1 April 2020, 7:46 pm - In Which I Finally Cry

Yesterday, I finally broke down. I cried. I am frustrated and sad and scared. I am faring better today, although my entire body hurts. No, I am not sick. I used my frustration yesterday to fuel an intense workout and went a little too hard and my body is lashing out at me for it. I am sad for selfish reasons, and frustrated at the ineptitude of our country. The world is just a sad, scary place right now, because of a virus.

I finished reading Dread Nation by Justina Ireland today. After I completed it, and reflected on zombie lore, I recalled a conversation from the beginning of the semester where one of my peers noted that we (white people) make entertainment out of apocalypse scenarios because we have never been the subject of an apocalypse…until now. The virus does not care about skin color, age, or wealth. It infects any viable host. It is being compared to the 1918 Spanish Flu - an influenza strain that was so deadly, it killed more people than WWI. However, we called it the “Spanish flu” and thus blame was thrown at Spain, but it merely got that name because Spain was the first place to consistently - and loudly - report on it. It really started in Kansas!

In Dread Nation, the main character, Jane McKeene, recalls reading The Great Yellow Menace because she mistakenly thought it was about the zombie virus overtaking the land (zombies have yellow eyes in Dread Nation), but soon found out it was actually propaganda against Chinese immigrants on the west coast (Ireland 360). McKeene thinks to herself, “It seems strange that in these very fraught times folks would be more concerned about hardworking people trying to find a better life than the monsters that actually want to eat them” (360). We are seeing it today with COVID-19. The man in the office of President of the United States continues to label it the “China virus,” which feeds into racist bigotry. His prejudiced rhetoric promotes racism (Newman et al.), and we are seeing more and more news stories of violence towards our fellow citizens just because they are not white.

See: Trump’s rhetoric does encourage open prejudice and bias. We checked.

As I write this post, a friend is messaging me about an interaction she had with a customer during the day. My friend is in an “essential business,” so she is still going to work while many other businesses are closed. The customer told her, without any prompting, that “you can’t trust the Chinese” and that “the ones who came here for school should go home [back to China] and stay there.”

I echo McKeene’s sentiment - how can people find the energy to malign others when there is a deadly virus making its rounds around the world? Why is the Trump hegemony so scared of keeping everyone alive?

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Works Cited:

Ireland, Justina. Dread Nation. Balzer & Bray, 2018.

Newman, Benjamin et al. “Trump’s rhetoric does encourage open prejudice and bias. We checked.” Washington Post, 11 Mar. 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/11/trumps-rhetoric-does-encourage-open-prejudice-bias-we-checked/. Accessed 1 April 2020.