Yellow Peril’: How the pandemic is fuelling anti-Chinese racism

https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/podcasts/thismatters/2020/06/25/yellow-peril-how-the-pandemic-is-fuelling-anti-chinese-racism/anti_chinese_racism.jp g" alt="Jessica Wong, front left, Jenny Chiang, center, and Sheila Vo, from the state's Asian American Commission, stand together during a protest on the steps of the Statehouse in Boston. Wilson Lee, co-founder of the Boston chapter of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance, has objected to a statement the Massachusetts' Asian American Commission recently issued expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the killing of a black man by police in Minneapolis." />

As the pandemic spread globally, there have been a surge of reports of anti-Chinese and anti-Asian racism in Canada. In Vancouver, 29 cases of racial assaults and harassment have been reported to police — including a 90-year-old man being pushed to the ground and an unprovoked attack on a 22-year-old Asian woman at a bus stop. The Chinese Cultural Centre was also vandalized with hateful graffiti in April.

Those incidents carry consequences, changing the way Asian-Canadians live. According to a recent Angus Reid Institute poll, 60 percent of Chinese-Canadians say they’ve changed their daily routines to avoid the possibility of racial confrontations. 50 percent say they’ve directly experiencd racial taunts and insults since quarantine began.

While the coronavirus pandemic may have brought anti-Asian sentiments to the surface, they are merely the latest example of so-called “Yellow Peril” and institutionalized racism in Canada — from the Chinese Head Tax, to the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, to cases of racism in Toronto during the SARS crisis of 2003.

Three Canadian journalists discuss anti-Chinese racism. The Toronto Star’s Evy Kwong, digital producer, Sean Pattendon, audio engineer/producer, and host/producer Adrian Cheung are in conversation about their experiences as Chinese-Canadians during the pandemic.

Then, an interview with Justin Kong, executive director of the Chinese Canadian National Council, on how the organization is collecting data on racial incidents and the work that is being done within Asian-Canadian communities to dispel the ‘model minority myth.’

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