This Asian Guy has Coronavirus: Racial Discrimination Experienced by Asian International High School Students in the Northeastern United States

Abstract

As the first case of COVID-19 was detected in Wuhan, China, the Novel Coronavirus pandemic has rapidly swept the world. As COVID-19 proliferated in the United States, the longstanding negative stereotypes of Asian Americans in society were revealed, and xenophobia among whites and non-Asian Americans was activated. During the pandemic, microaggression, negative bias, and violent crime significantly increased all Asian ethnic groups, especially in big cities and the northeastern United States. During this time, most literature focuses on the racial discrimination and mental health of Chinese/Asian college students. However, scant research explores Chinese/Asian high-school students in America, whose total number has risen dramatically in recent years. Therefore, this paper uses the snowball sampling method to conduct in-depth semi-structured interviews with 7 Asian high school students in the United States and tracked them for around one year, from September 2021 to October 2022. The purpose is to expose their real campus life and true racial discrimination feelings under COVID-19. The study found that Chinese high-school students seldom suffer from severe racism on campus. This is because private international schools in northeastern America are susceptible to racism. Their schools have strict anti-racial discrimination policies, severe punishment measures, and open channels for complaints to protect their students from racism. However, when Chinese high-school students are off campus, they are more likely to suffer intense hate incidents like weapon threats. Even though interviewees do not recognize that they or their friends have encountered extremely severe anti-Asian hate incidents, we should keep in mind that schools may control the public voice about racism on campus in order to keep their reputation and ranking, and therefore those serious events are not exposed to us.