Yes, I started that thread. Basically because you and a couple of others did nothing but call me a racist over at PRSI and I wanted to understand why. The why is because I breathe.
But l,et me clarify a couple of things. I don't blame Lebron for China's problems. I blame him for taking their dirty money all the while keeping his mouth shut about everything else they do. More of an NBA problem than a LeBron problem, he is just the most visible. Me calling Obama a Muslim sympathizer is not racist. It has nothing to do with race. For decades we called diseases and virus's based on the country of their discovery. Until China. We have to bow to China. Well if you have ever called the H1N1 Flu the Spanish Flu, are you a racist?
You seem to be targeted by it a bit more, well a lot more, than most. I don't know if you actually are, think you are or you just go looking for it. My friend Jay is Black. He isn't always looking for it. If he were, we would not be friends. I don't see him walking into a c-store in southern WV wondering which one of these rednecks is going to kill me. We go in, get some food and we leave. Just like every other white person does. Now maybe he goes home and tells his wife all the racists he saw that day, I don't know. But he doesn't seem the type. Not everything is racist and some things that may be, are not necessarily meant to be. I will say this: if your wife, daughter, mother, son, grandmother or anyone else you care about breaks down or gets a flat tire while traveling through WV, you want me to be one to roll up to help them. I will make sure they get back on their way safely. I will protect them like my own family. Just like I would anyone else. Even you. And if they think I am a racist, I can live with that.
H1N1 is the correct reference to a virus otherwise known as Swine Flu. The Spanish Flu is the virus that created the 1918 pandemic, and originated in Kansas, before it was spread across the world by U.S. soldiers.
So, maybe naming viruses after their origin is less useful than naming viruses after a nomenclature like SARS-CoV-2, or COVID-19.
The people pushing for it to be called the Chinese Flu are always looking to blame China for the virus, and thereby hope to undercut how disastrous conservatives have been at blunting its spread, from Trump's bumbling to DeSantis' obvious corruption.
As for your buddy Jay, it's worth considering that if a person of color doesn't tell you about a racist interaction, it may not be because they don't have them, but rather they don't trust you to talk about them.
Sure, not everything is racist, and lots of people are navigating the world the right way without intentionally racist intentions, but the desperate need to call SARS-CoV-2 the Chinese Flu is one. And, so were the arguments that Obama was a secret Muslim because they were based on race, sectarianism, and overt bigotry.
Bigotry drives the attacks on China. But, to be clear, China is run by people who routinely violate human rights, and we should acknowledge how they're treating the Uighurs, and those in Hong Kong. And, we also have to be really thoughtful about how China has worked power structures in North Africa and Afghanistan, and how we are in a long-term cold war with them over resources and places like Taiwan. We also have to acknowledge that they're a huge trading partner, and a complex culture, and that simply treating them like an enemy is stupid, and so is spending billions on the idea that we're getting into a shooting war with them. Rather, we're in an economic war that we're losing.
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