By Veronica Perry
During the COVID-19 pandemic, harassment and violence directed at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have become an urgent topic. On Thursday April 16, Lois Takahashi, Houston I. Flournoy Professor of State Government and Director of the USC Price School in Sacramento, discussed this issue during a 30-minute Price Talk, where she provided in-depth information on stigma, how race interacts with stigma, their effects on human behavior, and the implementation of federal, state and local policy.
Before Takahashi began, she engaged the audience in a poll and asked one question: “Have you ever been called a name or harassed anyway for who you are or how you look?” Out of 110 people on the Zoom webinar at that time, 83% said they had.
Takahashi anecdotally shared a trend of harassment of multiple communities of color, which she has witnessed on social media and through the news. Furthermore, she discussed health disparities and mortality rates related to COVID-19 that suggest racial and ethnic minorities are experiencing structural discrimination and stigma, as well as higher mortality rates than others.
“Stigma is important because it can result in federal, state and local policies that exclude and incarcerate,” she said. Takahashi went on to give examples of how stigma affects policy making, referring to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which restricted immigration of Chinese nationals, and the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II.
According to Takahashi, there are ways to understand how stigma interacts with race to explain the current COVID-19 situation . She specifically mentioned a book called “Racial Formation in the United States” by scholars Michael Omi and Howard Winant. “What’s helpful here is that they categorize race into four different elements, which helps us to understand the connections between larger global issues and federal, state and local policies,” she said. The four categories are: race as biology or genetic makeup and physical characteristics; race as ethnicity or cultural practices, values and customs; race as a nation state; and race as social construction.
“The third element, race as a nation state, is where labeling the COVID-19 pandemic in a certain way becomes important. The Trump administration has repeatedly described the COVID-19 disease and the novel coronavirus as the Chinese flu or Wuhan flu, using the nation state identification to categorize and characterize the pandemic,” Takahashi said. “So, the act of naming the COVID-19 pandemic as Chinese flu or Wuhan flu has ripple effects on people’s perception of race as biology and race as ethnicity,” Takahashi elaborated.
Takahashi also explored the increasing reports of attacks and harassment of Asian and Asian-American people in the United States. These incidents lie on a spectrum from aggressive looks and vandalism to violent hate crimes and physical assault resulting in critical injury, all inexcusable and reprehensible.
Takahashi explained that there are strategic efforts to track reports of these incidents though the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center. The center, founded by A3PCON, Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) and San Francisco State University’s Asian American Studies Department, officially launched on March 19, 2020. Since then, over a two week period, it has received more than 1,000 reports from Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders of harassment related to COVID-19.
She implored Price Talk listeners to be conscious of labeling and suggested the use of non-stigmatizing terms, for example, referring to the pandemic as COVID-19 instead of the Chinese or Wuhan Flu. She concluded by emphasizing that there are critical actions we can take to reduce harassment and discrimination during this difficult time.
Takahashi answered audience questions such as explaining stigma differences between groups, decision-making and behavior of national leadership, and preventative policy interventions. The full conversation is available to watch here. Be sure to register for future Price Talks and join in on discussions related to the critical policy issues facing the world.
Professor (Teaching)
Houston I. Flournoy Professor of State Government
Coordinator, Master of Public Administration - Sacramento