Feb. 6, 2020
The other night, at a posh theatre in the centre of Paris, I inadvertently perpetuated a tired old stereotype of the passive, submissive Asian when I failed to call out the French woman sat next to me, who spent the entire first act of the production with her turtleneck over her mouth.
The incident happened in increments. Sometime near the beginning of the first act, she had pulled up the top of her sweater to cover her mouth and nose. Progressively throughout the play, she began to lean further and further away from me until she was practically sitting in her boyfriend’s lap. Under the pretext of snuggling up to her partner, she had twisted her body into a knotty pretzel with one sole aim: to get as far away from me as possible.
During intermission, the pair packed up their affairs and moved to an entirely new section, robbing me of the chance to call her out.
By now, more than a month into the coronavirus outbreak, many in the Asian diaspora around the world have their own tale of discriminatory woe – be they of Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Japanese or, like me, Korean descent.
More at https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/coronavirus-asian_uk_5e3bef5ec5b6f1f57f0bce8a
