#5: Your N95 Mask Will Not Save You
Stop being racist or you'll fall sick, part 2
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Breaking news: My newsletter hasn’t solved racism :(
Cases of infection of the coronavirus are climbing steadily, there are now over 9,000 cases in China and there’s significant likelihood of community transmission within the country. As a result, many other countries are limiting travel from China. The Singapore government has just announced that new visitors with recent travel history to mainland China will not be allowed to enter Singapore.
Singaporeans who are returning from China will be asked to take a 14-day leave of absence. The Ministry of Health has assured the public that community transmission has not taken place in Singapore and that they are on top of the situation. The travel ban is a precaution against further risk of transmission.
To be very very clear, I am in no means suggesting that the Singapore government’s new travel restrictions are racially motivated. I have no expertise in public health and I can only place my trust in the experts who have made this decision.
I am, however, absolutely certain that the worst people in Singapore will be celebrating this decision. There have been several petitions for Singapore to ban Chinese visitors going around. The last time I checked, the most popular one had over 40,000 signatories.
I’m going to give everybody who signed this petition the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they all have Master’s Degrees in Public Health and know more about infections diseases than I do. I can only assume that the impulse behind the petition was rooted in research and was an informed decision.
Then why are all the comments so racist ah.
You know how parents try to trick their children into eating vegetables by chopping them really finely and hiding them in the rest of their food? These commenters are trying to conceal their putrid xenophobic beliefs in a package of hysteria and concern. The Chinese people are irresponsible and unhygienic and they carry their foreign viruses with them wherever they go. Some of the comments suggest that real Singaporeans should be protected over foreign talents, echoes of rhetoric that have been used to rally against immigration, even before the coronavirus became a concern.
There are some honestly appalling comments that suggest that the coronavirus is a biological weapon designed by the CCP to attack its enemies. Please la if I wanted to attack Singapore do you think I’d send my operatives to Rasa Sentosa?!
Just yesterday, I was at an event where the conversation turned to racism (how it usually does when I am involved, admittedly). A Singaporean Chinese woman admitted that she used to be racist against the “tiongs” (her words) until she went overseas and realised that the rest of the world saw her as Chinese too.
I think that it is very poor strategy for Chinese Singaporeans to be racist against Chinese people right now because the rest of the world is currently also very racist against Chinese-looking people and if you go overseas you will definitely also kena. Right wing nutjobs looking for an excuse to spread xenophobic sentiment and faux-intellectual Model UN types who enjoy pontificating about China’s growing geopolitical significance are having a field day right now. This just gives them more fuel to push their own agendas. Racism isn’t logical and nobody’s going to ask you if you’re a second-generation Singaporean before hurling slurs at you. But I obviously think that you should be as un-racist as possible in every aspect of your life all the time. Not just because you think it might come back and bite you. The right move here isn’t to distance yourself from China by saying oh I’m not one of them but to push back against the warped logic of racism in the first place. Anybody can contract the virus but it’s more likely if you’ve been in Wuhan recently. Shunning a Chinese person and calling them names isn’t going to protect you any more than spinning in a circle very quickly so the virus gets too dizzy to infect you.
There is a shortsightedness in the way Singaporeans attack citizens of other countries. China is dirty, Hong Kong is myopic and self-destructive, America is wonton and slothful. It is sheer projection. The hysteria over the $100 per diem for individuals who might be quarantined seems to reflect fears that there is not enough for real Singaporeans and a generalised economic anxiety. Despite what we are used to believing, there is actually enough to go around and punching down (or even laterally) is not the way to get what you want.
It’s almost too easy to blame the foreigner when things go wrong. It’s a generalised and shifting category that can be reworked as needed. Today, we are angry at the Chinese. When retrenchments take place, we are angry at the Indians for allegedly stealing our jobs. When a white expat’s child speaks Singlish, we say that anybody can be Singaporean if only they assimilate well enough. We don’t really have problems with foreigners. Our problems include (and are not limited to): capitalism, low wages, economic anxiety, fear of the unknown, fear of dying, fear of becoming irrelevant.
Some people are very afraid of the coronavirus. The fact that it can live in a person’s body without them exhibiting any symptoms only makes this scarier. Honestly, all you can do is listen to advisories from health experts. Wash your hands, use hand sanitiser, wear the right mask if you have a cough, and see a doctor if you’re sick. Crossing the street when you see a Chinese person is not a recommended precaution against contracting illness. In fact, I think it will make you sicker because being an asshole infects your soul.
I, personally, am not afraid of the coronavirus. I think I’m very hard to kill. In any case, I think I’m at a place in my life where my obituary would be pretty decent. Live fast, die young, etc etc.
Thanks for being good students, I’ll see you next time.
Further Reading
Racist memes target Chinese eating habits, but the real causes of the coronavirus are more mundane.
A Twitter thread about how to cover health crises responsibly.
The Ministry of Health’s FAQ page on the coronavirus.
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