On March 18, the senior U.S. senator from Texas, John Cornyn, endorsed a racist and totally unfounded theory that Chinese cultural practices are to blame for the COVID-19 pandemic. “China is to blame,” Senator Cornyn told reporters from The Hill, “because the culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs and things like that … these viruses are transmitted from the animal to people and that’s why China has been the source of a lot of these viruses like SARS, like MERS, like swine flu.”
Senator Cornyn’s ignorant comments are extremely dangerous, chiefly for the millions of Asian Americans living in the United States today, but also for all people trying to survive the health care and economic crisis currently ravaging this country.
In the first place, Senator Cornyn is flat out wrong. Neither MERS nor the 2009 H1N1 flu [strain] originated in China, and while the 2003 SARS pandemic did begin in China, there is no evidence to suggest that a particular culinary practice caused the first human infection. In the case of COVID-19, there is no consensus regarding what animal may have been the initial reservoir for the virus, let alone whether the virus was initially transmitted to humans via the consumption of a particular animal.
More importantly, Senator Cornyn’s comments endanger the lives and livelihoods of many of the Americans he has sworn to represent, encouraging an already alarming rise in anti-Chinese sentiment and action that has occurred over the past few months. Asian Americans – both those who are actually of Chinese descent and those who are imagined to be by racist perpetrators – have experienced overt harassment and violence on the street at alarming levels, and Asian American stores and restaurants have seen huge drop-offs in business, even before the widespread calls for social distancing.
While many critics have properly pointed to President Donald Trump’s use of the moniker “Chinese virus” to describe COVID-19 as a spur for this wave of anti-Chinese harassment and violence, Senator Cornyn’s comments are arguably even worse. His specific condemnation of alleged cultural practices goes far beyond a criticism of the Chinese government, suggesting that Chinese people are themselves to blame for this pandemic. Over 1 million Asian Americans live in Senator Cornyn’s own state of Texas, and over 21 million Asian Americans reside in the United States. Senator Cornyn’s words tacitly sanction their harassment, their violation, and their material depredation.
Finally, Senator Cornyn’s attempt to scapegoat Chinese cultural practices serves as a distraction from his own responsibility, and the responsibility of the federal government more generally, in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. Every breath wasted concocting racist theories about the alleged ethnic origins of this pandemic is a breath that could have been spent encouraging the Senate and the president to act with greater, unified urgency in ramping up the process of manufacturing and distributing much-needed medical equipment. Every attempt to stoke anti-Chinese racism is an attempt to redirect our attention away from the continued refusal of the Republican party to protect the millions of Americans who are now laid off, without health insurance, and frightened to death.
But these much-needed actions require direct and conflictual confrontations with health care and manufacturing corporations. Senator Cornyn is apparently scared of such confrontations – he would rather scapegoat Asian Americans who are already in harm’s way and leave millions of other Americans vulnerable to the devastating health and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Senator Cornyn’s racist comments warrant, at the very least, a censure from the U.S. Senate, and Texans must remember to hold him accountable for these comments when they go to the ballot box this November.
Nick Bloom is a doctoral candidate in American studies at the University of Texas at Austin, presently completing a dissertation on the effects of plantation slavery upon American political thought and culture in the 19th and 20th centuries. Bloom studies the historical relationship between race, economics, political thought, and popular culture.
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This article appears in April 17 • 2020.