Despite the World Health Organization’s official naming of “COVID-19”, Donald Trump continues referring to COVID-19 as the “China virus” or “Chinese virus” is an effort to shift blame on the Chinese and Asian-Americans. It’s not just racist, it’s a transparent attempt to deflect blame for his early inaction at any cost. Even if that cost is inciting violence to his own citizens and fellow humans.

If it wasn’t clear to you before, Trump truly only cares about himself.

Now Asians and Asian-Americans are under duress and I hope this wakes us up as a community. We had plenty of opportunities to witness this clear pattern from the start and had multiple chances to stand with immigrants (2015-), Black Lives Matter (2016-), Muslims (2017-), Trans (2017-), women (19-), disabled (2015-), and the poor (198x-) as they came under fire from Trump.

In large part, my experience has been that our community has remained quiet. It’s unacceptable.

Now it’s our turn at the front lines and we’re lucky it’s only his dumb mouth enabling harassment or violence at the grocery store by some idiots. That’s not okay by any means, but it’s nothing compared to the stripping away of human rights, being placed in cages, getting deported or attacked by a mob (yet). We also should be grateful because despite our community’s general inaction, we’ll have many non-Asian allies.

We need to learn from these allies and fight against how we’ve been conditioned. In the age of Trump, turning away and taking the “peaceful” route just makes it easy for this dirtbag administration to continue bullying us (and battering the most-vulnerable) until it’s more than dealing with ignorance at a mall.

Everyone else that hasn’t been directly impacted by Trump yet and doesn’t think they’re on the list — just wait. Trump doesn’t have your back and he won’t be satisfied until everyone is under his thumb – even white people. This is one of these crucial situations where by the time you start paying attention, it’ll be too late.

(originally posted on Facebook)