BEB: A Reminder

By Anna Gorman

hEY!

y’all!

don’t y’all have coronavirus where y’all from!?

y’all need to be wearing MASKS

don’t laugh. we’re serious.

your people have coronavirus, and you’re stealing our jobs.

wear masks.

a poem, courtesy of five giant men and a loudspeaker on a Pittsburg sidewalk

I recounted that lovely one-way conversation to a friend in one of my classes, to which an eavesdropper listened and decided the proper response was “WAIT you have CORONAVIRUS??”

For the record, no I do not. And also for the record, I am a half-Chinese but very white passing girl, and very aware of the undeserved privilege American society hands me because of that. Walking alone on the street on a normal day, no one would think to scream their ignorant and racist opinions at me.

That white girl? No, she’s fine. Let her pass.

But on that street in Pittsburg, I wasn’t just a white girl walking down the street. I was with a group of East Asians, and in that moment, I was one of “those people” that had coronavirus, “those people” that steal jobs, “those people.” And that is a different kind of sting I can’t quite put into words.

It’s been a while since the people in high school called me “Ling Ling” or made dog eating jokes. Since that one guy at a party the first week of freshman year asked me if my eyes slanted up or down. But it hasn’t been a while for so many Asian-Americans who didn’t happen to be born with white-passing features, especially now that mainstream media chooses to trade virtue for views and use pictures of random Chinese people when writing about a woman who contracted coronavirus in Iran.

So, a reminder.

Coronavirus does not need racism’s help to be tragic; it is already robbing people of their lives. However, it is ordinary people’s carelessness, ignorance, and racism that robs generations of Asians of our right to exist comfortably and be respected in our own skin - a tragedy we can actually prevent.