"Racism has always been prevalent in my life," says Eileen Wong, 40, a British-born Chinese mom of two. "I was bullied for the way I look when I was younger, but I thought things were better.

"You get the odd racial slur because there are some ignorant people. But it was only since the beginning of last year that I noticed there was another shift in how people were viewing me and my family."

Wong, born to Chinese immigrant parents, grew up in Swansea. She then moved to Cardiff to go to university and made the Welsh capital her home, where she is now raising her young family.

 

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She blames the early media coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak for this shift, which ran with the simplistic narrative about the origins of the virus, validating the assumption that China and its people were the cause of COVID-19.  

"As a British-born Chinese, I see the UK as my home," she says. "I don't want people telling me to go back to China. It's not my home, my home is here."

 

 

An increase in racism against British East Asians prompted some concerned citizens to form the COVID-19 Anti-Racism Group (CARG), which aims to create awareness and offer support to the victims of racist abuse and hate crimes.

"As the pandemic spread in Europe and the UK, we noticed the mainstream press mostly used images of Chinese people in masks whenever they presented COVID-19 reports, even when the news report had nothing to do with China or any other East Asian countries," CARG told CGTN Europe. "There was also misinformation around wet markets and Chinese eating habits."

A YouGov poll in June 2020 highlighted that 76 percent of Chinese had a racial slur directed at them followed by 63 percent of black respondents who had experienced the same.

 

Using humor to cope with racism

Since the start of the pandemic, Wong has experienced discriminatory behavior in her daily life, even while doing something as routine as buying lunch during a work trip in London.

She had queued up to pay for her lunch and saw the person serving at the cash counter was "all nice and smiles, exchanging pleasantries" with the two customers in front of her. 

However, when it was Wong's turn to pay, the cashier refused to take the money out of her hand and asked her to put it on the counter. She did not think anything of it but when she put out her hand to receive the change, the cashier threw it on the counter. 

"I was just shocked because she wasn't like that with the two people who were queueing in front of me," says Wong. "I didn't quite correlate why that was so I just picked up my change and left."

The discriminatory behavior continued as she got on the train back from London and found two seats either side of her were left empty on a very busy train. 

"I remember posting on my Facebook page to say, 'Wow, what a way to clear the room, just take a Chinese friend somewhere.' I was joking about it and that's how I was dealing with racism," she says.

But when her son was called 'Coronavirus' at school in September, she knew she could no longer dismiss it as a joke.

 

 

As she was growing up, the advice she got from her elders was to not create a fuss, ignore the bullying and it will go away. She also accepted the bullying because she thought she could deal with it.

"But when it's somebody who you love and someone close to you, you want to protect them," she says. 

She reported the incident to her son's school.

"It wasn't just my son. He was with his friend who is Japanese, and they were both called 'Coronavirus,' both coughed on."

 

'Sad to put up with racism in this day and age'

Having been born and raised in the UK, her then 12-year-old son could not understand why he had been singled out and called names.

The school addressed it in an assembly focusing on racism and explaining why it is not acceptable to call people names, cough on them, and wrongly assume they either have the virus or are the cause of it.

"No matter how much we try to assimilate into the UK society, no matter what you tell people, they will see the skin color, the dark hair, the Chinese features and make an assumption," laments Wong. 

She says that given the lockdown restrictions that the UK has been under due to the pandemic, people have been looking to blame someone and it did not help that world leaders like Donald Trump also condemned China about the virus.

Her son was anxious going back to school and no longer felt safe walking there. Wong was concerned for him too. 

"What if there were repercussions? What if [the bullies] felt targeted and reacted to being reported?" she wondered. 

So she started to drive him to and from school to protect him until he found his confidence again. 

"I'm just really sad that in this day and age we still have to put up with that behavior," she says. "And if you look across the pond in America, people are just pushing over elderly Chinese or Chinese-looking citizens, for what? Because they look Chinese? And some of the attacks have been fatal."

 

 

She says Chinese communities across the world must call out the way they are being treated and come together, like the Black Lives Matter movement. She believes reporting all racist incidents, whether verbal or physical, is key to creating awareness.

 

'People may not know it's a crime'

Some of these racist episodes are now being reported – Nigel Ng, a UK-based Malaysian comedian of Chinese origin, known for his popular YouTube character Uncle Roger, was punched in the face on a London street in November 2020. 

And Peng Wang, 37, a University of Southampton lecturer who is a Chinese national, was beaten up in a racist attack in February 2021. 

Both these incidents highlighted how prevalent the issue is. In terms of the everyday casual racism, Wong says the Chinese community may not know that it is actually a crime, and language is often a barrier in reporting.

She suggests promoting awareness about what a race crime is, translating the guidance about how to report it, and encouraging people to come forward and normalize the conversation about it. 

She wants the community to unite in challenging racist attitudes before it escalates and causes further damage. 

"We can see that in America that behavior has taken off because they were slow in addressing it. We don't want violent attacks to happen in the UK, which could be fatal before we do something about it," she warns.

"I don't mind talking about it. Am I worried about any repercussions? Yes, I am. But if nobody talks about it then we're just perpetuating [this] behavior."

 

Video Editing: Jason Wright