The rabbis were quite aware that words have consequences. They warn us on today’s daf TB Pesakhim 118 how serious the sin of slander is. ““And Rav Sheshet further said, citing Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya: Anyone who speaks slander, and anyone who accepts and believes the slander he hears, and anyone who testifies falsely about another, it is fitting to throw him to the dogs, as it is stated: “And you shall not eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field, you shall cast it to the dogs” (Exodus 22:30), and afterward it is written: “You shall not utter [tisa] a false report; put not your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness” (Exodus 23:1). Uttering rumors is here equated to delivering false testimony. Furthermore, read into the verse as though it stated: Do not cause a false report to be accepted [tasi], i.e., do not lead others to accept your false reports. ”” Obviously nobody was thrown to the dogs as a punishment for sin of gossip. The rabbis were just exaggerating saying that people who are cruel with words deserves a cruel fate.
The tragic shooting in Atlanta, Georgia murdering eight people six of whom are Asian Americans is shocking, but not surprising. Anti-Asian attacks have been escalating for a year with a rise of racist and sexist attacks as well online slurs blaming them for the coronavirus pandemic across the United States. hate crimes against Asian Americans is 16 of America’s biggest cities climbed 150% last year.
An article in today’s Washington Post conclusively shows the rabbis were correct in identifying the malicious effect of slander.
“As the coronavirus spread across the globe last February, the World Health Organization urged people to avoid terms like the “Wuhan virus” or the “Chinese virus,” fearing it could spike a backlash against Asians.
“President Donald Trump didn’t take the advice. On March 16, 2020, he first tweeted the phrase “Chinese virus.”
“That single tweet, researchers later found, fueled exactly the kind of backlash the WHO had feared: It was followed by an avalanche of tweets using the hashtag #chinesevirus, among other anti-Asian phrases.
“The week before Trump’s tweet the dominant term [on Twitter] was #covid-19,” Yulin Hswen, an epidemiology professor at the University of California San Francisco and a co-author of the study told The Washington Post. 'The week after his tweet, it was #chinesevirus.'
“Hswen is among a group of researchers who analyzed hundreds of thousands of #covid-19 and #chinesevirus hashtags drafted the week before and after Trump first referred to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” on the social media platform.
“Not only did more people use the #chinesevirus hashtag days after Trump’s tweet, but those who did were more likely to include other anti-Asian hashtags in their tweets, according to the peer-reviewed study published by the American Journal of Public Health on Thursday.
“The group’s findings come amid a wave of racist attacks and threats against Asian Americans, which some advocates have blamed on Trump’s anti-China rhetoric over the pandemic. Trump repeatedly referred to the disease as the “Chinese virus” and the “Kung flu” during White House briefings, campaign rallies and other public appearances. Earlier this week, he once again called the disease the “China virus” in an interview with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo...
“Despite public health experts’ request that people refrain from attaching locations or ethnicity to the disease, Trump argued that the term “Chinese virus” was not discriminatory or racist because the virus “comes from China.”
“Researchers though, suspected that they could demonstrate how his rhetoric inspired racist backlash against Asians.
“'We wanted to provide evidence to show that the term ‘Chinese virus’ is associated with racist undertones,' Hswen said.
“To test their theory, Hswen and other researchers analyzed nearly 700,000 tweets containing the hashtags #covid-19 and #chinesevirus published from March 9-23, 2020, corresponding to the week before and week after Trump’s tweet. (All of the tweets analyzed were in English and although most were published by U.S. users, the team did not set any geographic limitations when collecting the tweets.)
“The group’s analysis found that the week after Trump first tweeted the phrase “Chinese virus,” the number of users tweeting the hashtag increased more than ten times compared to before his post. Most who tweeted the phrase used it with a negative connotation and were more likely to display anti-Asian hate, the study found. Half the users who tweeted the “Chinese virus” hashtag used other anti-Asian hashtags, while only 20 percent who used the #covid-19 hashtag did, according to the study.
“‘It perpetuated this idea that the disease was the fault of the Chinese,” Hswen told The Post. “It normalized these racist attitudes. That might have perpetuated these beliefs and behaviors offline.'
“The findings did not surprise Russell Jeung, a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University and co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, which tracks incidents of hate and discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. Jeung argued that Trump’s repeated use of the phrase “Chinese virus” has a direct correlation with the rise in hate crimes.
“‘It demonstrates how words matter,' Jeung told The Washington Post. “The term ‘Chinese virus’ racializes the disease so that it’s not simply biological but Chinese in nature, and stigmatizes the people so that Chinese are the disease carriers and the ones infecting others.
“Dean Winslow, a professor of medicine at Stanford University said the study’s findings are consistent with what the public has continued seeing in the news: a rise of violence and harassment against Asian Americans. He wonders whether Americans would have used a geographical location to refer to the virus had it originated somewhere in the U.S
“‘It just happened that this particular virus may have arisen in China,” Winslow told The Post. “If this virus had arisen from a cave in New Mexico, I don’t think that people would be tweeting or calling it ‘the New Mexico virus.’ It’s not appropriate. This is science, and viruses don’t discriminate.’” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/19/trump-tweets-chinese-virus-racist/)
We Jews know exactly what it means to be scapegoated and be targeted by anti-Semites. We remember how fearful we were after the Pittsburgh Etz Hayyim shooting that Shabbat morning. We also remember how grateful we were when people of all races, religions, and creeds joined together in solidarity with the Jewish people. Now it’s our turn to stand in solidarity with the Asian-American community
No comments:
Post a Comment