Intolerance Exposed by Coronavirus Concerns
Photo Courtesy of Zhaoyi Li
Cases of bigotry on college campuses across the nation have flooded news headlines for the past month—unfortunately, SLU was not immune to this insensitivity.
At SLU, the growing concerns about coronavirus have fostered an atmosphere of xenophobia towards international students on campus. Instances of intolerant remarks warranted a response from SLU President Fred Pestello, P.h.D. and the increased worry and uncertainty surrounding the virus was partially to blame for the cancellation of SLU’s annual Chinese New Year Celebration on Jan. 31, 2020.
In an email entitled “Walking in solidarity with our campus community members,” written on Feb. 5, Pestello stated that there were already reports of racist remarks to Chinese students while off-campus. He concluded the email by reminding the community that “wearing a face mask in and of itself is not a sign of sickness.”
The bigotry experienced by international students may stem from a lack of understanding of Asian cultures. For one, wearing face masks is a common cultural practice in East Asian countries. These woven-cloth surgical masks have many everyday uses—to prevent inhaling airborne dust particles, pollutants and from spreading bacteria to others. U.S. Centers for Disease Control states that face masks of little use in preventing coronavirus because, “most facemasks do not effectively filter small particles from the air and do not prevent leakage around the edge of the mask when the user inhales.” Although, students unfamiliar with this practice still make this fallacious connection.
While some students joke about the virus, they fail to take into consideration the tragedy at hand—according to CNN, the death count is currently over 2,000. This unfortunate number is just another reason why the Chinese Student and Scholar Association (CSSA) ultimately decided to cancel their Chinese New Year event.
In another instance,”Barstool Billikens,” a comedic Instagram account notorious for commentating on SLU events, making light of international fears of a pandemic, posted an image of a face mask with a Billiken on it. The caption read “protect yourself from the coronavirus with school spirit.”
The CSSA hosts the Chinese Spring Festival every year to acknowledge one of the most widely celebrated holidays in China. Numerous students, staff and faculty attend the event and attendees often include students from WashU, UMSL and SIUE.
According to Lina Liang, the Minister of Public Relations for CSSA, the Festival “aim[s] to share this part of Chinese culture with the Saint Louis University community and hope[s] it can help SLU faculties and students form a better understanding of the Chinese culture.”
Although, this year, concerns for public health and outbreaks of coronavirus in China led the CSSA to their decision to cancel the event.
“Considering what was happening in our home country, and whose students family members are in China, we are finding celebration to be difficult at a tragic time,” Liang stated.
This sensationalized concern for coronavirus in America, Liang states, comes from “shocking” and “overreacting” media coverage of the disease. “Influenza has a far more impacted population in U.S. The difference is that influenza is well known, but coronavirus (with flu-like symptoms) is novel,” she said.
The CSSA will continue to fight against intolerance from their peers. In response to some of the SLU community’s assumptions about and reaction to the virus, the CSSA hopes to educate against the misconceptions about their culture that might lead to bigotry. In collaboration with INTO and SLU’s Office of International Services, they are also fundraising to help Chinese hospitals at the forefront of the fight against Coronavirus. Please consider donating here: https://www.into-giving.com/support-us.
“Let us remember that we are a Catholic, Jesuit, international, urban, residential, research university with a mission that calls us to walk in solidarity with others,” Pestello wrote in his email to the students, faculty and staff of SLU. In such a time of this global health crisis, solidarity is essential to the success of a university-wide community.
Your donation will support the student journalists of Saint Louis University. Your contribution will help us cover our annual website hosting costs.
William • Feb 21, 2020 at 7:20 am
Let me ask this question: how tolerant were these foreigners from China of non-Chinese before the onset of the coronavirus that came from Wuhan and caught the world off-guard, and affected all of the world, due to Mainland Chinese peoples eating habits? In these challenging times, foreigners from China studying in the United States still behave as if they are still in China, meanwhile, they are chastising their non-Chinese peers. Let me remind you that Mainland Chinese people are amongst the most xenophobic people on Earth, and they bring this xenophobia to the United States. Let us remember that Mainland Chinese students of Han ancestry are mostly in their own little Chinese world on campuses in the United States and tend to view non-Chinese people with a bit of contempt and distrust, if they even choose to interact with them at all. Meanwhile, an incident like this happens and they shove their 5,000 year old culture in the faces of non-Chinese people as if to say, ‘See how old my culture is? See how much better mine is in contrast to yours? This is all the Mainland Chinese students have to share: their culture. How can sharing culture help American students feel at ease about the coronavirus epidemic?