Scholars v. COVID-19 Racism

Jason Chang, an associate professor of history and Asian American studies at the University of Connecticut, started putting together a crowdsourced document with resources on teaching about coronavirus-related racism back in January. Students, he said, are hungry for readings that help them put this current moment in perspective.

"I’ve actually had students who are asking for more assignments to expose them to more material," Chang said of students in his Asian American history class this spring. One of the assignments in the course asks students to create a zine connecting their experience during the COVID-19 pandemic with a broader theme in Asian American history

"The way that I’ve begun to teach about this is to put the racist response to the pandemic in the context of an Asian American history of 'yellow peril,'" Chang said. "I’m using a class on Asian American history to show how these cyclical patterns have echoes in our contemporary environment, giving them actual historical evidence about what things looked like to help them understand the consequences of historical narrative. I don’t always get that kind of punch in this course. I’m usually satisfied with students just acquiring new knowledge about Asian American history."

Scholars are among those confronting the rise in anti-Asian and anti-Asian American racism that’s come with COVID-19, which originated in China and which President Trump and some other prominent figures have described as the “Chinese virus” despite warnings from experts who say such terminology fuels xenophobia. Scholars are addressing this topic in the classroom, in their research -- the Journal of Asian American Studies put out an urgent call for submissions this week for a special issue on racism and the COVID-19 pandemic -- and in outreach to Asian American communities.