Episode 009: Hate Goes Viral (1/3)

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Transcript

CATHY: Hi, this is Cathy. I’m so excited to let you know that we’ve launched a membership program for Self Evident, through Patreon!

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CATHY: Check out the link in our show notes, or on selfevidentshow.com

CATHY: And thanks.

CATHY: Oh, by the way. This episode has some swearing and explicit descriptions of physical violence and intimidation. Nothing graphic, but I thought you should know.

CATHY: Today, the U.S. has confirmed five million cases of COVID-19. The virus is at the center of American life. But back in February and March, health care workers on the front lines could see the pandemic coming.

SOJUNG: early on, uh, what you were reading in the media about not having enough PPE and kind of us being on the front lines was definitely true.

CATHY: That's Dr. Sojung Yi, who was working as an Emergency Doctor in San Francisco, when patients started to show up in the ER, asking for help with coronavirus symptoms.

CATHY: But COVID wasn't the only threat that found its way into her hospital.

SOJUNG: I remember walking into a patient's room and one of my patients asked me where I'm from... and given our context, I knew exactly why she was asking me that question.

CATHY: Sojung grew up in Seattle, but as an Asian American...

SOJUNG: as an Asian American I've always fielded that question. I'm asking kind of my legitimacy.

SOJUNG: I said I'm from here. And, uh, she kind of fumbled and said, you know, “I, I'm not, I'm not racist. I'm just, I just don't want to get sick.”

SOJUNG: That was the moment for me that I realized, you know, it doesn't even matter that I have, you know, a physician badge, um, at the end of the day, what the patient sees is what I look like.

SOJUNG: And that was kind of a little bit devastating for me.

CATHY: Even though this hurt Sojung, she had this responsibility as a doctor to build a rapport with patients. Especially someone who was coming into the emergency room, looking to her for help, with a virus that nobody really knew that much about.

CATHY: But the kind of "help" they started asking for... was something she couldn't stand for.

SOJUNG: People were asking me if they could have another nurse take care of them. 

SOJUNG: There's a significant portion of us healthcare workers that are Asian. And, um, there are many Filipino nurses, um, in our hospitals here. And one of my patients asked me. Um, where my nurse was from and that they didn't want to be taken care of by them. 

SOJUNG: I think the combination of my personal interactions and seeing how patients interacted with my staff members made me realize that there was this kind of new wave of anti Asian and racism that was going to be here to stay.

MUSIC: Theme music starts

CATHY: This is Self Evident, where we challenge the narratives about where we’re from, where we belong, and where we’re going… by telling Asian America’s stories. I’m your host, Cathy Erway.

CATHY: You know, when we launched this show, we thought America was long overdue for a reckoning when it comes to racism. And we’re starting this new season with stories of how that reckoning has played out during the pandemic, what we’re up against, and what we need to do to move forward.

MUSIC: Theme music ends

CATHY: At the start of the pandemic, Dr. Sojung Yi was treating a patient who had requested that she no longer be treated by her nurse, who was Filipina American.

SOJUNG: So for this particular interaction, the patient told me that my nurse had been a little bit rough and hadn't placed the IV correctly.

SOJUNG: but the nurse is awesome. Like, I've learned to place IVs from them. Um, and so I was kind of a little bit taken back. And so…

CATHY: Sojung asked the patient to clarify what was wrong with the nurse.

CATHY: Here’s what the patient said:

SOJUNG: “I am here in this emergency department, because I went to a restaurant and someone was coughing close to me."

CATHY: Sojung asked, “Okay, what type of restaurant was it?” 

SOJUNG: And like, "Oh, you know, Chinese food." 

CATHY: Once she heard this, Sojung kept digging in, asking why the patient thought being at a Chinese restaurant had made her sick.

SOJUNG: The patient said, "you know, I just don't really want them to be my nurse anymore."

CATHY: So she asked, point blank: Is it because the nurse is Asian?

CATHY: The answer was pretty familiar.

SOJUNG: “I'm not racist. I just don't want to get sick.”

CATHY: Sojung refused to change the patient's nurse.

SOJUNG: I did say that I thought that that statement was racist and that this nurse is very professional. Um, I brought the nurse back into the room and,, I talked about our care plan for the day.

SOJUNG: Even if, even if that racism is directed towards me or to my team members, um, at the end of the day, like I still have an incredible privilege, um, and position of power in the room, that I'm very aware of. And I think. Having your doctor tell you that what you said is inappropriate or it hurts other people's feelings,, is powerful.

CATHY: These incidents were happening in early March, when the people who were supposed to be leading the conversation about COVID-19 in our country were instead, saying...

CNN News Correspondent: ...diagnosed Saturday with the Wuhan coronavirus...

Secretary of State Pompeo: ...putting energy into combatting the Wuhan virus and protecting the American people...

President Trump: ...progress in our war against the Chinese virus

Yamiche Alcindor: …and do you think using the term “Chinese virus” that puts Asian Americans at risk, that people would target them?

President Trump: No, no no, I think they would probably agree with that 100%, it comes from China.

SOJUNG: And so as that was happening in the national media, um, What I was seeing kind of on the ground level were a few cases of, um, patients coming in for other complaints, for, like, falls or abrasions. Um, just a fancy way of saying like scrapes and bruises.

CATHY: But there was more to these cases than it seemed.

SOJUNG: At the beginning of one of my afternoon shifts, what we see on the board is a patient to be seen, and I saw that there was, “Seventies year old male.”

SOJUNG: Kind of looked like he had been scraped up. He had a big bruise to the top of his head, um, and had a bunch of scratches on his hands and arms, um, from falling and kind of bracing himself as he was falling.

CATHY: This emergency room patient was a Chinese American elder who didn't speak much English. Sojung got him into an exam room and called up a Cantonese language interpreter on a tablet.

CATHY: He said that he had fallen while he was going for a walk in golden gate park.

CATHY: But the scrapes on his hands and arms looked a lot worse, as if he’d been dragged on the ground.

SOJUNG: And eventually, I clarified and asked the interpreter.

SOJUNG: "I do not believe what you're saying, please like tell me the circumstances of how you fell today."

CATHY: So the patient started over.

CATHY: It turns out his first story was part of the truth. He was out for a walk in the park.

SOJUNG: He had a mask on, and this was not when masks were required, but, you know, he was elderly, thought that it would be smart to wear a mask, and was going for his usual walk through the park. when a couple of what he said were kind of teenage kids approached him and kind of pushed him over, told him to go back to his country, told him you can go and eat bats in your country…

MUSIC: Beat, then music starts

SOJUNG: …and just assaulted him.

CATHY: The man was released from the hospital later that day. And what happened to him isn’t an anomaly.

MUSIC: Music ends

CATHY: Since March, cases of harassment and assault against Asian Americans have popped up all over the country.

ARCHIVAL: Short montage of media reports and social media videos paint an aural picture of anti-Asian hate spreading across the country

CATHY: Our producer James Boo has been reporting on this throughout the pandemic. Hey James.

JAMES: Hey Cathy.

CATHY: OK. I know this isn’t new. I mean, racism, including anti-Asian racism, has always been around. But it didn’t really make headlines... Then all of a sudden, with COVID-19, we’re just seeing a lot of it.

JAMES: That’s right. 2,500 hate incidents against Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders have been reported to “Stop AAPI Hate,” which is a research and advocacy project that’s really been sounding the alarm on this throughout the pandemic.

CATHY: And I think it's important to note that the majority of those cases are not violent. But it's still really disturbing.

JAMES: Yeah. There’s this range that encompasses everything from stabbing children to just calling someone “Corona” as a racial slur.  About 70% of reported incidents take the form of verbal harassment, and 70% of the people being targeted present as female.

JAMES: More incidents are reported every month. And by the way, Sojung’s colleagues have continued to have similar experiences with anti-Asian racism in hospitals. But most of these incidents happen in public venues, especially places of business.

JAMES: So that means, if you’re whatever kind of Asian, a racist person might lash out at you...

CATHY: Anywhere! I heard from folks in the restaurant industry how much this has, you know, affected workers at Asian restaurants. Some of them were afraid to take the subway, or just to go home from work at night because they or their family members were afraid they'd get attacked.

CATHY: So what really struck me is that it seemed like people were more afraid of their Asian American neighbors… and their food, and their businesses... than the virus itself. 

JAMES: And now that we’re all in this pandemic... if you can’t work from home, if you don’t get your groceries delivered, if you don’t have a lot of options for quarantining, you are increasingly likely to run into these hostile interactions as you try to get through day to day life.

CATHY: That makes me think of what Sojung pointed out, when she said that there are so many Filipino American nurses risking their lives in the hospitals, and then going out to face racist harassment in public. So I mean, yes. This pandemic is not an equalizer.

JAMES: No. And look, I don’t think we can be reminded enough that this pandemic has been most damaging to Black and brown communities.

JAMES: And in the same way, Pacific Islanders have been severely overrepresented in COVID cases and deaths on the West Coast.

JAMES: And this is also happening because this virus is especially dangerous to communities that have more essential workers, but have less wealth. Greater risk factors for COVID, but fewer resources to manage that risk.

JAMES: I mean, here in New York, right? Once shelter-in-place kicked in, we saw a 6,900% increase in unemployment applications from Asian Americans.

CATHY: Six thousand nine hundred PERCENT?

JAMES: Yeah. There’s no missing zero, that’s an actual number. We think a lot of that is from folks working low-wage jobs that you just can’t do during a pandemic.

CATHY: I mean, six thousand nine hundred percent is a number I can’t even wrap my head around? And you’re talking about unemployment applications, so undocumented people aren’t even included in that.

JAMES: Yeah… (sigh)

JAMES: So, when we say that structural racism is killing people, these are just a few examples of that.

JAMES: Like, the data, you know, needs to be disaggregated to kind of show who’s really being deeply impacted.

JAMES: But once you’re in that position, the experience of outright racism gets stacked on top of all it.

JAMES: I want to tell you about one of those experiences, here in New York.

Beat

CHARLIE: So I was, the point of contact for my mom when she went to the ER ER, and every 12 hours or so the attending nurse will call me and give me an update on my mom's situation

JAMES: That's Charlie Wang. He's a photographer in Queens who grew up in Manhattan Chinatown during the 90s. In March, he was furloughed from his job. Then his mom caught COVID.

CHARLIE: And, you know… it gets progressively worse and worse. And then I have to, go through the grieving process and then calm myself down. Call my dad. Explain to him in Chinese what’s happening, and then what is the percentage of survival. And then another few hours later I get another call and I do the same thing over again.

JAMES: Charlie is the youngest member of his family, and he had to check in with the nurse every few hours, and then translate to his dad. And then his sister.

CHARLIE: And so it’s just a constant rollercoaster of emotions… While translating, you have to be the one, not seen to be upset. 

MUSIC (ambient, mood) begins

CHARLIE: My mother passed in May 14th. And one of my jobs that I have to do for my dad was to print photos for my mom's funeral. And I went to Walgreens to get a print.

CHARLIE: When I printed the lady who picked up my photos and put it in an envelope, she was complimenting, how pretty the picture was and that it looks like a painting 

CHARLIE: You know, I just… I wanted to tell her, “Hey, that's, you know, that's my mom, she died,” but I didn't need to tell people that, you know? This is kind of private. I didn't need to broadcast things like that.

CHARLIE: My point of view is that this pandemic is affecting everybody, and you know, there's no point for me to announce another death and just ruin people's day.

CHARLIE: So I just went on my way, um, quietly. Went to the checkout line and just wait to pay.

MUSIC ends

CHARLIE: What happened next was that I saw a guy who was kind of loud, coming in. And then the person in front of me who is six feet away from me, she was also Asian descent. The man saw her and then started to make comments about her being Chinese, or being Asian.

CHARLIE: I just thought, okay, this guy, um, sounds a little bit off. I should just pull out my camera and keep an eye on him.

MAN IN WALGREENS: Every one of your pretty wives is getting sold at the market. 

JAMES: OK, so this is from the video that Charlie took with his phone, of this guy in Walgreens. At first it’s a little hard to make out, so I’m just gonna repeat it.

JAMES: He said, “Every one of your pretty wives is getting sold at the market.”

MAN IN WALGREENS: If you'll sell your own fucking women, you'll sell your own fucking life.

(ducks under James)

JAMES: “If you sell your own fucking women, you’ll sell your own fucking life.”

MAN IN WALGREENS: You got the nerve to come to my fucking country.

(duck under James)

JAMES: “You got the nerve to come to my fucking country.”

JAMES: And when he turned to talk to a white employee, or a black customer, his tone would completely change.

MAN IN WALGREENS: Is there any more registers, open sweetheart?

MAN IN WALGREENS: How you doing?

WALGREENS EMPLOYEE: I’m good, how are you?

MAN IN WALGREENS: So much better. I told you my sister died. My sister died over that COVID shit, that fucking Chinese brought here, which is pretty fucked up, you know?

WALGREENS EMPLOYEE: Yeah. It is. I'm so sorry.

JAMES: Charlie was at the front of the line. The Asian woman in front of him was checking out with the cashier. He just kept recording. Photo of his mom in one hand and phone in the other.

MAN IN WALGREENS: We’re going to war with them. I'm a United States Marine. I'm 33-34. So I'm going back over there. I can't wait to go back over, to China…

(fades under Charlie)

CHARLIE: the way he was talking about Asian people made me feel unsafe. So I had to not have my back facing him So I was standing on a sideway stance facing the aisle,, and had my shoulders pointing towards him. And then I had my camera pointing towards him when I had my arms folded.

JAMES: There's a moment in the video where the man just leers straight towards Charlie. And, like, I couldn’t believe how composed Charlie was while recording this. He stayed totally silent.

JAMES: That was actually something that he had learned from childhood experiences, of being bullied for being Asian. And figuring out how to navigate that.

CHARLIE: When I posted a video, I got a lot of flack from Asian American saying that I shoulda said something and that I am, I am perpetuating the stereotype of a weak Asian American and that I should have said something defending myself will be vocal. 

CHARLIE: At the time I just didn't want to show that I am an aggressor. 

CHARLIE: Cause if I said anything, he'll just say something that will bait me to attack him.

CHARLIE: For instance, if I say something like my mom also died from COVID, he would probably say something like that's because you're Chinese, you know, you know, you deserve to die, things like that.

MUSIC begins

JAMES: What’s kinda funny about this, is that Charlie does know how to defend himself.

JAMES: He learned kung fu when he was a teenager in Chinatown, from a Chinese American transit cop, who taught lessons in private to kids from the neighborhood.

CHARLIE: He said that the way Chinese people practice kung fu it's, there's no structure. No belt system that tells you what rank you are or how dangerous you are. Cause the stuff that he teach me isn't for show, or isn't a point system.

CHARLIE: He teaches me things like eye gouges. Throat punches, groin kicks, like end the fight as fast as possible. Just maim the person. Cause that's when you actually have to use it. But when you do use it, you have to make sure the law's on your side.

JAMES: When you hear about tense confrontations like this, you imagine that you’ll speak up right away, you’ll show your strength.

JAMES: Charlie could have raised his voice. If this guy had gotten physically violent, he could have fought back. But he was thinking about what the world would choose to see if he did.

CHARLIE: Because as a person with training, you could actually cause more damage than a normal person. And then in the eye of the law, your hand is considered a weapon and you don't get into troubles, or look for trouble, like that.

CHARLIE:  Everything that I did, keeping my mouth shut, record videos of this guy, all these little things are a part of the training of de-escalation and avoidance of confrontation.

CHARLIE: Just do not engage and only engage when you are pushed to the point where you can't escape.

MUSIC ends

JAMES: Remember, Charlie didn't really know anything about this guy, so he kind of took everything he was saying at face value.

JAMES: He said that his sister died of COVID. Charlie's mom had just died from COVID.

JAMES: He said that he was a marine. Charlie had family members who had come back from Afghanistan with PTSD.

JAMES: So even though this guy was clearly racist, Charlie wasn't angry at him personally. What made him upset was that no one else in the store said a word.

CHARLIE: The response I felt from the store, the staffers and things like that was that they were more sympathetic to him and they were understanding and they didn't felt like they needed to shut him up. or to tell him to be a little bit sensitive with the people around him

CHARLIE: Their silence was actually really poignant to me.

JAMES: To Charlie, it felt like this guy was just… saying what everyone else was thinking.

CHARLIE: So you know, more reasons why I should not approach this guy. That's how I felt.

JAMES: If a cop came on the scene… what do you think would have happened?

CHARLIE: Nothing. That's what I thought., that's the environment thatI grew up in, nothing would happen to him. He's white, and that's it.

JAMES: Charlie went to the cashier and paid for the photograph.

JAMES: That was why he was there in the first place.

CHARLIE: My mom was a bright guiding light for me. And when she passed away, it, you know, that light is gone. And I felt like I was lost in the world. And that was the dark place I was in. And within two days of people hearing that my mom passed they all reached out. I'm talking about. People from my past, who I hung out with in the park when I was 13, 14, um, every classmate, every coworker, bosses...

CHARLIE: ...everybody.

CHARLIE: Cause they, they know too. They know that their parents can get it too. And I had one coworker who said, you know, chin up, make your mom proud. And then. It took me out of a dark place because all those little, well wishes, they were like little fireflies and, you know, eventually they combined into a giant light and, you know, I was out of my dark place because of that.

CHARLIE: ...Yeah.

CHARLIE: And I was able to take that with me when I went to get my mom's stuff done. Because… you know, I'm just doing it for my mom.

JAMES: Once Charlie got home, he filed a complaint with Walgreens. They offered a follow-up phone call, but he was still preparing for his mom’s funeral, so he didn’t pursue the complaint any further.

CHARLIE: Know, I just told them, “Look. You know, train your people. Be more aware.” I even told them, I don't think they should be, anyone should be fired for this, because this is not their job.

CHARLIE: I wanted them to have some sensitivity training, that Asian people, Asian Americans are also suffering from Coronavirus. They're not the cause of the virus and they were also suffering, and now they're suffering in silence.

JAMES: I hear a lot from, from Asian Americans of all backgrounds that they just say, Oh, it's a cultural thing. Like we don't talk about these things.

JAMES: what, what is your reaction to when you hear the — those words? When someone says, “Oh, it's just not our culture to talk about it.”

CHARLIE: Half true? (chuckles) Sure. On the surface, it's a cultural thing, not to talk about it, but I think what they're really saying is that this is not, the culture is to talk about it in America. As in Asian American, because they will think that's because you deserve it.

JAMES: Who is “They” in that sentence?

MUSIC begins

CHARLIE: Anyone who's not Asian American. Who thinks that this is a Chinese virus or anything. Cause you know, you prove their point. If you're Asian, and you're dying from COVID, you prove their point, that Asian people tend to get this.

CHARLIE: So when they say it's not in Asian culture to talk about it, that is a hidden meaning or hidden message saying that this is not the culture we should talk about it.

MUSIC plays for a bit and ends

JAMES: In other words, there’s nothing culturally Asian about being silent. Especially during one of these hate incidents, silence is basically a survival tactic. Silence says less about us than it does about the society we’re living in.

CATHY: Of course, Charlie isn’t staying silent. He posted that video. He made a choice to share his story, with us.

JAMES: That’s right. There are a lot of people raising awareness about this on social media.

JAMES: And as I was reporting on all of this, I spoke to someone who’s also gathering reports directly from the people who experience hate incidents, to make sure nobody can deny what’s going on.

CYNTHIA: When it goes unaddressed... individuals feel like they have a license that they can, they're really speaking on behalf of so many people who feel that you don't belong, that you're not deserving, that you should go back to your country, that you should be held accountable for creating this pandemic and for the lives lost.

JAMES: That's Cynthia Choi [CHEY], co-Executive Director of Chinese for Affirmative Action in San Francisco. She's one of the leaders at Stop AAPI Hate, the research and advocacy project that’s been documenting anti-Asian hate incidents since March.

JAMES: But while Cynthia is using this data to put pressure on elected officials, she says that focusing on the legal definition of a hate crime isn’t enough to protect people from the majority of hate incidents.

CYNTHIA: hate speech, for example is not considered a hate crime because of the fact that, uh, it's protected speech.

CYNTHIA: And I think that's really important because I think the natural response is let's legislate or let's prosecute. And what we want to say is that we should look at ways that we can respond to the rise in hate incidents (whether they rise to the level of a hate crime or not), that we have a real problem with anti-Asian racism and xenophobia.

CYNTHIA:: We know that there is going to be long term impact and resentment against Asians and Asian Americans. 

CYNTHIA: Just as serious as this public health crisis, and just as seriously as we would plan to recover economically, we really need to address racial animus and to really have a plan in place.

JAMES: So far, those plans are not being put in place at an institutional level.

JAMES: Like, we’re not seeing pharmacies or big box stores rolling out harassment intervention training to deal with anti-Asian racism — although there is a great group doing exactly that, which we’ll link to in the show notes.

JAMES: At the state and local level, we’ve seen a few efforts to create task forces against hate crime and workplace discrimination, but with mixed results.

JAMES: In a lot of ways, Asian Americans are still fighting for people to acknowledge that this is a real problem.

JAMES: And, you know, the President...

CATHY: Yeah. I know the President.

JAMES: So just like with COVID-19, there’s a real feeling in so many of the people I’ve spoken with, that communities are being left to fend for themselves.

MUSIC plays for a bit and ends

CATHY: But this isn’t the first time that Asian Americans have dealt with this threat and this fear. And like Sojung, like Charlie, like Cynthia, we’re not going to be silent about this.

CATHY: Because our communities are not defined by silence, or by suffering. We know how to make change for ourselves.

CATHY: And in this three-part series we’re doing to kick off our new season, we’re going to spend time with Asian Americans who have very different ideas of what it means to keep their communities safe.

CATHY: This episode was produced by James Boo, with help from Sonia Paul and Prerna Chaudhary.

JAMES: We were edited by Julia Shu and mixed by Timothy Lou Ly. Our theme music is by Dorian Love.

CATHY: Thanks to Sojung and Charlie for sharing their stories with us.

JAMES: And big thanks to Cynthia Choi at Chinese for Affirmative Action for helping us with research and reporting.

CATHY: Self Evident is a Studiotobe production. This episode was made with support from the Solutions Journalism Network, and from the National Geographic Society’s Emergency Fund for Journalists.

CATHY: I’m Cathy Erway. Let’s talk soon. Until then, keep sharing Asian America’s stories.

MUSIC ends