A little four-year-old Chinese-American girl has been taking violin lessons from a highly respected music professor in the South for the past year. Now, apparently because she is Chinese in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the professor has halted her lessons.
Once again, President Trump's attempt to brand the coronavirus as the "Chinese virus" is finding its way into the psyche of America as Trump's use of the term has fanned the flames of racism.
Now, Trump has announced that he will withhold congressionally-approved U.S. financial support from the World Health Organization (WHO), because he is unhappy with the organization's failure to get tough with China at the pandemic's outset. That action, encouraged by Trump's supporters, is an effort to deflect blame from himself for his own lack of action and place it back on the Chinese.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Trump’s decision is “dangerous, illegal and will be swiftly challenged.”
Meanwhile, little Rory (her mom, Annie, says that's her "little name") is being denied her violin lessons, even online at home. And, Annie said, it's just a continuation of the increased racial animosity she has felt in recent years, but especially now as the coronavirus pandemic has hit.
Rory's Story
Here's Rory's story in Annie's words from a Facebook chat:
"I don’t want to tell his (the professor's) name, he is a professor in a university in the South. We respected him, my daughter likes him. Before the virus he is soooooo kind and nice person to my daughter, then suddenly sooooo cold and don’t want to schedule any class with us. I recently figured out the reason is that we are Chinese. He is afraid his peers will think something.
"Until recently we have only one online group class with him, he posted a picture on his Facebook page with shadowing my daughter’s picture. I sent him message asked him why he hide my daughter’s picture, he didn’t answer. He was sooooo very very very nice and patient to teach my daughter.
"After March we cannot schedule any class. But I insisted to my daughter to practice even without class. I posted some successful Chinese or Asian musician in my Facebook. I think he saw the posts, he still clicks Like to my daughter’s video, but we won’t have class with him... even though we paid tuition and he still owe us tuition. (Annie asked us not to publish Rory's video because she wants to protect her identity.)
"I worry mostly about my daughter’s future, she wants to be a violinist, I cannot see hope in front of her if we live here... because this won’t just disappear, things already happened, people changed. I have been living in U.S. for over ten years and have never been struggled like right now, because I don’t know where we should go. We are citizen now (the Chinese government doesn’t allow foreign citizen travel to China now because of the obvious reason...
"So we cannot go back to China to stay with my family there. Sometimes I really start to Hate this teacher, as myself I have big heart, I didn’t have any experience of being treated like this, at least not because the racism situation, you can see all the teacher are actively teaching their students online, yes for violin, teachers can teach online, because the main job is at home practice at home.
"If he continues teaching my daughter, I perhaps actually will enjoy this lock down, because both my daughter and I are indoor person, the lock down will just give us more time to study, practice, cuddle and laugh... at first couple weeks, when everything every school goes online, I even send the teacher the pdf version of the violin books, because he perhaps doesn't have any book for us at his own home. He can just mark and choose what etude, scale, and repertoire that fits for us, he doesn’t need to do extra hard work, he can teach us online no problem. But he didn’t.
"Yes America is different than before..even before the virus spread here, it changed a lot these years."
Indeed, it has.