It's kind of bizarre really. Asian Americans as a whole tend to be invisible, historically, culturally, and otherwise, until something like this happens.

So a couple of weeks ago, I was organizing a birthday party for a friend. I was getting on the DC Metro.

I was having dinner at one of my regular restaurants. My family and I were going out to lunch.

I was walking with a colleague at lunch. I was on the bar train for my morning commute to work.

Some guy at the bar whom I had never seen before said, do you have the corona?

They told my wife and son to get away.

Get out of here, go back to China.

People call us corona. People ask us if we eat dogs.

And this kid said, well, you're Chinese, so you must have the coronavirus.

Coronavirus.

It's probably coronavirus.

The woman that replied that she isn't racist, but she just doesn't want to get sick.

You're listening to Code Switch from MPR. I'm Jean Demby.

And I'm Shireen Marisol Mirage.

The news about COVID-19, a.k.a. coronavirus, has been unsettling.

And as the virus spreads, so does suspicion and harassment of Asian Americans.

And we have been here before in the United States because fear of disease and xenophobia have often gone hand in hand or unwashed hand.

SARS was associated with Chinese people. Ebola was associated with Africans.

Irish is, you know, typist carriers or Jewish Italians and others from Southern Eastern Europe

as bringing tuberculosis and smallpox.

That's Erica Lee. She's a historian at the University of Minnesota and author of America for Americans,

a history of xenophobia in the United States.

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