NJ.com: We can’t allow COVID-19 to foment hate

  • April 23, 2020

By Andrew N. Kim, Evan Bernstein and Shira Goodman

The coronavirus crisis has shown us some of the best and the worst sides of our nation. Front line heroes – doctors, nurses, EMTs, grocery store workers, police, firefighters and others – continue to do their jobs under unusual, stressful, even dangerous conditions. Many teachers are working from home while balancing their own familial obligations in order to ensure that our students can finish the year strong and be ready for what’s next. Neighbors are checking in on each other, running errands for the elderly and vulnerable, and finding ways to build connections even as we cannot physically be together.

But, as is too often the case, hatred and bigotry have also taken a firm hold on those who seek to sow division and stoke discord. The Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community and the Jewish community – along with immigrants and anyone perceived as “other” – have seen a surge in coronavirus-related bias. This is unacceptable and we cannot allow a public health crisis to overwhelm our decency and civic obligations to each other.

Hatred and bigotry often fester during times of uncertainty and trauma. Fear and ignorance can overtake better instincts as there is an effort to lay blame. Those driven by hatred count on this to fuel their efforts – to devastating effect. In the last month alone, we have witnessed verbal and physical attacks on members of the AAPI community, with more than 1,000 incidents documented by Stop-AAPI-Hate, a project of the Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council and Chinese for Affirmative Action.

In late March, the FBI issued a warning about increased hate crimes against Asian Americans, as attackers “blame” this community for the spread of the virus. Jews have also been blamed as causing the spread and as being possible profiteers of the virus or an ultimate cure. In New Jersey, the Jewish community has been bombarded with hateful rhetoric online that twists the actions of a few to paint an entire community with a broad brush. This kind of stigmatization does not always stop with words. Earlier this month, an individual was arrested for threatening to travel to Lakewood to assault Orthodox Jews with a baseball bat.

We know, logically and from science, that the virus cares not what language we speak, what God we pray to, or the color of our skin; the virus has spared no community. While its effects have been devastating for communities of color (highlighting longstanding disparities and inequalities in access to health care) – the virus itself needs only host after host, so we collectively need to work together to starve the virus of new hosts through social distancing and other critical protective measures.

This is new for all of us and we need to work with each other to broaden education and awareness for the necessities of these measures. To that end, we acknowledge and thank the Rabbinic leaders across the Jewish community, including the VAAD in Lakewood, for working with law enforcement and state and local officials to declare coronavirus a mortal threat. Working together, they urged the community to “stay home; save lives,” and improved adherence to social distancing. More work needs to be done on that front in Lakewood and throughout our state, but this is best accomplished together in civil and respectful ways.

While we starve the virus through social distancing, we also must starve the virus of a fertile soil for hate. We do that through education, coalition-building, strong support networks and allies who stand up for one another. Just as we all have a role to play in stopping the spread of coronavirus, we all bear responsibility for stopping the bigotry and hatred. We must call it out when we see it; we must stand up for our neighbors. This includes advocating for social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to quickly remove hateful content from their platforms that violates their own terms and conditions and urging law enforcement at all levels to be attentive and responsive to rises in hate crimes and discrimination.

We have plenty to be afraid of right now. Our own health, the health of our loved ones, and our economic futures weigh heavily on the minds of us all. We have a choice; do we allow those who seek to use fear and hatred to turn our communities against each other to find scapegoats, or do we allow the better angels of our nature to bring our communities together to find solutions?

We have one chance to move our country forward through this crisis; let’s set aside hate and do it together.

Congressman Andrew N. Kim represents New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District.

Evan Bernstein is ADL’s Vice President, Northeast Division, which serves northern New Jersey.

Shira Goodman is ADL’s Regional Director for the Philadelphia region, which serves southern New Jersey.