OPINION: Is being human illegal now?

Let’s talk about racial injustice.

Let’s hold the same energy people used for Black Lives Matter as for other races. Or, was your support just for you to feel like a good person, and for you to show off to other people that you’re just so active for equality? Or maybe you just haven’t been an active reader in the social injustices that are currently happening? Well, unfortunately, a ton of people of color need  your help.

Starting with the United States, the country I live in, Asian people have been receiving a ton of hate and racial prejudice, thanks in part to the Coronavirus. This racism was reinforced with former President Trump, and others, calling it the “China virus”. That is completely unfair, because there are strains of Covid-19 that originated in other parts of the world, and yet no one singles them out.

To help, you shouldn’t just do what little was done during the BLM movement, which was articles of information, fundraising, and peaceful marching, but hopefully, we as a community can help make a real difference and move for real change.

This is a movement, but please don’t use Asian Lives Matter. It’s disrespectful to both communities and it goes against the point of both movements, which is to make radical change in realising that there’s a fundamental problem that is affecting that community. Instead you can use “Protect Asian Lives” or “Stop Asian Hate” to help promote this movement.
Moving on to a slightly scary topic, there’s concentration camps. I would say that the United States’ and China’s are the most terrifying because they’re moved by unfair discriminations that should be protected as rights. The US has a ton that tend to pick up “migrants, immigrants, and/or refugees, many of whom are children.” what are we doing to them doing unpaid too low labor, imprisonment, etc.

China, on the other hand, is singling out Uighur Muslim population of the far-west region of Xinjiang. Religious freedom is a right in the United States, and I feel that it should be a right everywhere because regardless of what you believe in, as long as it doesn’t harm others or yourself it shouldn’t be criminalized. Please, do your best to speak up on the behalf of those we can’t hear.

Lastly, France’s anti-Mulim laws are discimination that became popularized by individual threats. There’s two sorts of big recent hate moves, one of which is “a bill aimed at rooting out Islamist extremism that could trample on religious freedom and make all Muslims into potential suspects.” The other is “The French government’s ban on wearing garments seen as part of the Muslim hijab but the irony is the religious symbols ban does not include the banning of the wearing of Christian symbols, such as the crucifix.” This is an obvious move to criminalize their community. Yes there have been attacks but just as in many other countries and their attacks, it’s not necessarily determined by race or religion but even if it was the number of people in each community who are innocent versus are a sort of  “terrorist”. Is not even close enough to be a ratio that can even hint at connecting Muslim/islamic people to acts of terrorism.

Of course I’ll link my sources but they’re so relevant today that many news sources are covering this. Anyone can and should be informed.

Protect Asian Lives , What Is the French Hijab Ban? (with pictures) (infobloom.com) , Protesters slam French ‘anti-Muslim’ draft law ahead of parliamentary vote (france24.com) , US Internment Camp List (internmentcamps.us) , China’s 260 concentration camps are proof of pure evil (nypost.com).

Zariah Best is a freshman general studies major from Hutchinson

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