Racism Against Asian During the Covid-19 Pandemic

¹ Department of English, Faculty of Humanities Dioponegoro University Semarang - Indonesia,
² Department of English, Faculty of Humanities Dioponegoro University Semarang - Indonesia,

^* Corresponding author: fifahfifah03@gmail.com, ariya.jati@live.undip.ac.id

Abstract

Covid-19 was discovered in Wuhan China on December 1^st, 2019. On March 9^th, 2020, WHO (World Health Organization) officially announced Covid-19 as a pandemic. Since the declaration of Covid-19 as a global pandemic, Covid-19 causes a major impact in various fields. Starting from the economy, education, to human resources. The most significant is felt by Asians or people with Asian ethnicity. They start to receive racist treatment starting hate comment on social media, insults, or bad treatment from others towards them. This paper is aimed to discuss the background to the emergence of racism against Asian during the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact, especially in America. The method used is data collection taken from news and journal articles related to racism and Covid-19. The result is how Covid-19 can trigger racism against Asian in America and the form of racism and its impact to Asian in America. In conclution, some factors, such as governments that tend to be racist, the pre-existing xenophobic and exclusive government environment exacerbates the negative stigma in society. Various forms of racism starting from hate speech on social media, verbal attacks to physical violence. Racism has caused mental problems for Asian Americans, such as anxiety, depression and lack of confidence to their identity as Americans.