I chuckled the first time I saw the words “Kung Flu.” It is a clever wordplay that attributes the COVID-19 pandemic to its country of origin, China.
The mainstream media disagrees. After all, many journalists had long ago discarded a sense of humor in exchange for a self-congratulatory obsession with race. Not surprisingly, when President Trump publicly used the term this summer, the media worked itself into a fit of rage and called him a racist. The accusations reveal the media’s narcissism, just as their faux outrage masks cowardice before real racism.
In March, an unnamed White House official was reportedly the first to refer to the coronavirus outbreak as “Kung Flu” in front of a CBS journalist. The correspondent, a Chinese American, immediately took to Twitter to express her indignation and insinuate that the White House was being racist toward her. During the deadliest pandemic to hit the United States in a century, this reporter has a habit of focusing first and foremost on her own ethnicity. Though China has bequeathed the virus to the world and exacerbated its early spread with falsehoods and coverups, the correspondent thought everything was about her.
Others in the media, steeped in similar narcissism, anti-Trump hatred, and group-think, have treated her like a victim of bigotry. Not only have they matter-of-factly declared “Kung Flu” racist, they have deemed other terms Trump has used, such as the “Wuhan virus” or the “China virus,” as stigmatizing and racist as well. Never mind that in January and February, when the COVID-19 first exploded in the city of Wuhan, Chinese state media widely referred to the virus as “Wuhan pneumonia” or the “novel Wuhan coronary pneumonia.” No one complained that Wuhan was being unfairly stigmatized.
More importantly, China shoulders a vast amount of blame for being the root cause of everything virus-related, from small inconvenience to big tragedy. That includes every Chinese restaurant in America that has been shuttered due to the pandemic lockdown, every Asian American family that cannot visit its elderly grandparents for fear of contagion and contamination from the virus, and every Chinese American child that can no longer attend school in person. The worst thing that has happened to Asian Americans this century, and all racial groups together, is the “Kung Flu.” It’s not Trump’s rhetoric. Americans with common sense rightly believe that China deserves to be stigmatized.
Certainly, Asian Americans, who have been reporting an uptick in racist attacks during the pandemic, know that racists often cannot distinguish between “China” and “Chinese.” Understandably, they fear that the president’s rhetoric could fan the flames of racism, which is why every president should consider the unintentional and negative consequences of his words, even if they are humorous.
With that said, the best way for Chinese Americans to separate themselves from China’s culpability is to acknowledge and strongly condemn it. Instead, left-wing Asian American leaders have denounced and derailed legitimate legislative proposals seeking to hold China accountable, calling them racist. Additionally, though some instances of coronavirus-related racism against Chinese individuals are very real and ugly, some allegations are examples of racial grievance run amok. Others reflect racism from other ethnic and racial minorities that had existed long before Trump and had been purposely ignored or dismissed by the Left out of craven political correctness.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 has not stopped real racism from taking place in America. Specifically, a truly racist policy is before voters in California this election year, but it does not bother one bit the media organizations that are appalled by the term “Kung Flu.” In June, California’s Democrat-controlled legislature passed a measure that seeks to overturn a section of the state constitution — adopted by voter referendum nearly a quarter of a century ago — that prohibits discrimination by race, gender, ethnicity, and country of origin in public education, public contracting, and public employment.
This November, voters will decide whether they agree with their state representatives. If they do, race-based quotas and preferences that have been outlawed will return. The state will consider it lawful to discriminate against every racial group, and Asian Americans can expect to bear the brunt of such racism. After all, they are the racial group that has been consistently and disproportionally harmed by these types of racial schemes across the country. Not surprisingly, a broad coalition of Asian American organizations has come together to oppose the current ballot initiative and defend equal rights.
Still, the mainstream media, along with the left-wing political groups they have brandished to condemn “Kung Flu,” have no interest in reporting on real racism. They only care about condemning Trump.
Ying Ma is the President of the Three Kingdoms Institute, host of the China vs. USA podcast, and author of Chinese Girl in the Ghetto. She is a Kung fu practitioner.
