UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY

Leftists blaming pandemic fears on bigotry, racism

Kyle Hooten | Campus Reform – FEBRUARY 19, 2020

**Fear of the coronavirus stems from “xenophobia and racism in America,” according to faculty at the University of California-Berkeley.**

“Biased American public health and immigration policies” are to blame for Americans’ “anxiety over the potentially deadly disease,” says a recent Berkeley News article.

The piece, titled “Coronavirus: Fear of Asians rooted in long American history of prejudicial policies,” draws on the opinions of two UC Berkeley educators to make this claim.

Professor John A. Powell, director of Berkeley’s “Othering and Belonging Institute” is quoted saying that Coronavirus woes stem partly from “an assumption that the West, particularly Anglo-American Christians, should dominate the world,” and partly from a “heightened state of [anti-immigrant] bias.”

He adds that debates about Chinese expansionism, Chinese 5G networks, and Chinese espionage can also reveal racist American tendencies.

Powell concludes that a global society is the only path forward in a new world characterized by growing Chinese hegemony.

Berkeley research scientist and lecturer Winston Tseng agrees with Powell.

“There’s a part of that original history of xenophobia and racism in America from the 19th and 20th centuries that is coming back,” he told Berkeley News.

“[The Coronavirus] is a very serious issue, for sure, but from a public health standpoint it’s a relative issue compared to all the public health issues globally,” he said, after stating his belief that the virus will peak with only 200,000 cases.

The Berkeley News article also claims that “social media memes and GIFs” about the coronavirus are complicit in the spread of virus-related xenophobia.

Campus Reform previously reported on a similar statement about the virus made by Berkeley that was ultimately retracted by the school alongside a public apology. The statement came in the form of a now-deleted Instagram post from an official Berkeley account which claimed that “xenophobia” is among the “normal reactions” to the virus.

The school’s executive director of communications and media relations, Roqua Montez IV, acknowledged the social media retraction and apologized for its content.

Campus Reform reached out to Montez for further comment but did not hear back in time for publication.

A University of California-Berkeley instructor and graduate student attacked rural Americans in seemingly contemptuous terms in a now-deleted tweetstorm posted on Wednesday night.

Jackson Kernion is a graduate student at UC-Berkeley who teaches philosophy courses to undergrads. He made himself a target for criticism, some of which came from other left-leaning academics, when he came out with his surprisingly bigoted views against rural Americans.

Perhaps most shockingly, the elite-university philosophy academic went on to actually call for increased health care costs for rural Americans.

“Rural Healthcare Should be expensive! And that expense should be borne by those who choose rural America!”

It’s unclear what the young punk thinks that eroding rural healthcare programs is going to accomplish, but it’s more than likely that his desire to do so is more firmly rooted in prejudiced rancor than a real, coherent worldview.

Rural Americans are often left with a lack of decent health insurance options under the current American system. Some on the left, such as Bernie Sanders, have sought to offer policy solutions to this problem, but it appears that at least some coastal elitists such as Kernion actually don’t think rural Americans should even have healthcare.

Kernion ended up deleting his Twitter shortly after his tweetstorm, being widely rebuked for his prejudice. However, he did apologize shortly before for his remarks, admitting that his remarks came across as “crass and mean,” leaving open a chance that he could possibly learn and grow from the incident that revealed his starkly bigoted views. It does go without saying that an entire geographic demographic of Americans don’t even deserve healthcare is a bit more than “crass and mean,” though.

Ironically, many of the rural Americans who Kernion has voiced his dislike of would be quick to forgive the elite university student for his slighting of them. The men and women who he speaks of are instrumental in growing the food of urban America, and extracting the natural gas and oil used to power their cars, buses, trains and planes.

Leftists blaming pandemic fears on bigotry, racism

Fear of the coronavirus stems from “xenophobia and racism in America,” according to faculty at the University of California-Berkeley.

The coastal academic was fiercely hostile to rural Americans.

A University of California-Berkeley instructor and graduate student attacked rural Americans in seemingly contemptuous terms in a now-deleted tweetstorm posted on Wednesday night.

**Fear of the coronavirus stems from “xenophobia and racism in America,” according to faculty at the University of California-Berkeley.**