More Racism – this time for Asian Americans

I’m still working on replacing the data from the Covid Tracking Project with data from the CDC and I have made some progress. And I learned something new. But I didn’t have time to develop anything for tonight’s post so this one will be a short one on some other topic that I feel compelled to note.

I’ve been reading that attacks against Asian Americans have increased this year; I’m not surprised. If you have a President who openly expresses bigotry, then there will be some people in the American populace who will feel free to express their racism, sometimes in violent ways. We can pretty much point the finger at our prior President (Trump) because he reveled in the violence and in bullying others.

His choice of words to describe the virus gave cover to the more bigoted people to display their threatening behavior. The last four years was really about bigotry against the Latinos, the blacks, the Asian Americans, the LGBTQ, the Jews, the Muslims, the handicapped…just about anybody who looked foreign and weak. I guess about anyone who looked white and male was not the object of such bigotry – everyone else was fair game.

But I would say it is not just the prior President who is responsible; I would consider all Republicans who used the prior President’s phrasing for the virus to also have contributed to the atmosphere of hostility. That would also include some of the right wing media such as Fox News. All of them are responsible for creating the hostile environment.

It’s really sad and tiring that we keep revisiting these issues.