Dont make this deadly mistake again
Xenophobia and pandemics
The current focus on the Chinese and Jews is nothing new.
The "Chinese virus" rhetoric coming from the White House has real-world consequences for Chinese-Americans (and relationships with China broadly). That doesn't mean, as Bill Maher suggested last week, we cannot use the geographical location in naming the virus. He lists plenty of examples: "Zika is from the Zika Forest, Ebola from the Ebola River, hantavirus the Hantan River. There's the West Nile virus and Guinea worm and Rocky Mountain spotted fever and, of course, the Spanish flu."
Maher's larger point is relevant and unfortunately absent in many discussions regarding this pandemic. It's possible to both recognize that this virus appears to have originated in an exotic animal market—a danger that we've been warned about since at least 2007 specific to Chinese markets (by researchers in Hong Kong, no less)—and not be racist and xenophobic. We can work toward banning food stalls that threaten public health without abandoning Chinese restaurants in America. Yet it doesn't appear that we're able to hold two ideas in our heads anymore.
Deserts, Mountains and Coasts. Recovering and Improving
4 年People always make a grave mistake when talking of Nations. The second world war and gas chambers were condemned as German. It is a grave mistake. Germans are great people like all others. But the crime was committed by the Nazis. They were not only Germans. Few people condemned the Atrocities in Germany, not as German atrocity but Nazi German atrocity. Even Joseph Stalin did not condemn the atrocities as German but as Fascist part of Germany. He did not condemn Germany as a nation but as "Fascist part of Germany". He even advocated that Germany should be promoted. Similarly, grave mistake is in circulation with the great Nation China. China's atrocities should be differentiated and mentioned like the atrocities in Germany. German had great Germans, they need not be mentioned because they are well known, and Germany had bad Germans, "The Nazi Germans". The atrocities of China were and are committed by CP China and not China as a whole. Now Maoism with all its murders and massacres of their own people, "in the name of people", plus the over flow to neighbouring countries like Cambodia were done CP China. And the bragged Maoism doesn't exist anymore in CP China herself. That has been a severe crime against Humanity, with Mao's volumes going from one end of the wall to the other end. They are not even found in waste bins today. In America and rest of the world, the crime committed by the present China must be written categorically differentiated. It should be written as works of CP China and not as China. For, there are many Chinese spread all over world who are exemplary and must be taken as examples to follow. -Hamsen-