootings by a man named Robert Aaron Long.
That same day, StopAAPIHate.org reported 3,795 racially motivated attacks against Asian-Americans from March 2020 to February 2021, noting that the number is likely a fraction of the attacks that occurred because many were not reported to the group. The statistics show that if a person with authority blames a country, then his followers will also blame them.
"Too many Asian Americans have been walking up and down the streets and worrying, waking up each morning the past year feeling their safety and the safety of their loved ones are at stake," President Joseph Biden said at a speech at Emory University on March 19. "They’ve been attacked, blamed, scapegoated, and harassed.”
Things have gotten to the point where the current president needed to intervene and comment on the recent spike in Asian hate crimes. Biden also called on Congress to pass the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, a bill that would require the Department of Justice to conduct an expedited review of hate crimes spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I think the people who are harming Asians and other humans are not right in their mind,” local citizen Luis Caracoza said. “They just suddenly wake up and decide they're gonna be other human beings. I just don’t get that.”
Hating on a race because you have nothing else to blame isn’t right. Everyone needs to stop hating and hurting Asians based on what the internet has told you.
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