U. of Washington Diversity Official: Chinese Virus May Have 'Originated' in America

A diversity official at the University of Washington told students this week that the Chinese virus may have originated in the United States. The comment was made by Vice President for Minority Affairs and Diversity Rickey Hall on Wednesday during a webinar on discrimination in the age of the Chinese virus.

According to a report by The College Fix, an official at the University of Washington told students on Wednesday that the Chinese virus could have originated in the United States. On Wednesday, Rickey Hall, vice president for minority affairs and diversity, hosted a webinar on discrimination in the age of a global pandemic.

“We don’t know where this virus originated,” Hall said during the webinar. “It could have originated in the United States.”

Professor Jennifer Ho of the University of Colorado Boulder and Emory University official Wanda Collins also participated in the webinar. Both Ho and Collins argued that some Americans have adopted “racist practices” in response to the pandemic, such as referring to the virus by its country of origin.

“Though the virus may have first originated in Wuhan, China, it has become a global pandemic,” Ho said during the webinar. “And as the WHO and many other organizations have noted, to misname the virus and call it by its point of origin engages in racist practices of blaming a region and by extension a group of people with this disease.”

Collins argued that some Americans are wrongly blaming the Chinese government for the pandemic. Collins went to say that she is worried that Americans will use the pandemic as justification to discriminate against China and Chinese-Americans.

“Some people, armed with bias, prejudice, and misinformation, look for people from an out-group to blame because it creates a false sense of security and control,” Collins said. “Feelings of fear can turn into feelings of hate and disgust toward members of an out-group, this includes a process of dehumanization that leads to a justification for harming others or letting them suffer.”

In 2010, the University of Washington partnered with the Confucius Institute, a non-profit funded by the Chinese government that has been accused of wielding its influence to restrict critical discourse of the Chinese government on American campuses.

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