Dynamics of Microaggression behind the COVID-19 Pandemic

Yuchen (Nikki) Li

Instructor’s Introduction

Nikki began working on this paper, in my WR 151 class, “Boston Social Justice Now,” in February 2020. The students were choosing timely topics related to issues of race, class, equity, or any combination of the above, and in those early days of the pandemic, Nikki felt called to investigate the different attitudes toward mask-wearing by students of different backgrounds. Drawing on her background in China, her experience on the receiving end of race-based microaggressions in Boston, and our class reading pool of theorists on race, microaggressions, and intersectionality, Nikki began building up a compelling argument about the racially-biased microaggressions against those wearing masks. As the public health messaging on masks changed, and changed again, she shifted her topic and expanded her project to look at university and city recommendations on the subject, even analyzing some of the official BU guidance and its language and diction. When the university switched to remote classes after the first week of March, she continued to work on her paper, remediating her research into an elegant podcast and returning once again to a focus on microaggressions. I cannot imagine any other topic one of my students could have chosen which would have progressed as rapidly as Nikki’s did; despite feeling unmoored by the constant changes in American attitudes toward masks, she nevertheless managed to keep her research in focus and produce a final podcast that is both logically and emotionally compelling.

Christina Michaud

Dynamics of Microaggression behind the COVID 19 Pandemic

2020 was a critical year for the whole world, a nightmare for the Asian community. Chinese students in the US were the first to encounter microaggressions and will continue to be the central targets of microaggressions. I noticed many microaggressions stem from different notions of personal protection. The use of face masks stands out to be the most obvious one. In my article, I picked China and the US as the representatives of each side. From the guidelines given by health centers, hidden historical backstories, and cultural contexts, I tried to show how mask-wearing reveals completely different implicit and explicit meanings to both sides. And how the Chinese community in the US, which is caught between two cultures, struggles to stay healthy while being “normal.”

Script

Hi, listeners, this is The Nikki Li Show, the last episode we talked about “Microaggression behind mask-wearing,” in today’s episode, we’re going to dive into the dynamics of microaggression under the background of COVID-19 pandemic.

“In Los Angeles, a child in San Fernando Valley was physically assaulted at his middle school and accused of having the coronavirus simply because he is AAPI. On a San Francisco street, a young AAPI woman was spat upon and blamed for bringing the coronavirus to the U.S. Young people as well as adults and seniors in California fear being perceived as the source or carrier of the disease.”

This is a section of “Coronavirus Anti-AAPI Racism Incident Report.” This report center, which launched on March 19, is held by Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council along with Chinese for Affirmative Action and aim to track anti-Asian harassment.

With nearly 3 million cases confirmed in a few months, the whole world is under the nightmare of COVID-19. And the fact that the origin of this virus can probably be traced back to China has pushed Asians into a hard time.

As the hatred towards the Asian community continues to grow, we saw many Asian “model minority” reach out and speak for the life of the whole community. The one that caught my attention was an Op-Ed written by John Cho, who is one of the most famous Asian American actors in Hollywood movies. The article is titled “Coronavirus reminds Asian Americans like me that our belonging is conditional.” Even though I’m not an Asian American, but as a Chinese student, I do relate to this article when he mentioned that he grew up with his parents encouraging him “to watch as much as television as possible” in order to “speak and act like the natives,” it is the same thing when I am encouraged to participate in events held by my university or even community, the purpose is to “assimilate,” it is the hope that “race would not disadvantage us.” However, just as he already mentioned in the title, “The pandemic is reminding us that our belonging is conditional. One moment we are Americans, the next we are all foreigners, who ‘brought’ the virus here.”

While John Cho is feeling a loss of belonging to his home country America, I, who still considered myself Chinese, has no problem with my belonging. However, still, this pandemic made me think about the dynamic of all the microaggression that happened to us.

When I go back to Derald Wing Sue’s book: Microaggressions and Marginality: Manifestation, Dynamics, and Impact, the book classifies the major psychological dilemmas or dynamics created by microaggressions into 1) the clash of realities between the dominant group and socially devalued group members; 2) the invisibility of unintentional bias and discrimination; 3) the perceived minimal harm of microaggressions.

Now let’s address these dynamics to this COVID-19 background. In my opinion, the model for “dominant group” and “socially devalued group” in COVID-19’s case will be a little bit complicated. It is not simply white people as the dominant group and Asian communities as the socially devalued group. Here, I would argue that our “dominant group” would be individuals that are not Chinese, whose lives are affected by COVID-19, and the “socially devalued group” would be anyone who has a Chinese-looking appearance. You may wonder why I use “Chinese-looking” people instead of just Asian communities, the reason for that is because there exist situations that Asian people discriminate against Asian people. For example, DW, a Germany news website, reported an article titled “Chinese-looking” Indians targeted in racist attacks.” The article mentioned Indians who were from northeastern states that border China were attacked by other Indians because of COVID-19.

After defining our “dominant group” and “socially devalued group,” let’s go back to the first point under the dynamics. In general, as the book also mentions, “mainstream groups hold the ability to define reality through the tools of education, mass media, and social institutions.” For example, let’s listen to this typical message during COVID-19 pandemic:

“The United States will be powerfully supporting those industries, like Airlines and others, that are particularly affected by the Chinese Virus. We will be stronger than ever before!”

This is a tweet from US President Donald Trump. Even though soon after this tweet, the director of the CDC condemned Trump’s tweet and agreed that it was absolutely wrong for President Trump to label the COVID-19 as the “Chinese Virus,” the Trump administration still denied calling COVID-19 the “Chinese Virus” as a mistake. “It’s not racist at all. It comes from China, that’s why.” This is how Trump explained his use of “Chinese Virus. The White House besides, even used other illnesses, like the Ebola virus, that had been named after places, to criticize “the media’s fake outrage.”

Donald Trump and his administration are definitely one of the leaders for mainstream groups, their speech, response, action towards COVID-19 shapes and influences on the speech, response, and action within the whole dominant group. The problem here is not that the notion of “never call COVID-19 as Chinese Virus” is a denial to the origin of the virus, but the word “Chinese Virus” itself is fueling up the hatred and fear against the socially devalued group. Just like a tweet by a person named The Alternative African said: “I’d say this president & his cohorts only EXPOSED the racism/xenophobia that was already there. He just gave those people ‘permission’ to openly express it.” And in fact, this person is absolutely right. After Trump claimed “Chinese Virus” is not racist, the word upgrades into “Kung Flu.” The use of “Chinese Virus” was no longer simply to define the origin of the virus, but as an excuse to accuse China for taking the full responsibility of this COVID-19 pandemic.

On the other hand, when the leading groups permit all these microaggressive words, any actions from the socially devalued group that attempt to protest or point out the offensiveness of the terms will be marked as being “oversensitive” or “paranoid.”

“The virus doesn’t have a nationality.” “It started IN CHINA!”

“Let’s remember. Coronavirus is not an Asian virus. It’s a human virus .” “What about the Spanish Flu ? Or the Russian Flu?”

“It’s not the ‘Chinese Virus.’ It’s a global pandemic.”

“What it is supposed to be called then dude… Didn’t the Virus originate from China?”

Such kind of conversations fills up the replies under Trump’s tweet. Are we really acting “oversensitive” or “paranoid”? Study shows people within the socially devalued group could often identify and define microaggressions well compares to the dominant group, but the scary thing here is that with the everyday influence from the leaders of the dominant group, we, or at least me, do start to question myself on my judgment towards microaggression.

I bet you are tired of Trump’s tweet, so instead, I’m going to share one of my own stories on the unintentional bias I experienced. At the end of my spring break, the confirmed cases in Massachusetts area continued to grow, after receiving the email from BU that all in-person classes were moved online and hearing from my friend in Northeastern University that their school has already asked them to go home, I finally decided to fly to Seattle, the place where my uncle lives.

One of the neighbors of my uncle is a lovely granny, who is always friendly to welcome us if we visit her. However, this time, I was told by my uncle that this granny implicitly asked us not to visit her by saying, “I’m hoping to see her on Facetime.” Do I feel offended? Not quite, but I must admit I still feel a bit “weird” and “uncomfortable” hearing this. Even though I on purposely booked a business class ticket (which means no one sits next to me), never took off my mask during my flight and bathed myself as soon as I arrived home, I still know there’s a chance that I might get the disease. I clearly understand she was keeping social distance, which is a right choice under this pandemic until I got to know from my uncle, the son of this granny recently was diagnosed with a gut problem, and she went to the hospital, without wearing masks, every time with her son and even my uncle hasn’t kept in touch with this granny for a long time. So now is the story becomes tricky, am I “oversensitive” or “paranoid”?

I would love to think more simply that she is doing something right and proper in this particular time, but still, her action can be seen as what is called “aversive racism” which refers to “an insidious and less conspicuous form of racism that hides in the assumptions/beliefs/values of well-intentioned people and is difficult to identify in its motivational manifestations.” Honestly, I would rather she said it clear like “I go to hospital regularly, and you just came off from a 6- hour flight, both of us are under the risk of getting COVID-19, so why don’t we do what CDC suggests, let’s keep social distancing, how about we use Facetimes instead of reaching to each others’ home?” But instead, what she really does made me feel she is being welcome on the surface level but implicitly showing no welcome to in-person conversations. However, the point of mentioning “aversive racism” is not just reminding people about its existence but also to address the fact that “people have unconsciously inherited the cultural biases of their forebears and that of society” which is the cause of “aversive racism.” The media should definitely take the most significant responsibility for building “cultural biases.” Especially for this COVID-19 pandemic, the controversy exists among China (a country with censorship) and the rest of the world (mostly without censorship), the information from both sides are never interlinked. As a Chinese student who studies in the US, I am lucky to have the ability to understand information from both sides, but I am also nearly desperate to see how the tension between China and the world (especially the US) gets tighter and tighter due to the misleading and one-sided, biased information from the media of both sides.

I would like to recall your memory for John Cho’s article I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast. It is an article posted on Los Angeles Times, but my first glimpse of this article was on Weibo (Chinese version of Twitter), it was translated into Chinese, and I remembered one of the comments down below really got me related, she said (translated into English): “now people who are inside the wall (here “wall” refers to the censorship in China) are sick of people who are outside the wall, and people who are outside the wall are sick of people who are inside the wall. However, both sides know who stirs up fights in the media.” Then why don’t we stop even we see the media is messing up with the truth? Because “those in power do not need to understand disempowered groups to survive or do well, while those without much power must actively discern the mindset and motives of those with power in order to survive.” Every time the dominant group minimizes the harm after microaggressive action. They claim you are acting too sensitive, and they encourage you to “let it go” and “get over it.” Gradually, the socially devalued group loses its voice, but the problem still exists and becomes even worse.

I’ve seen people who are in socially devalued group revenge back with their hatred against the dominant group, the result will be people who used to experience microaggression become the ones who carry out microaggression towards another group. With no voice, no action taken, people are losing part of their humanity. They take pleasure in other’s misfortune instead of feeling empathy for patients. Instead of getting together to fight back COVID-19, they are more persistent in finding the real origin of the virus to either get rid of microaggression or have a proper reason to carry out microaggression by blaming others for taking the full responsibility of the virus.

So I would again bring out the main idea suggested in John Cho’s article: stand up for your group, your community, never keep silent to minimize the harm or hatred. Do something. When you witness a hate crime, do something; when you hear some assaulted words, do something; when you sense anything in your family, do something.

Yuchen (Nikki) Li is a rising senior at Boston University, majoring in Film & Television and minoring in Computer Science. She is an international student from Shanghai, China. Studying abroad in the US is her first time living as a minority in a foreign country. This led her to pursue Professor Michaud’s WR 151 course. Nikki thanks Professor Michaud for her clear guidance and instructions on every project. She also appreciates Professor Michaud’s patience in providing helpful resources and suggestions for her paper.