Actor fends off racism
It was a bright day in North Bay a week or so ago, just days before the nation ground to a halt. Canadian actor Russell Yuen, 54, was relaxing by picturesque Lake Nipissing during a break from filming, his sunglasses perched on his nose as he absorbed the icy beauty in front of him.
A white couple walked up and stood nearby. Presently the man spoke. This is Yuen’s account of what happened next.
The man said, “It’s so much nicer here than Toronto. We can get away from that Chinese virus.”
Yeun turned to him said, “Excuse me?”
The man said, “Oh you know, the virus that Chinese people brought over.”
So Yuen took off his glasses and said, “Please repeat that again.”
At that, the man turned verbally abusive. “You f---ing Chinese man, why aren’t you wearing a f---ing mask? Get the f--- away from me. You and your f---ing virus, go back to where you came from.”
Yuen is fourth-generation Canadian. His ancestors literally united Canada — they came here to build the Canadian Pacific Railway, upon which rested British Columbia’s decision to join Confederation in the late 1800s.
He said, “You mean, Montreal?”
“Don’t be a f---ing smartass,” the man said. “You know what I’m f---ing talking about.”
“Meanwhile his wife is hiding behind him,” Yuen said. “Like I’m the alien creature from
“Alien” that could spit acid at her and dissolve her or something.”
“I said ‘Look, you’re entitled to your opinion but you’re wrong.’ ” And as Yuen walked back to his room, the man kept swearing, saying “We’re going to get out of this place. I can’t believe they’re letting those types of people in here.”
This wasn’t Yuen’s only recent experience with racism since the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic. And bigots being bigots everywhere, he is one of the rising number of people of East Asian descent being singled out around the world and blamed for the deadly virus.
A few things need unpacking in light of this renewed racism. First, people of East Asian descent need systemic support. Second, it establishes why COVID-19 should never be called the Chinese virus. Third, the brazen bigotry has blown the facade off the “model minority” myth.
The Indian actor Meiyang Chang was out for a jog on the streets of Mumbai recently when two guys sped past him on a bike, “screaming ‘corona’ and laughing,” he told media. He gets teased by friends, which he told media he didn’t mind, but he also gets randomly called “corona” on Instagram, which he does.
American writer/journalist Jeff Yang shared his “first ‘breathing while Asian’ moment” on Twitter. An older white woman with a mask turned on him at a grocery store and shouted “F--- you.”
“As I stared at her, she pulled off her mask, coughed directly at me, turned on her heel and walked off.”
Other Asian Americans responded with their own experiences on Yang’s Twitter feed.
Sinophobia being rampant in the U.S. isn’t surprising. That country’s president read a speech last week on which, as a Washington Post photographer captured, the word “corona” was scratched out and replaced with “Chinese.” All the better to cover his own ineffectual response that led to the U.S. swiftly becoming the world’s third-most affected country.
It’s not racist, Donald Trump insisted. It’s just where the virus originated.
For those in the back: IT IS RACIST.
Calling it Chinese serves no purpose other than to stigmatize a group of people. Viruses have been named after geographical areas even if they didn’t originate there. The Spanish flu, for instance. After the outbreak of MERS — or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome — in 2012, the WHO recommended not naming viruses after regions to mitigate negative impacts on places and peoples. Instead, it encourages descriptive terms — respiratory, pulmonary — whom it impacts by age — geriatric, senile — whether acute or chronic etc.
New York recently established a new hotline to report hate crimes against Asian Americans. Canadian police jurisdictions should consider either doing the same or expanding their existing lines and work on targeted outreach so more people know whom to call. Toronto police’s Hate Crimes Unit had not seen an increase in reports, but “haterelated crime often goes unreported to police,” said police spokesperson Meaghan Gray, who encouraged people to report it by calling 416-8082222.
It’s virtually impossible to prove hate crimes unless people walk around with cameras turned on. However, hotlines can document incidents and connect people to legal resources. The rest of us don’t need to be silent bystanders either. (Obviously, if dangerous, call 911.)
On Saturday, Yuen was going about his business heading to a grocery store in Montreal when a white staffer blocked the automatic doors from opening and yelled through the glass: “Go put on a f---ing mask and gloves.”
Explicit spoken racism is verbal assault. It can leave people feeling shell-shocked and scarred. But the daily subtler forms take a different toll. For Yuen, that comes in the looks he gets in public, the extra-wide berth people give him, but not his white wife while walking, the overly watchful eyes as he picks up things in a store.
These experiences have left Yuen flooded with “that feeling of racism I used to get when I was much younger.” That was a time of growing up in Montreal when he was the only Asian person, “the only Asian in elementary school, one of two Asians in high school, the only Asian in theatre school.”
Both East Asians and South Asians are touted as model minorities in western nations. Look how well they do in school. Look how much they earn. Look how hard-working they are. Look how they fit in without complaining.
Whiteness — the system of racial hierarchy — works such that this praise is less directed toward the so-called models and more geared toward taunting Black and Indigenous people for their poverty and their resistance to assimilating to European norms. “If they can do it, why can’t you” is also a tactic to avoid settler accountability.
As the COVID-19 fallout shows, that veneer of praise for Asians is as thin as it is insincere.
“One thing I’ve learnt as I’ve grown older is that what our parents said — ‘keep your head down, work hard and you’ll be rewarded’ — unfortunately it’s not true,” Yuen said. “You have to speak up. You have to show people the racism that other people don’t see. You have to call people out.”