On Monday night, Donald Trump, the President of the United States had perpetuated a racist remark when he took to his twitter page and referred to the Coronavirus that started its outbreak in Wuhan, mainland China as the ‘Chinese Virus’.
This stirred an uproar and received several backlashes. The tweet was about him announcing his support to various sectors especially during this time that the world is battling with ‘the Chinese virus’.
Earlier on Monday, Trump gave a speech where he addressed the possible chances of the Country going into recession. He encouraged social distancing and also avoiding public gatherings.
The head of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention with several other officials criticized and referred to the term ‘the Chinese virus’ as outrightly inappropriate.
As it could perpetuate racists association between the COVID-19 virus and the people of China. In reaction, several people took to their pages on social media to lash out and call the President out for his harmful and inappropriate use of the phrase.
One of the people who replied ‘the Chinese virus’ tweet is Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York. He stated that Trump was pinning blames wrongly and that the single tweet he made puts Asian Americans at risk and danger.
The Asian Americans are already suffering as it is, they don’t need Trump to make it worse for them. Trump calling it ‘the Chinese virus’ is not new, he had called the virus a foreign virus at some point and also retweeted a tweet that referred to the virus as the China virus.
Robert Redfield the Director of CDC at a House hearing shared in the thought that it is inappropriate to refer to the virus as ‘Chinese coronavirus’ especially because the novel virus has spread across borders to other countries and continents.
The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus also admonished legislators to help them prevent the racist assault and misinformation about the 2019 coronavirus.
While we have people fighting against the racist association of the virus to Chinese people, other people like Donald Trump and the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif continue to use offensive and racist terms to refer to the virus. The United State as an estimated number of 3,500 infected people on Monday night.