Purpose
We want to give AAPI Students at IU a place to have their voices heard. We made this website in response to anti-Asian sentiment being expressed due to COVID-19. Xenophobia is another spreading pandemic that is happening at the same time as COVID. This is one of the big issues that is happening to Asians across the world, and we want to research the effect it has had on IU students. Our research on the dominant narrative is of disease attributed to race and the idea that the Coronavirus is a “Chinese problem” or a “Chinese disease.” The counter narrative is that disease is never something that should be affiliated with a racial identity and that people who don’t wear masks or believe in the disease (anti-maskers) contribute more to the pandemic. (We will be deconstructing differences in COVID perceptions where focus is on how it started vs. how it is being handled). Our research question is “What is the effect of the dominant narrative of COVID-19 as a “Chinese virus” on Asian international students at IU?” Our audience is Asian international students that go to IU and currently live in Bloomington. We chose these students because we want to hear their experiences, especially related to America and the current political climate. Our target audience will be the ones who don't realize that they have a bias issue on shifting responsibility for several pandemic situations and the ones who were targeted as an criticism from these dominant narratives. Right now, we are experiencing a global epidemic. Just because the first outbreak was in China, people in other parts of the world are maliciously calling the disease the Chinese virus. Chinese and even Asians are being discriminated against when they get along with other races and others think they are representing the virus. We desperately need to do something to stop this. The purpose of this essay is to explain the social injustice that people of color experienced in different pandemic situations and common misconceptions of diseases related to certain races. We want the audience to understand how people of color were criticised for certain diseases because of their certain way of living or their living environment and to realize that diseases are not racial which none should be blamed for a natural originated disease. In addition, we would like our audience to realize the pain that some races received during the extreme situations of pandemic and be more acceptable and kind to each other. Our plan for implementation will include research about stigma, culture, and disease. More than ever, we see news about it now because of COVID, but we also want to talk about how it has been referenced in history because, in dominant narratives, we are trying to dissect the way history was “made by winners” and told by people in power. Some resources we will need are news articles, personal stories, and scholarly resources. We talk about how diseases are racially related to be given by “the Other,” so this means we may have to include some postcolonial and orientalism related texts into our research. For the timeline, first, we will use the information we learned from the primary resource search module to each come back to our groups with two articles/studies/blogs we believed would benefit our research. We will compile this (like an annotated bibliography, but more informal) and we will be able to reference back to it when writing our paper by 10/20. Then, for the WA 12 interviews and surveys, we will do 2 interviews and 2 questionnaires (completed by 10/23). We want the point of view of both international and domestic students, and possibly our own parents and professors. This project will likely be more student oriented and have a central focus around how COVID reignited this research. We will promote to our target audience through another website/technology based medium that is open to educating people with biases or giving a voice (possibly put a message board where people can write their stories and we can include information for interviews/questionnaire that does not make it into the main text). Survey Analysis
Our survey contains 11 questions (new 13 questions) regarding our research topic and has collected 15 responses. Since our research topic is especially targeted on the international Asian students at IU, our participants are 80% Chinese (12 participants), 20% Vietnamese (3 participants), and 6.7% Indonesian (one participant) while 53.3% of participants are undergraduate seniors, 40% undergraduate juniors, and a few participants are undergraduate sophomores. Also, it is worthy to note that the gender diversity among our participants are 66.7% females and 33.3% males.
Our survey indicates that the participants usually receive news of COVID-19 mostly from the mainstream news reporters that 20% NBC News and the same distribution of 13.3% for The New York Times and CNN. The result shows that 53.3% of participants think COVID-19 has some impact on their daily lives. Also, it is an interesting point to see that only 33.3% of the participants think the COVID-19 has a great impact on their daily lives while 80% of the participants indicated they had not been to a gathering event that involved more than 15 people since COVID-19 spreads in the United States. It is also worth noting that since most of our participants are female, we expected the female participants to be more likely to feel the differences and the aroma, however, we do acknowledge that our participants might not experience major effects from COVID-19 since Bloomingtong is a college town and IU was helping to reduce the negative emotions regarding to the Asian community. Therefore, it makes sense when the answers of the participants on the specific ways of COVID-19 impacts, most answers indicate the academic life and social life was influenced most and mental health was mostly worried by the participants. Our participants are all from IU and mostly juniors and seniors who are concerned about their academic performance and their future career, which were greatly influenced by the COVID-19, while it is possible to say that the reason why most our participants didn't experience major racial crimes is that they were staying at home to protect themselves and others from the COVID-19 spread. Regarding our participants' race information, it is reasonable to conclude that our participants might have more knowledge about COVID-19 since China is the first country that revealed the information of COVID-19 and other Asian countries were expecting to pay more attention to the virus than others. Our participants might be influenced by or told by their family members or relatives in Asia that they needed to be careful with the virus. Also, since the COVID-19 confirmed cases of the U.S. has increased that the U.S. has become the country with most confirmed COVID-19 cases, our participants could be taking extra precautions regarding this fact. The survey result also indicates that our participants didn't receive any serious hate crime relative to COVID-19, but some of they mentioned they had felt the pressure of being an "Asian in a white-domimnated state" and minor discrimination from strangers. Regarding Trump calling COVID-19 a "Chinese Virus", our responders showed their discontent with it and most answers of the responsibility of COVID-19 are mentioned that the responsibility should be on the government and everyone in the world. Also, since our participants are restricted to Asian people only, an interesting fact has been found out: half of the participants think Asian people are more careful than other racial groups, but they don't think they are as careful as other Asian. In conclusion, the participants of the survey suggested that their lives have been most likely influenced by COVID-19 especially in social and academic ways. However, since our responders are mostly undergraduate seniors and juniors, the harm of COVID-19 is the lowest among other age groups. It is reasonable to see the result showing that the participants didn't care about the virus as much as other group ages. Because of that, some of our participants found themselves not as much careful as other Asian people around and didn't think COVID-19 had a huge influence on them. |