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Collected Item: “Casual Racism Towards Ethnic Asian Diaspora”

Give your story a title.

Casual Racism Towards Ethnic Asian Diaspora

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

Video. Sent by my friend Nikko Guan.

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

This is a short video where I asked my friend Nikko Guan to share her experiences with casual racism toward ethnic Asians at the beginning of the pandemic here in Melbourne, Australia. There was a lot of panic and misinformation surrounding the coronavirus, and a lot of people attributed the origin of the virus (Wuhan China) with the cause of the virus and harboured distrust toward anyone who looked remotely foreign or Asian. Some of my friends and acquaintances who were Asian but not even Chinese also reported similar experiences. It's especially pertinent as this also affected Asian diaspora who were born in Australia and may have never even been overseas, but are judged purely on their appearance. My friend in the interview had not been to China, or anywhere internationally, for many years. It's important that a global disaster that is the result of natural catastrophe isn't judged on malice for political or racial prejudices.

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

#china, #racism, #fear, #asian, #diaspora,

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Nikko Guan

Give this story a date.

2020-03-23
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