Blaming COVID-19 on any ethnicity just wrong

As mental stress associated with COVID-19'S pandemic lingers, incidents of racism have mushroomed across Canada.

Police departments in several jurisdictions have recorded significant surges in anti-asian hate crimes and offensive behaviour.

Amy Go, president of the Chinese Canadian National Council for Social Justice, recently commented that “just because we look Chinese or look Asian, we're suddenly not Canadian.”

She and others have pointed out that descriptive terms such as “Wuhan virus” or China virus” have done tremendous damage to Canada's Chinese community.

Racist and recently in Windsor, homophobic graffiti, is offensive. Yet it also may reflect a nasty racist and homophobic legitimacy implicitly inspired by America's most recent former president.

For now, I shall confine comments to that invisible racism directed towards Canadians of Chinese and Asian ethnicity.

Perhaps ironically many low-lights responsible for verbal and physical assaults upon Canadians of Chinese ethnicity may themselves be of relatively recent residency status in Canada.

A Chinese presence has existed in this country and its root territories as far back as Captain John Meare's 1788 expedition when Chinese workers landed at Nootka Sound (Vancouver Island) to assist in construction of a trading fort. Many did engage in “integration” with many coastal First Nations peoples.

In 1858, a boat loaded with Chinese miners arrived in Victoria from California. They were in pursuit of what was termed “Gum San” or Gold Mountain a Chinese phrase applied both to California and British Columbia. Chinese were among the first seeking gold along BC'S Fraser River.

So think about this. Despite historic systemic racism in B.C. and Canada (notable in the 1923 Chinese exclusion Act) across this country, early Chinese descendants have thrived. Many have roots almost 200 years in depth. Some Chinese Canadians have been here almost as long as many black Canadians. They who arrived before and after America's 1776 Revolution.

Furthermore, in respect to our Chinese-canadian heritage, an estimated 6,500 Chinese (without wives) were imported into British Columbia to work as labourers building that very railroad that tied this diverse country together and prevented greedy Americans from moving north.

In other words, when people hurl racist epithets at persons of Chinese and Asian origin effectively they are attacking persons many of whom may claim a Canadian ancestry well before their own relatives stepped off a boat on to Canadian soil.

Historically, Chinese and other Asians, notably those of Japanese ethnicity, have been brutally discriminated against in this country. And disgraceful treatment of British subjects from India in 1914 known after a ship's name, the Komagata Maru incident, adds another racist account to our history of maltreatment of persons of Asian origin.

In a recent Angus Reid poll of persons of Chinese ethnicity, 50 per cent had been called names or insulted and blamed for the virus. Another 43 per cent had been personally threatened, physically attacked or intimidated.

How do people develop bizarre ideas that Canadians of Chinese or Asian ethnicity are in some manner responsible for COVID-19?

There has been only one American president who has uttered the phrase “China virus” as an excuse for his own gross policy failures.

So why then are some Canadians being fuelled in terms of hatred by an impeached and disgraced U.S. president?

The lockdowns, isolation and social distancing have stressed all of us. Yet, overwhelmingly most Canadians seem loath to emulate that type of behaviour.

There may be persons of Chinese ethnicity in Canada who, like many other immigrant population, carry emotional or other ties to their respective “mother” countries. After all, that's why so many residents of Canada of British origin rushed off to serve the King in the First World War. Large numbers died as British, not Canadians despite residence in this country.

If we are what we generally claim to be — a “caring and compassionate country” — why have some people decided that racial slurs, homophobic graffiti and even the absurdity of Nazi symbolism somehow make one a better Canadian?

That is a part of Canada I want to see vanish.

Please, take a moment to readjust your COVID-19 stress monitor and let's not blame any ethnicity for the ruddy mess we all are enduring.