Anti-Asian Racism in the West: A Queen's Contagion Cultures Lecture with Professor Ali Na
Rory Sullivan, Investigative Journalist
February 20, 2021
“Asians are viewed as perpetual foreigners, as unassimilable aliens”. Assistant Professor Ali Na, from the Department of Film and Media at Queen’s University, spoke these heavy words during her February 2nd lecture as part of the Queen’s Contagion Lecture series. Her lecture, titled “The Diseased Horde: Anti-Asian Racism from the 19th Century to COVID-19”, discussed the stereotypes against Asian peoples, most notably that they are diseased, filthy people who intentionally infect others as an invasion tactic. Anti-Asian racism has been a prevalent issue since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, which originated in Wuhan, China. In the United States, the use of the term “China Virus” by former President Trump led to an increase in anti-Asian tweets. One incident in Texas led to the stabbing of a Burmese family who the perpetrator thought “was Chinese, and infecting people with the coronavirus”. In Canada, there has been an increase in Asian-specific hate crimes. In France, a local paper used the title "Yellow Alert" to discuss COVID-19. These examples, brought forth by Professor Na, are only a few of many anti-Asian sentiments that have become more and more apparent throughout the pandemic.
Perhaps the most important element of Professor Na’s lecture was that these issues go back centuries. Recent anti-Asian hate crimes are simply a continuation of the racism that has been prevalent throughout North America for longer than most of us would admit to knowing. Professor Na went through many examples of the use of art to perpetuate the common stereotypes associated with Asian people, including quite a few from beloved children’s author Dr. Seuss, who was an avid supporter of Japanese internment camps during the Second World War (a library of his racist Japanese cartoons can be found here). Throughout the past few centuries, Asian people have been portrayed primarily as filthy, immoral, and animalistic.
Canadian history rarely - if ever - discusses the long and shameful history of their treatment of Asian peoples, specifically those from Japan and China. Through the use of media, Canada has buried the truth about the contributions of Chinese labour workers during the building of the Canada Pacific Railway for decades. As Professor Na put it: “eating taboos were mobilized to make Asians inhuman”, and this was especially the case in the justification of the poor working conditions and unfair wages given to Chinese labourers in Canada. For example, Professor Na showed a particular damning poster that showed two images side by side: one was a racist depiction of Chinese labourers who are stuffed into a small space, eating rats, and the other is a depiction of a White man and his family in a traditional home. The poster is titled “Why they can live on 40 cents a day…and they can’t”. The meaning, of course, is that the “taboo” eating habits and lack of a traditional family mean that Chinese labourers deserve less than their White counterparts who have a strong nuclear family and “civilized” habits. Chinese labourers in Canada were given the worst work for the worst wage, which led to many deaths. Their deaths were not even treated with respect; their bodies are buried under the railway that Canada has claimed as one of its great accomplishments.
The anti-Asian immigration acts passed by Canada (conveniently) followed the completion of the railway, starting with the Chinese Immigration Act in 1885, which placed a tax on every Chinese person entering Canada. Originally, each person had to pay $50, but by 1903 the tax was $500. Juxtaposed with the fact that Canada was offering free plots of land for European settlers, the anti-Asian racism present in Canadian policy was alarmingly clear. In 1923, this became the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned all Chinese immigration until 1947. This false idea of “Asian invasion” is solely built on fear rather than numbers, and government propaganda and policies are representative of this unfounded fear.
But two centuries have done little to change the perception of Asians, and anti-Asian racism is clearer than ever. The Human Rights Watch provides a comprehensive list of the anti-Asian racism that has happened around the world since COVID-19 first began, many of which are related to the perception of Asian eating habits and the concept of “Asian invasion”. For example, the Governor of Veneto claimed that Italy was better equipped at handling COVID-19 because Chinese people “eat live mice”. There have been many cases of people boycotting Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai restaurants as well. Another example, which was mentioned by Professor Na, discusses former technology CEO Micheal Lofthouse, who is an immigrant himself, telling an Asian family at a restaurant to “go back to whatever f---ing Asian country you're from”. These types of hateful attacks echo those of the 2003 SARS epidemic, which saw a similar rise in anti-Asian hate crimes. Professor Na discussed how the concept of masks, which were normalized in many Asian countries due to the SARS outbreak, has become associated with the “diseased horde”. Queen's graduate student Tanya Tran detailed an incident on Princess Street in which someone used extremely vulgar and racist language to tell her to wear a mask. But Asian people are also targeted for wearing masks: in B.C., two white men told Clara Kan and her mother to “go back to their country”, accusing their Asian heritage and their masks as being the “problem”.
But how can these prejudices and stereotypes against Asians be changed? How can we begin to deconstruct these preconceived ideas about Asian people representing the “diseased horde” or threats of invasion? As a Professor in Film and Media studies, Professor Na pointed to the work of Asian creators who are pushing back against these false stereotypes. As she pointed out, there are only about three major Hollywood films with a predominantly Asian cast, the most popular of which being Crazy Rich Asians in 2018 and Mulan in 2020. But are films like these pushing back against stereotypes, or are they creating new ones? The focus, says Na, should not be on making a perfect movie with an Asian cast, but rather that they are prolific. Every new story told by Asian creators is another complex, realistic, and interesting perspective that is actively fighting old stereotypes. As Professor Na pointed out in her lecture, a lack of representation in media can create internalized racism, and even a somewhat questionable movie such as Crazy Rich Asians can provide a sense of belonging.
Though Canada may have ridden itself of its anti-Asian immigration policies, there is a very long road of reconciliation ahead. This history is not behind us; only in 2012, an Asian woman was supposed to be on our $100 bill but was replaced with a white woman after claims that she was not representative of Canada. This is not only in Canada: the increase of anti-Asian racism around the Western world as a result of COVID-19 is revealing how many people held these biases and stereotypes, and how quick they were to turn their anger on a group of people for no reason other than fear and ignorance. This type of hatred is never far away, and it is not something that we have escaped. Without change through means such as history-based education and the increase of Asian voices, these harmful stereotypes will be allowed to continue, inevitably leading to more violence and hatred toward Asian people.
More information about Professor Na can be found here.