As a Chinese-American girl living in the San Francisco Bay Area, the racism I have experienced has been relatively minimal because my community embraces a large Asian population. However, at the start of the coronavirus outbreak, my friends and I decided to go on an online site to chat with teenagers in other parts of the country. It was a careless decision, one only three bored teenagers would make. The first teen who popped onto the screen shrieked at the sight of three Chinese kids staring back at him. Slowly, as if he expected us not to understand, he asked: “Do you chinks have coronavirus?” He pulled his eyes upward, slanted as his siblings laughed in the background. We left the site immediately, vowing never to make such a stupid choice again. That was the first time I had experienced any form of racism. The reality is, xenophobia still exists.
