“He looked at me straight in the eye and said, ‘You should be quarantined’ and took off"
AP reports that Warrior star Olivia Cheng and Tiger Tail star Tzi Ma have spoken up about Coronavirus racism.
Rep Judy Chu recently revealed there are 100 incidents of targeted racial hate a day towards Asian Americans as a consequence of Coronavirus racism.
Cheng said she saw a man drive up to an elderly Chinese woman yelling out his window, “This is your fault!”. He then threw trash at her.
“I don’t think we can pretend that this isn’t happening,” Cheng said. “For now, it would not be unwise to be a little more careful, to maybe have buddy systems when possible to go get your groceries if you’re not feeling safe.”
The Marco Polo star fears that hatred towards Asians will wipe out the progress made by Asian American representation in film.
“We have made so much progress in Hollywood with Asian American stories,” she said. “I’m a a big believer in stories and how important they are in creating empathy.”
“I worry about this impacting our chances so soon after we made some serious inroads. Is this going to regress us and put us however many steps back?”
Ma himself was a victim of Coronavirus racism. At a grocery store in Pasadena, Ma was approached by a man in a car.
“He looked at me straight in the eye and said, ‘You should be quarantined’ and took off,” the Hong Kong born actor said.
“I got very angry obviously, flush with this kind of cold in your body,” Ma recalled. “And I started screaming at him, but he was way too far away for him to hear me.”
Ma, who recently starred in The Farewell, is advocating through the #WashTheHate campaign to combat Coronavirus racism.
In related news, A motorcyclist was caught on video spewing Coronavirus racism towards an Asian American couple in Pasadena.