An Open Letter To America

I’ve heard it said that when times get tough, people tend to show their true colors and, America, if these are your true colors, I’m afraid; very afraid.

In the age of the pandemic we’re staying home, and we don’t like it, I get it. But, staying home keeps us all safe from the virus, safe from dying. But we’re so spoiled, so pampered, so used to getting our way, or our haircuts, or hamburgers, or church services, that a lot of us have lost our minds.

And I’m not just talking about the one storming the state capitols with guns and Nazi flags and their 2nd Amendment cries, because they are a special breed of ignorance. That is not a protest, that is terrorism and when someone gets shot, we’ll understand it as terrorism. But then there’s the ignorance of the people who buy into the rightwingnut rhetoric about this being China’s fault. And, because they believe, without knowing, reading, educating themselves, they attack the Chinese restaurant, or the Japanese store, or the Asian market because “those people”—who, by the way, are most likely Americans—are responsible for the virus.

Yes, America, some of us are that dumb.

Since January 2020, there has been a rise in the number of reports of Asian people being threatened and harassed on the street … being told to “Go back to China” … being blamed for “bringing the virus” to America … being called horrific names, spat on, or even physically assaulted. And it doesn’t help that the leaders of this country—who let’s be really clear, are the ones responsible for this mess—do nothing to stop this racial outrage but instead fan the flames by calling it the Chins Virus or say that it was invented in a lab and spread around the world even though they have no proof of that.

And so, this is America in 2020 …

Last month, in Albuquerque a Chinese American man, shopping at a supermarket, was told to “stay away”  while in Brooklyn, an Asian woman was verbally assaulted and called a “Fucking freak.” In Houston, a woman verbally harassed employees of a Vietnamese restaurant, telling them, “Get out of our country.”

In America; to Americans; by Americans.

In the Bronx, three teenage girls harassed and used an umbrella to attack an Asian woman, saying, “You caused coronavirus, bitch.” In Martinsville, Indiana, a man of Korean descent was denied entry into a gas station and told to “never come back.” The gas station attendants reportedly told police that "anyone of Chinese descent was not allowed in the store.”  In Woodbury, Minnesota a woman returned home to find this flier posted on her door: “We’re watching you fucking chinks take the chinese virus back to china. We don’t want you hear [sic] infecting us with your diseases!!!!!!!”

Freedumbers.

In Davie, Florida an Asian woman who works as a musician received harassing and racist text messages saying that she would not be hired anymore until she surrendered her Chinese passport and renounced her Chinese citizenship. In Midland, Texas a Burmese man and his two children were attacked and stabbed at a Sam’s Club by a 19-year-old man, who admitted to targeting the family because he believed they were Chinese and infecting people with coronavirus.

And this week, in Flint, Michigan, after Family Dollar store security guard, Calvin Munerlyn, told Sharmel Lashe Teague, that her child needed to wear a mask inside the store, Teague spit on the man and drove away. Twenty minutes later Teague’s husband and son, Larry Edward Teague and Ramonyea Travon Bishop, came into the store, found Calvin Munnerlyn and Bishop shot him.

In America. We’re shooting people who are trying to enforce standards to keep us all healthy. We’re spitting on people, harassing people, terrorizing people, killing people because we want to go outside and so if we need to push or shove or shoot our way outside, we’ll do it.

I get that we’re scared; none of us have ever been through any thing like this before. But why turn your fear into hate; why attack people … kill people … because you’re afraid. Listen to the doctors, the medical professionals, those people on the front lines trying to save lives, and turn off the politicians who preach that 80,000 dead Americans is a success; turn off the pundits who feed you lies about blame, lie about protection, about bleach.

Educate yourself or succumb to your freedumb.

The freedumb to impose your rights over those of others all the while saying they cannot do the same to you; the freedumb to murder a man for doing his job, following his boss’s orders, as well as state orders; the freedumb to target and terrorize others because they look different.

That’s not America; that’s not the America we all learned about in school; but clearly, as we watch the news and see the hate and the violence rise because people want to go to the beach or the park—and you may notice, very few say they want to go back to work—think their rights to walk around in a pandemic are more important than the rights of others to stay safe and healthy and alive.

If you want to believe this is a hoax, or no worse than the flu, instead of heading out to the playground, why not head to work, and don’t wear a mask. Pray you won’t get infected and bring the virus into your home where you might pass it along to your parents or your kids, or your friends.

Is that the freedumb you want? The freedumb to die? The freedumb to infect and possibly kill others? The freedumb to spit in the face of police officers who are simply doing their jobs?

Grow up, America, people are dying at the rate of nearly one person every minute, and if those new models are right, one American will be dying every forty-five seconds this summer.

Free?

Dumb.