Mask Me No Questions

Hapa Mag- OCTOBER 7, 2020

By Sam Simahk

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced theatrical productions across the country to shut down, I found myself out of a job — three months into a year-long contract. Shocked into unemployment and thrown into a collective depression, I returned to my parents’ house in rural Massachusetts. It seemed like the perfect place to wait out the apocalypse: acres of densely forested wilderness just outside the door, much more interior space than a Manhattan apartment, and an endless supply of Mom’s baked goods.

When we eventually felt safe leaving the house and embarking on missions to grocery stores, we started with Millbury Fish Market, the local Asian grocery store — a catch-all of Pan-Asian kitchen staples that services every Asian restaurant and home kitchen in the area. We thought it the safest shopping option because, while the federal and state governments wavered on health and safety guidelines, the Asian grocery store had a strict policy: “Mask and gloves required, for my safety and yours.” And in addition to tamarind concentrate and coconut milk, they had boxes of protective equipment for sale at a time when such equipment was hard to find — or expensive to procure online.

At that point, the CDC and the WHO were beginning to reverse their stance on masks, which they had originally said wouldn’t protect people from contracting COVID. In later months it would be revealed that a major reason they had made that claim was to prevent the hoarding and price gouging of equipment that should be saved for medical personnel. Anybody who tried to buy toilet paper in March understands the validity of their concern… but the inevitable consequence of their misinformation, even if given with the best intentions, was the erosion of America’s trust in medical authorities.

This erosion was helped by the dissemination of conspiracy theories on social media. An anti-vaccine “documentary” subtly titled Plandemic and other pieces of propaganda spread more quickly than they could be debunked, so that by the time the authorities started to get their act together, many Americans were hesitant to believe any medical advice that didn’t confirm their miseducated biases.

To be fair, there are plenty of Americans who already distrusted scientific advancements and advice. Some cynicism is justifiable — sugar and dairy lobbyists have demonstrated that federal nutrition guidelines can be purchased — but most of the time people’s hesitation to trust science seems to come from a general resistance to change: We were told in childhood that Pluto is a planet, so it is — regardless of what Neil DeGrasse Tyson says. But aside from conflicting information and a general distrust of science, is there another reason for American rebellion against medical authorities?

During and immediately after the SARS epidemic of almost 20 years ago, I remember plenty of jokes about Asians wearing masks — some from my friends and some, I’m ashamed to confess, from a younger and stupider version of myself. Mostly these jokes came in the form of responding to a sneeze with “SARS!” instead of “gesundheit!” but sometimes they were more pointedly discriminatory. Oftentimes jokes, even racist ones, can alleviate some tension and discomfort; jokes about mortality help us confront the concept of death with laughter, and that’s very likely the intention at the core of much disease-related humor. But when it comes to pandemics that start in another part of the world, race and ethnicity often come into play — and the result is much less productive.

A New York Times article from 2003 details the economic fallout that Asian-owned businesses experienced amidst growing fears of SARS:

“Chinatowns in cities like New York and San Francisco are suffering, with some businesses reporting a 90 percent drop in revenue from this time a year ago. Some store and restaurant owners complain of irrational and galling ethnic stereotyping and attribute losses to frightened out-of-town tourists keeping away from Asian-American establishments.”

Less than 20 years later, we’ve seen the same result accompanying a similar disease. When it comes to a pandemic, ethnic stereotyping doesn’t simply insult a group of people — it creates financial strife for them, as well.

Stereotyping has played a role not only in the collapse of many Asian-owned businesses, but also in the increased number of hate crimes against Asian people. According to a CBS News article published in July, the three-month period between March and June saw over 2,100 COVID-related hate crimes against Asian Americans:

“One assailant yelled about ‘bringing that Chinese virus over here’ during an attack against an Asian-American man at a San Francisco hardware store on May 6… and in Santa Clara on June 16, a man kicked a woman’s dog and then spat at her, saying, ‘Take your disease that’s ruining our country and go home.’”

Remembering the SARS jokes of the past and recognizing the recent rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, it’s easy to see that many Americans attribute this pandemic — which is widely believed to have originated in Wuhan, China — to all people of Asian descent.

The root problem that Asian people face in America is that we are seen as perpetually foreign, regardless of nationality. This isn’t helped by representation in popular media. Even when Asian actors are employed in mainstream TV shows like Lost and The Boys, they are not Asian American. They speak heavily accented English — if they speak English at all. While the presence of such characters helps increase demographically representative employment numbers, it doesn’t help dissuade the average American from continuing to see Asians as “others.” So, something like mask-wearing, which we associate with both continental Asia and Asians in America, is a foreign concept to us.

With displays of both anti-Asian sentiment and fanatical aversion to wearing masks, it’s hard not to wonder: Is there a tribal component to anti-mask culture? Do so many Americans reject the notion that masks are an effective preventative measure simply because they don’t want to be associated with Asians? 

While outspoken American racism regarding masks is difficult to find, first-hand perspectives on Asian mask culture is not. Actor Viveca Chow is a native Hongkonger who’s spent the last 7 years in America — first attending college in Pittsburgh, then moving to New York City. The only member of her family in the States, Viveca remembers wearing masks as a child in Hong Kong.

“I don’t remember SARS that well,” she tells me, “but I remember enough to know that I was in a mask for a whole year. At school and everything, I always had a mask on. So that helped me take [the pandemic] more seriously because I’ve kind of been through COVID’s cousin.” But unlike in America, where mask mandates were a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hong Kong implemented the widespread use of masks long before SARS — further back than Viveca can remember.

“As long as I’ve been alive, it’s been like this. I’m sure it dates back to way, way before. When I went to doctors in Hong Kong, all of them had masks on — and I guess I’ve just realized in recent years that when I go to the doctor in America, no one wears a mask at the facilities.” Not only did Hong Kong doctors wear masks — they provided masks for their patients, as well. “They just had a box [of masks] and you’d take one and you’d wear it. It wasn’t a big deal. I think, as a culture, we’re just conscious about hygiene in general. The main thing being: In a lot of Asian households, we don’t wear shoes in the house, because…why? It’s dirty as f**k.”

As for people in Hong Kong who refuse to wear masks: “Actually, a lot of Westerners in Hong Kong don’t wear masks,” she says, “but the difference is that they don’t make other people feel uncomfortable for wearing them. When I first started wearing [a mask] and I was pretty much the only person on the subway to wear one, I got a lot of dirty stares, and people ran away from me and just made me feel unworthy — not worthy of existing in the same space. And that doesn’t happen in Hong Kong.”

Other than dirty looks and people avoiding her on the subway, Viveca hasn’t experienced much race-based hostility during the pandemic. But a friend’s grandmother “was one of the ladies who had acid poured on them. To hear about that was very disheartening and maddening. Sometimes I’m just like, is this even happening right now?”

But racism isn’t unique to America. “Racism is very prevalent in Hong Kong, and in Asian countries in general. No one talks about it. There is a lot of discrimination still toward darker-skinned people — toward Indians, toward Pakistanis, toward Black people. It happens everywhere, but people don’t speak up about it as much. So in a way, it’s super empowering that such a huge community in America is fighting for racial justice and equality. I find it…hopeful?”

Like Viveca, I believe there is hope — as Asian people continue to exist in America, Asian cultural concepts become part of mainstream American culture. How many Americans were inclined to taste raw fish 50 years ago, and how many Americans today count sushi as one of their favorite foods? How many American families take off their shoes upon entering the house? Concepts that seemed foreign decades ago can be absorbed into American culture — America just needs to see proof of their efficacy (or in the case of sushi and other foods, their deliciousness).

So when it comes to masks, I suppose the real question is: When will America find enough proof to justify changing the culture around hygiene and communal health practices? And in the current climate of hyper-partisan media coverage, will the falsehoods surrounding the scientific evidence drown out the truth long enough to prevent that change from happening?

Only time will tell. Until then, I’ll be following Viveca’s advice: “Just wear a mask.”

Sam Simahk is an actor/singer/songwriter based out of New York City. Born and raised in central Massachusetts, Sam attended Emerson College in Boston for musical theatre and has been in NYC ever since. He’s performed on Broadway, a couple of national tours, and many regional stages. www.samsimahk.com IG: @soapboxsam