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Condemning any and all racist and xenophobic rhetoric against Asian and Asian American communities amid the rise of COVID-19, and expressing appreciation for the resilience, support, and contributions of the City of Philadelphia's Asian American and Chinese American communities.
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WHEREAS, Anti-Asian xenophobia has continuously emerged over the course of United States history. From the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act - the first immigration law to restrict an entire ethnic group - to the World War II internment of Japanese-Americans, racist rhetoric and overtly discriminatory public health and immigration policies, rooted in racial anxieties and animosity, have consistently been weaponized against Asian immigrants; and
WHEREAS, There is also a long history of economic exclusion and even quarantine directed at Asian communities in times of crisis. Public health officials in the 19th century characterized Asian immigrants as carriers of fatal diseases like smallpox to justify discriminatory and demeaning policies rooted in racial and economic anxieties. Between 1910 and 1940, over 250,000 Chinese and Japanese immigrants were detained for as long as six months at Angel Island Immigration Station, where, without any indication of illness, they were given invasive medical examinations; and
WHEREAS, The conflation of discriminatory attitudes and the discussion of disease in the public sphere has worked to reinforce anti-Asian sentiment. Flu pandemics in the 1950s and 1960s were coined the "Asian flu" and "Hong Kong flu," yet the spread of H1N1 flu, which first emerged in the United States was not labelled the "American flu," but rather the "swine flu"; and
WHEREAS, For weeks, political figures, media outlets, and individuals on social media have purposefully vilified China and, by extension, people of Asian descent in assigning blame for COVID-19 - an association that has revealed anti-Asian resentment and resulted in an uptick in racial hatred; and
WHERE...
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