“Yellow Perils,” Revived: Exploring Racialized Asian/American Affect and Materiality Through Hate Discourse over the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The goal of this essay is to explore what kind of hate is produced against Asian bodies in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. By centering Asian/American affect and materiality -marginalized voices, narratives, and feelings of Asian/Americans as affective-performative texts, this essay attends to critique the historical continuum of racial discrimination against Asian/Americans (i.e., yellow peril) and advocate for social justice, equality, and inclusion in the U.S. Overall, I argue that Asian/American bodies are both physiologically and ideologically desensitized, dehumanized, and weaponized as the revival of yellow perils over the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, this essay highlights the possibility of adding affective and performative lenses in Critical Intercultural Communication research, exploring the politics of Asian/American bodies and the hate discourse as a case study for further academic conversations in Asian/American scholarship in Communication.

Korean immigrants’ perceptions of library services and library multicultural programs for Asian communities before and during COVID-19

“…The lack of (re)action by the local library systems to the racist discourse toward Asian Americans delivered the message that such hate speech is "the norm or accepted" (Kimura, 2021, p. 139); Asians are insignificant members of the communities; and integration of Asians into communities can be ignored (Kimura, 2021). Even though children were not exempt from physical attacks and verbal ridicule, such as Chinese dietary habits, during COVID-19 (see Stop AAPI Hate, 2020;Kimura, 2021), the number of multicultural programs for children was reduced to 0 at Branch B and the frequency of children's multicultural programs at Branch C was only 7% (15 of 207 slots).…”

“…This abrupt social change caused by COVID-19 gave us an additional opportunity to research ways that local library systems responded to the urgent need of Asian American communities to counter the problematic representations of Asian as carriers of the Chinese virus (Kimura, 2021). Therefore, we decided to study the libraries' multicultural programs planned for the general public and immigrants, Asian immigrants in particular, again in 2021.…”

COVID‐19 and climate change: The social‐psychological roots of conflict and conflict interventions during global crises

“…With dehumanization apparent throughout the COVID‐19 pandemic (D. M. Markowitz et al, 2021), understanding how dehumanization works as well as how to prevent or reduce it becomes ever more important. Several prominent public officials have repeatedly referred to COVID‐19 as the Chinese flu (Rogers et al, 2020) contributing to stigmatization and blame towards a national identity rather than promote dialogue and unity (Kimura, 2021). Importantly, dehumanization promotes prejudice against and apathy for outgroups, a pattern often observed in responses to climate change impacts (Bandura, 2016).…”

The Politicization of COVID-19 and Anti-Asian Racism in the United States: An Experimental Approach

“…More importantly, this politicization of the pandemic has adversely affected broader Asian American communities, giving rise to a historic surge in reported hate crimes against the minority population regardless of their diverse ethnic and national origin identities (Jeung and Lee, 2021).Scholars have explained such a rapid racialization of COVID-19 as rooted in deep-seated American stereotypes of Asians who have been lumped together as a monolithic racial group (Kimura, 2021;Li and Nicholson Jr, 2021). Furthermore, dating back to the late 19th-century Chinese Exclusion Act and the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, Asian Americans have long been viewed as "perpetual foreigners" in American society, unassimilable to the mainstream and sometimes even more loyal to their countries of origin (Kim, 1999;Wu, 2002).…”