Dave's completely right. But, and this is more to embellish on one of his points, it does more than simply distract, it creates people defending him.
His language is brilliantly vague. Is there anything overtly racist about what he said? Nope! And he knows that most people only consider overt racism as legit racism, where everything else is largely fine.
Obviously if he had called it a chink virus or something, we wouldn't even be debating this. Or if he said the Wuhan virus, to be honest. But he did neither, he specifically said Chinese. And yes, if anyone studies psychology or social psychology for just a few hours, you will see that racism/prejudice CAN in fact be inspired and flamed by these kinds of things. It happens all the time by various leaders in different contexts. And you can sweep it away as "well those people doing racist things were already racist to begin with" and you'd be partially right. We're ALL racist to some degree, or prejudice to some degree. Under certain circumstances, almost everyone can turn. So he's not making people racist. Not at all. He's giving it credence, or legitimacy. And, for a lot of people, that's enough to have big impacts. Racial attacks against Asians have risen dramatically since the virus started. Is Trump responsible for any of it? Nope! But he's giving it some inspiration, some legitimacy, some egging on. If I do that, it makes no difference because who cares about me? But Trump can speak to every single 350 million Americans (at least the ones able to hear/read/see him) and serves as the highest law of the land. That matters...a lot. You can say it does not, but you'd be wrong. It's the same reason why if a head Rabbi or a head Priest or Imam or what have you preaches racially based things, many of his follows will act on those things without being directly told to.
But that's besides the point. His language is brilliant, as I said. Because of its ambiguity. Because of it's grayness. So now you'll have people like me, who actually have to deal with the results on the ground by helping Asian clients, and people who see things a little differently. The result is you have people, like Stadler and others, who do NOT like Trump at all, but are more than happy to defend him in these cases because of that ambiguity. I am confident that if Trump said "Chinese immigrants are trying to kill all of you with this virus!" then Stadler and such would not defend him at all. So instead of focusing on how badly this was handled, Trump now has people strongly defending him, even if they hate him. That's brilliant. It also, as Dave pointed out, emboldens people like Trump. So, on that note, this will be the last thing I say on the racism aspect of it, unless something huge happens. I made my points, others have made theirs, and I have nothing else to offer. Luckily this virus is making the world such a fun place that I doubt we'll run out of things to discuss.
Topic: Coronavirus (Read 442420 times)
