Drag Race legends Sum Ting Wong and Yuhua Hamasaki say vile anti-Chinese racism sparked by coronavirus ‘comes from the top’
Yuhua Hamasaki and Sum Ting Wong sat down to discuss racism in the coronavirus age. (WOW)
Drag Race UK‘s Sum Ting Wong spoke to American season 10 queen Yuhua Hamasaki about how coronavirus has sparked a wave of disgusting anti-Chinese racism.
The outbreak of coronavirus has brought with it a wave of anti-Asian hate, with LGBT+ people of Asian descent warned they face a “double whammy” of homophobia and racism.
Sum Ting Wong and Yuhua Hamasaki saw down to discuss the issue over video call for RuPaul’s Digital DragCon over the weekend.
“The recent COVID-19 outbreak has really highlighted that thing have become a lot more heated,” Sum Ting said. “Have you noticed that in the US?”
“Totally,” Yuhua replied. “People are relating the coronavirus to an ‘Asian virus’ or ‘Chinese virus’, but the thing is when you call it the Chinese virus it [creates] a bad stigma, and a bad emotion attached to the Chinese.”
“It also encourage violence… Same thing as a few decades ago, when people were talking about HIV and calling it the ‘gay virus.'”
Drag Race UK’s Sum Ting Wong says coronavirus has brought back historic racist slurs.
Sum Ting agreed, saying that she hadn’t heard racist slurs and stereotypes such as “all Chinese people eat bats” for “so long”.
“It’s all coming back because of this pandemic,” the Drag Race UK queen said. “And it’s all racially charged and it all comes from the top”.
Both Sum Ting and Yuhua are of Chinese descent. Yuhua was born in China and moved to the US aged 7.
Sum Ting’s grandparents were all born in China, with her parents born in or having lived in Vietnam before moving to Britain, where she was born.
Her father owned a Chinese takeaway, where she would help out when she was “really really young”, coming face to face with racism “day to day”.
“The best thing that I learned from that [experience] is how my dad dealt with it,” she said.
“He’d almost shrug it off and that’s the thing I’ve taken in to adult life. As a really young kid I learned to push that aside and not let if affect me, but obviously it does.”
