vox--2020-04-20--Lockdown protests, Congress nears another stimulus deal: Monday’s coronavirus news

Worldwide , the number of coronavirus cases topped 2.4 million .
The United States accounts for nearly 762,000 of those recorded infections , as of April 20 .
The United States is very much still in the middle of a public health crisis , yet the pain of the pandemic is not spread equally across the country .
That ’ s why protesters in some states are beginning to agitate against the lockdown restrictions that have slowed the spread of the outbreak but have also suffocated the economy .
Protesters in Colorado , Texas , and elsewhere are demanding the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ states , even though public health officials say doing so too soon risks a surge of infections and that any rollback must be gradual .
Even though recent polling has shown that a majority of Americans fear what might happen if stay-at-home orders are lifted too soon , the fault lines are growing deeper , with some of the tumult being fomented by the president himself .
Experts say that any plans to reopen will need to include large-scale testing and contact tracing , along with ways to show who has been infected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve gained any immunity .
Antibody tests are starting to be rolled out , but questions remain about their accuracy and availability .
But a little more economic relief may be on the way as Congress and the White House near another stimulus package , which will include hundreds of billions more for small businesses .
The small-business assistance passed in the first coronavirus stimulus bill has already run out of money .
Here ’ s what you need to know today .
Protests over the shutdown grew louder over the weekend Maybe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like these photographs from Alyson McClaran , a photojournalist in Denver , Colorado , of health care workers in surgical masks and scrubs standing in the middle of city streets to block people — many in cars — who came out to protest against the stay-at-home measures .
Demonstrators across the country — from Maryland to Indiana to Texas — gathered outside state capitols over the weekend in defiance of lockdown restrictions .
They ’ re angry about the shutdown measures that have upended the US economy , shuttering businesses and leaving at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protesters are still a minority , organized largely by right-wing and anti-government activist groups .
But they ’ re an increasingly vocal and visible minority , with echoes of the early days of the Tea Party .
And they are being egged on by President Donald Trump , who tweeted last week about “ liberating ” states .
Rolling out the federal government ’ s new guidelines for how to gradually reopen some parts of the country , Trump said he would ultimately defer to governors on when it was safe to open @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contradict that .
Public health officials in his own administration have said that attempting to lift stay-at-home measures too quickly could cause coronavirus cases to spike once again .
Dr. Anthony Fauci , the nation ’ s top infectious disease expert , told Good Morning America Sunday that , unless the US gets the virus under control , “ the real recovery economically is not gon na happen.
” “ So what you do if you jump the gun , and go into a situation where you have a big spike , you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Fauci said .
“ So as painful as it is to go by the careful guidelines of gradually phasing into a reopening , it ’ s gon na backfire [ if you don ’ t ] .
” Right now , most Americans agree , according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center .
Some countries , including Germany , have begun to ease their lockdown restrictions , but they ’ re taking baby steps : allowing some businesses to reopen with limits on the number of customers allowed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all other social-distancing restrictions .
Bars are still closed , and big gatherings are still banned .
Does the US have the capacity to open up ?
Governors and public health experts say that taking even tentative steps toward reopening will require greater testing capacity — more than double or triple what the US is doing now .
One study conducted by a panel of experts at Harvard estimated that the US must be able to complete 5 million tests a day by early June and 20 million tests per day by late @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The US is currently conducting about 150,000 tests per day , according to the COVID Tracking Project , for a population of about 330 million .
The Trump administration has said states must shoulder the testing burden .
But governors have resisted , saying the lack of coordination across the country and states ’ lack of resources are making that an impossible task to achieve .
States need things like swabs and reagents to conduct the tests , which rely on manufacturers and supply chains .
“ It ’ s not accurate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ testing out there , and the governors should just get it done , ” Maryland Gov .
Larry Hogan said on State of the Union Sunday. “ That ’ s just not being straightforward.
” Hogan announced a deal with suppliers in South Korea to import 500,000 tests to Maryland .
Per the New York Times , he was able to secure the deal in large part thanks to his wife , “ a Korean immigrant who speaks fluent Korean , had been on the phone in the middle of the night helping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ labs to sell Maryland the tests.
” Trump has said he will use the Defense Production Act to increase swab production by 20 million per month ( though these shortages are nothing new ) .
And beyond testing for new infections , the US still needs a better grasp on who might have recovered from the virus .
Serological tests , which test for antibodies , might help gather this information and show who has gained some immunity .
This may allow some people to return to the workforce .
There are still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , including whether and for how long it might confer immunity , but there ’ s hope these antibody tests can help piece together this information .
And serological tests are starting to become available : New York is beginning to test antibodies this week from a 3,000-person sample .
But there are a lot of questions about their accuracy and efficacy .
The Food and Drug Administration has issued emergency use authorization to just four tests , but there are some 90 tests now on the market that haven ’ t had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Post .
Some critics are saying that it ’ s now such a free-for-all that it could be even more dangerous if the tests don ’ t work or offer false results , leading people to believe they have some immunity if they do not .
This is especially worrisome if states are relying on these results to determine whether and how to lift lockdowns .
The FDA and other government agencies are now trying to vet the tests , but the risks are real .
Just look at the United Kingdom , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ antibody kits from China .
They didn ’ t work .
Congress gets close to passing another stimulus deal Last week , the Paycheck Protection Program ran out of money .
The program , which earmarked $ 349 billion for small businesses , was included in the $ 2 trillion coronavirus stimulus passed in March .
The initiative offers loans to businesses that are forgivable if the businesses maintain their payrolls and essential expenses .
But with so many businesses shut down , demand for the program has exceeded the funds available .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ more cash , but Republicans and Democrats have been at odds over what to include in this latest round of stimulus .
There are signs the two sides are coming close to an agreement on an approximately $ 450 billion package .
It will include about $ 300 billion in additional money for the Paycheck Protection Program , some of which will be set aside for minority- and veteran-owned and rural businesses .
The bill will also include an additional $ 60 billion for another emergency loan program , another $ 75 billion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ billion to expand testing .
Both Democrats and Republicans agree that the small business loan program needs a refresher , but Democrats had held out for more money for hospitals , testing , and for states and local governments that are having to cut their budgets after the expense of battling the coronavirus .
Right now , it appears as though the Democrats got the GOP to budge on hospitals , but the states may have to wait for the next stimulus package .
Captain Tom Moore is turning 100 years old at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his centennial , the war veteran walked 100 laps in his garden to raise money for the United Kingdom ’ s National Health Service .
Moore , who lives in Bedfordshire , England , originally wanted to raise £1,000 ( $ 1,200 ) .
In the end , he raised more than £20 million — that is , about $ 25 million .
“ The sun will shine on you again and the clouds will go away , ” he told reporters , referring to the coronavirus crisis .
Every day at Vox @ @ @ @ @ @ @ important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

Worldwide, the number of coronavirus cases topped 2.4 million. The United States accounts for nearly 762,000 of those recorded infections, as of April 20.
The United States is very much still in the middle of a public health crisis, yet the pain of the pandemic is not spread equally across the country. That’s why protesters in some states are beginning to agitate against the lockdown restrictions that have slowed the spread of the outbreak but have also suffocated the economy.
Protesters in Colorado, Texas, and elsewhere are demanding the government reopen schools and businesses in their states, even though public health officials say doing so too soon risks a surge of infections and that any rollback must be gradual. Even though recent polling has shown that a majority of Americans fear what might happen if stay-at-home orders are lifted too soon, the fault lines are growing deeper, with some of the tumult being fomented by the president himself.
Experts say that any plans to reopen will need to include large-scale testing and contact tracing, along with ways to show who has been infected by the disease and whether they’ve gained any immunity. Antibody tests are starting to be rolled out, but questions remain about their accuracy and availability.
But a little more economic relief may be on the way as Congress and the White House near another stimulus package, which will include hundreds of billions more for small businesses. The small-business assistance passed in the first coronavirus stimulus bill has already run out of money.
Here’s what you need to know today.
Protests over the shutdown grew louder over the weekend
Maybe nothing sums up the current moment quite like these photographs from Alyson McClaran, a photojournalist in Denver, Colorado, of health care workers in surgical masks and scrubs standing in the middle of city streets to block people — many in cars — who came out to protest against the stay-at-home measures.
Health care workers stand in the street in counter-protest to hundreds of people who gathered at the State Capitol to demand the stay-at-home order be lifted in Denver, Colo., on Sunday, April 19, 2020. Photos by Alyson McClaran pic.twitter.com/yanunDrVKj — Alyson McClaran (@McclaranAlyson) April 20, 2020
Demonstrators across the country — from Maryland to Indiana to Texas — gathered outside state capitols over the weekend in defiance of lockdown restrictions. They’re angry about the shutdown measures that have upended the US economy, shuttering businesses and leaving at least 22 million people unemployed.
These protesters are still a minority, organized largely by right-wing and anti-government activist groups. But they’re an increasingly vocal and visible minority, with echoes of the early days of the Tea Party. And they are being egged on by President Donald Trump, who tweeted last week about “liberating” states.
Rolling out the federal government’s new guidelines for how to gradually reopen some parts of the country, Trump said he would ultimately defer to governors on when it was safe to open up. Yet his tweets seem to contradict that.
Public health officials in his own administration have said that attempting to lift stay-at-home measures too quickly could cause coronavirus cases to spike once again. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told Good Morning America Sunday that, unless the US gets the virus under control, “the real recovery economically is not gonna happen.”
“So what you do if you jump the gun, and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you’re going to set yourself back,” Fauci said. “So as painful as it is to go by the careful guidelines of gradually phasing into a reopening, it’s gonna backfire [if you don’t].”
Right now, most Americans agree, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center.
Some countries, including Germany, have begun to ease their lockdown restrictions, but they’re taking baby steps: allowing some businesses to reopen with limits on the number of customers allowed in and everyone still expected to follow all other social-distancing restrictions. Bars are still closed, and big gatherings are still banned.
Does the US have the capacity to open up?
Governors and public health experts say that taking even tentative steps toward reopening will require greater testing capacity — more than double or triple what the US is doing now. One study conducted by a panel of experts at Harvard estimated that the US must be able to complete 5 million tests a day by early June and 20 million tests per day by late July to “fully mobilize the economy.”
The US is currently conducting about 150,000 tests per day, according to the COVID Tracking Project, for a population of about 330 million.
The Trump administration has said states must shoulder the testing burden. But governors have resisted, saying the lack of coordination across the country and states’ lack of resources are making that an impossible task to achieve. States need things like swabs and reagents to conduct the tests, which rely on manufacturers and supply chains.
“It’s not accurate to say there’s plenty of testing out there, and the governors should just get it done,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said on State of the Union Sunday. “That’s just not being straightforward.”
Hogan announced a deal with suppliers in South Korea to import 500,000 tests to Maryland. Per the New York Times, he was able to secure the deal in large part thanks to his wife, “a Korean immigrant who speaks fluent Korean, had been on the phone in the middle of the night helping to secure the final deal with two labs to sell Maryland the tests.”
Trump has said he will use the Defense Production Act to increase swab production by 20 million per month (though these shortages are nothing new).
And beyond testing for new infections, the US still needs a better grasp on who might have recovered from the virus. Serological tests, which test for antibodies, might help gather this information and show who has gained some immunity. This may allow some people to return to the workforce.
There are still a lot of questions about the coronavirus, including whether and for how long it might confer immunity, but there’s hope these antibody tests can help piece together this information.
And serological tests are starting to become available: New York is beginning to test antibodies this week from a 3,000-person sample. But there are a lot of questions about their accuracy and efficacy. The Food and Drug Administration has issued emergency use authorization to just four tests, but there are some 90 tests now on the market that haven’t had prior review, according to the Washington Post.
Some critics are saying that it’s now such a free-for-all that it could be even more dangerous if the tests don’t work or offer false results, leading people to believe they have some immunity if they do not. This is especially worrisome if states are relying on these results to determine whether and how to lift lockdowns.
The FDA and other government agencies are now trying to vet the tests, but the risks are real. Just look at the United Kingdom, which paid $20 million for at-home antibody kits from China. They didn’t work.
Congress gets close to passing another stimulus deal
Last week, the Paycheck Protection Program ran out of money. The program, which earmarked $349 billion for small businesses, was included in the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus passed in March. The initiative offers loans to businesses that are forgivable if the businesses maintain their payrolls and essential expenses. But with so many businesses shut down, demand for the program has exceeded the funds available.
Congress wants to give the initiative much more cash, but Republicans and Democrats have been at odds over what to include in this latest round of stimulus. There are signs the two sides are coming close to an agreement on an approximately $450 billion package. It will include about $300 billion in additional money for the Paycheck Protection Program, some of which will be set aside for minority- and veteran-owned and rural businesses. The bill will also include an additional $60 billion for another emergency loan program, another $75 billion to assist hospitals, and $25 billion to expand testing.
Both Democrats and Republicans agree that the small business loan program needs a refresher, but Democrats had held out for more money for hospitals, testing, and for states and local governments that are having to cut their budgets after the expense of battling the coronavirus. Right now, it appears as though the Democrats got the GOP to budge on hospitals, but the states may have to wait for the next stimulus package.
And some good news
Captain Tom Moore is turning 100 years old at the end of April. To celebrate his centennial, the war veteran walked 100 laps in his garden to raise money for the United Kingdom’s National Health Service.
Moore, who lives in Bedfordshire, England, originally wanted to raise £1,000 ($1,200). In the end, he raised more than £20 million — that is, about $25 million.
“The sun will shine on you again and the clouds will go away,” he told reporters, referring to the coronavirus crisis.


vox--2020-04-21--Prolonged school closures could be very costly for America’s students

Prolonged school closures associated with the coronavirus pandemic are likely to have a major and negative affect on children ’ s learning , according to a wide range of experts — leaving some students behind academically for years to come , and even leading to meaningful lost income over the course of their lifetimes .
Problems are likely to be especially concentrated in younger children and lower-income households , but not necessarily limited to them .
Yet this has been mostly absent from the national debate over social distancing , which has tended to focus narrowly on the idea of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than the nation ’ s schools .
Even states that have not issued full-scale stay-at-home orders have generally closed schools , and the Trump administration ’ s reopening plan envisions bringing back movie theaters before educational institutions .
That ’ s a blinkered approach .
Schools , of course , should not reopen if it can ’ t be done safely .
But when balancing the risks and rewards of different kinds of activities , the fact that prolonged school closures are likely doing real long-term harm to an entire cohort of American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at different points in March in different states , but they are currently not operating anywhere in the country even in states that have made a big show of staying open for business during the pandemic .
Twenty-eight states have formally canceled the entire rest of the 2019-2020 school year , with three more “ recommending ” closures through the end of the year and the rest — a list that includes blue states like New York and New Jersey as well as red ones like West Virginia and Wyoming — claim they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Virtually all of those states , however , have already postponed their initial plans to reopen , so it ’ s far from clear that a mid-May reopening will happen .
Washington state has formally notified schools to prepare for the possibility that they won ’ t reopen in the fall , as has Maryland a bit less formally .
It ’ s hard to find a state clearly committed to being back open by Labor Day .
The Trump administration , however , wants to reopen stores , gyms , and restaurants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work be done from home as Phase 1 of reopening .
A move to reopening schools would not happen until Phase 2 , which requires case volumes to continue falling even as Phase 1 reopenings take place .
In other words , if a state opens up over the summer and then cases start rising schools won ’ t be able to reopen .
States could potentially be stuck in a stop-and-go implementation of Phase 1 measures with schools left as an afterthought .
Meanwhile , school systems have been taking stabs at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ something America ’ s corps of teachers or principals has really trained for , and implementation is spotty .
The potential for distance learning also varies by the age of the student .
But it also seems likely to pose particular difficulties for lower-income students , kids with unstable family environments , or kids who lack strong intrinsic motivation — exactly the populations whose educational outcomes we worry most about .
Indeed , in many circles there is worry about the impact of something as banal as summer vacation on these populations — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consequences of months of closures .
There is a longstanding line of research in education scholarship about “ summer learning loss , ” whereby kids seem to regress academically during the annual summer vacation .
This seems like the best model we have for what happens when schools shut down for months at a time .
( Unlike in a typical summer , however , most kids are not currently enrolled in any non-school organized activities , either . )
Much of the literature on summer learning loss is especially focused on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ start out behind academically , the gap is especially likely to increase during the summer .
This literature has provoked a long-running debate about experiments with year-long schooling ( that have mostly proved disappointing ) or else more targeted interventions designed to help ensure that even low-income families have enriching opportunities .
But there are also skeptics about summer learning loss theory , with Paul T. von Hippel , a professor at the University of Texas ’ s LBJ School of Public Affairs , leading the charge with an influential 2019 article asking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
” He argues that the apparent learning loss is an artifact of old-fashioned test designs and that if you look at more modern data , there ’ s no real evidence of backsliding .
It ’ s true , he says , that children don ’ t learn much new stuff over the summer , but this is true for both poor and non-poor kids .
Gaps between the performance of poor and non-poor kids thus have nothing to do with summer vacation and , if anything , provide an opportunity to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kids bonus school time over the summer .
So I asked Hippel if he had a more optimistic perspective to share that would reassure people who are worried about kids losing school time .
“ I do have a somewhat different perspective , but I ’ m afraid it ’ s not more optimistic , ” he said .
Everyone is worried about prolonged school closures It turns out that Hippel ’ s critique of summer learning loss theory is pretty narrow and technical .
His view is that nobody learns much during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doesn ’ t explain anything about the achievement gap .
But the reason kids aren ’ t learning much over the summertime is they generally aren ’ t trying .
The current school closures are not an extended vacation .
Students are , in theory , engaging in distance learning , both online and through paper handouts .
But in the overwhelming majority of cases , these distance learning paradigms are likely going to be less effective than traditional school .
And the problems will likely be most severe for the lower-income , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ working from home and least likely to have the personal knowledge and wherewithal to act as effective homeschoolers .
Von Hippel notes that we do have evidence from other kinds of school year disruptions that all point to problems .
A two-month teacher ’ s strike in New York in 1968 left students two months behind where prior cohorts had been when they returned to school .
In 1990 , the Francophone schools in Belgium closed for a strike while the Flemish-speaking ones did not .
Looking at Belgian kids who were in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were noticeably more likely to need to repeat a grade and made less progress into higher education later in life .
Test scores suffered when Hurricane Katrina closed schools in and around New Orleans .
Having kids out of school is bad , and especially bad for poor children .
I thought Michael Petrilli , a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution and a profound skeptic of the status quo in public education , might have some happier thoughts on the disrupted schedule .
But that ’ s not the case .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is going to be particularly devastating for poor and working-class youngsters , ” he wrote in the Washington Post .
“ Their parents are often working the sorts of jobs that don ’ t have the option of being done virtually , and their homes are more likely to lack high-speed Internet and ample devices.
” Andrew Rotherham , the co-founder of Bellwether Education Partner and a education policy staffer in the Clinton administration , offered the most optimistic assessment I found , telling me that for middle-class parents of older kids , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a deal.
” Even so , he says he ’ s very worried about “ early grades where we ’ re focused on literacy which really is foundational to your experience in school and life ” as well as for low-income kids of all ages .
Many in this group count on schools not just for education but for a range of social services , and their parents may have limited math and literacy competency .
He also notes that beyond the limited technological resources available to lower-income families we see even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ County in the DC suburbs , don ’ t really seem to be getting the job done in terms of remote learning .
Some other districts and charter school networks are doing better than this , of course .
The point is simply that both the quality of and access to distance learning are highly variable .
And even when the distance curricula are good it ’ s not clear how much benefit younger kids will get from them if their parents aren ’ t able to supervise them closely .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ value of education to just dollars and cents .
But economists who ’ ve tried generally have found that in high-income countries , an extra year of education is worth about a 10 percent boost in income .
If you take that literally , the implication is that two or three months worth of school closure will be cost today ’ s cohort of schoolchildren thousands of dollars a year in lost earnings for their entire lives .
Those thousands of dollars multiplied across millions of kids add up to tens of billions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That ’ s a bit simplistic , especially because , as experts all seem to agree , the harms of school closures won ’ t be felt evenly .
But any back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that closures ought to loom larger in the national discourse as a costly aspect of social distancing — albeit one whose costs accrue over the long term rather than the immediate future .
President Trump ’ s guidelines for reopening the country , by contrast , have sit-down restaurants and movie theaters coming back in phase one and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I miss going to the movies , but the movie theater industry simply doesn ’ t have a very strong claim to being important to the country ’ s long-term economic future .
Nor is their closure fueling vicious class divides in American society .
Schools should reopen when it ’ s safe to do so .
But getting them back up and running should be a relatively high priority , rather than an afterthought .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contribution to Vox today .

Prolonged school closures associated with the coronavirus pandemic are likely to have a major and negative affect on children’s learning, according to a wide range of experts — leaving some students behind academically for years to come, and even leading to meaningful lost income over the course of their lifetimes.
Problems are likely to be especially concentrated in younger children and lower-income households, but not necessarily limited to them.
Yet this has been mostly absent from the national debate over social distancing, which has tended to focus narrowly on the idea of opening up “the economy” rather than the nation’s schools. Even states that have not issued full-scale stay-at-home orders have generally closed schools, and the Trump administration’s reopening plan envisions bringing back movie theaters before educational institutions.
That’s a blinkered approach. Schools, of course, should not reopen if it can’t be done safely. But when balancing the risks and rewards of different kinds of activities, the fact that prolonged school closures are likely doing real long-term harm to an entire cohort of American children deserves more emphasis.
Kids are missing a lot of school
Schools closed at different points in March in different states, but they are currently not operating anywhere in the country even in states that have made a big show of staying open for business during the pandemic. Twenty-eight states have formally canceled the entire rest of the 2019-2020 school year, with three more “recommending” closures through the end of the year and the rest — a list that includes blue states like New York and New Jersey as well as red ones like West Virginia and Wyoming — claim they’ll be reopening in May.
Virtually all of those states, however, have already postponed their initial plans to reopen, so it’s far from clear that a mid-May reopening will happen.
Washington state has formally notified schools to prepare for the possibility that they won’t reopen in the fall, as has Maryland a bit less formally. It’s hard to find a state clearly committed to being back open by Labor Day.
The Trump administration, however, wants to reopen stores, gyms, and restaurants and relax strict mandates that white-collar work be done from home as Phase 1 of reopening. A move to reopening schools would not happen until Phase 2, which requires case volumes to continue falling even as Phase 1 reopenings take place. In other words, if a state opens up over the summer and then cases start rising, schools won’t be able to reopen. States could potentially be stuck in a stop-and-go implementation of Phase 1 measures with schools left as an afterthought.
Meanwhile, school systems have been taking stabs at distance learning. But this is not something America’s corps of teachers or principals has really trained for, and implementation is spotty. The potential for distance learning also varies by the age of the student. But it also seems likely to pose particular difficulties for lower-income students, kids with unstable family environments, or kids who lack strong intrinsic motivation — exactly the populations whose educational outcomes we worry most about.
Indeed, in many circles there is worry about the impact of something as banal as summer vacation on these populations — a starting point for thinking about the consequences of months of closures.
Some researchers think summer vacation impedes learning
There is a long-standing line of research in education scholarship about “summer learning loss,” whereby kids appear to regress academically during the annual summer vacation. This seems like the best model we have for what happens when schools shut down for months at a time. (Unlike in a typical summer, however, most kids are not currently enrolled in any non-school organized activities, either.)
Much of the literature on summer learning loss is especially focused on the idea that while kids from low-income families start out behind academically, the gap is especially likely to increase during the summer.
This literature has provoked a long-running debate about experiments with year-long schooling (that have mostly proved disappointing) or else more targeted interventions designed to help ensure that even low-income families have enriching opportunities.
But there are also skeptics about summer learning loss theory, with Paul T. von Hippel, a professor at the University of Texas’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, leading the charge with an influential 2019 article asking, “Is summer learning loss real?”
He argues that the apparent learning loss is an artifact of old-fashioned test designs and that if you look at more modern data, there’s no real evidence of backsliding. It’s true, he says, that children don’t learn much new stuff over the summer, but this is true for both poor and non-poor kids. Gaps between the performance of poor and non-poor kids thus have nothing to do with summer vacation and, if anything, provide an opportunity to close the achievement gap by giving poor kids bonus school time over the summer.
So I asked Hippel if he had a more optimistic perspective to share that would reassure people who are worried about kids losing school time.
“I do have a somewhat different perspective, but I’m afraid it’s not more optimistic,” he said.
Everyone is worried about prolonged school closures
It turns out that Hippel’s critique of summer learning loss theory is pretty narrow and technical. His view is that nobody learns much during the summer, so summer learning loss doesn’t explain anything about the achievement gap.
But the reason kids aren’t learning much over the summer is they generally aren’t trying.
The current school closures are not an extended vacation. Students are, in theory, engaging in distance learning, both online and through paper handouts. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, these distance learning paradigms are likely going to be less effective than traditional school. And the problems will likely be most severe for lower-income students, whose parents are least likely to be working from home and least likely to have the personal knowledge and wherewithal to act as effective homeschoolers.
Von Hippel notes that we do have evidence from other kinds of school year disruptions that all point to problems. A two-month teacher’s strike in New York in 1968 left students two months behind where prior cohorts had been when they returned to school. In 1990, the Francophone schools in Belgium closed for a strike while the Flemish-speaking ones did not. Looking at Belgian kids who were in school during the strike, French speakers were noticeably more likely to need to repeat a grade and made less progress into higher education later in life. Test scores suffered when Hurricane Katrina closed schools in and around New Orleans.
Having kids out of school is bad, and especially bad for poor children.
A harsh experience for the poor
I thought Michael Petrilli, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution and a profound skeptic of the status quo in public education, might have some happier thoughts on the disrupted schedule. But that’s not the case.
“All of this time away from school is going to be particularly devastating for poor and working-class youngsters,” he wrote in the Washington Post. “Their parents are often working the sorts of jobs that don’t have the option of being done virtually, and their homes are more likely to lack high-speed Internet and ample devices.”
Andrew Rotherham, the co-founder of Bellwether Education Partner and an education policy staffer in the Clinton administration, offered the most optimistic assessment I found, telling me that for middle-class parents of older kids, “this will be not that big of a deal.”
Even so, he says he’s very worried about “early grades where we’re focused on literacy, which really is foundational to your experience in school and life” as well as for low-income kids of all ages. Many in this group count on schools not just for education but for a range of social services, and their parents may have limited math and literacy competency. He also notes that beyond the limited technological resources available to lower-income families, we see even some well-resourced school districts, like Montgomery County in the DC suburbs, don’t really seem to be getting the job done in terms of remote learning.
Just a reminder that these are two of the highest capacity districts in the country - so should trigger some concern about what millions of students in less-resourced places are experiencing:https://t.co/FrNULvDJtI — Andrew Rotherham (@arotherham) April 16, 2020
Some other districts and charter school networks are doing better than this, of course. The point is simply that both the quality of and access to distance learning are highly variable. And even when the distance curricula are good, it’s not clear how much benefit younger kids will get from them if their parents aren’t able to supervise them closely.
A costly cure
It’s not possible to boil down the value of education to just dollars and cents. But economists who’ve tried generally have found that in high-income countries, an extra year of education is worth about a 10 percent boost in income.
If you take that literally, the implication is that two or three months worth of school closure will cost today’s cohort of schoolchildren thousands of dollars a year in lost earnings for their entire lives. Those thousands of dollars multiplied across millions of kids add up to tens of billions in lost income each year for decades.
That’s a bit simplistic, especially because, as experts all seem to agree, the harms of school closures won’t be felt evenly. But any back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that closures ought to loom larger in the national discourse as a costly aspect of social distancing — albeit one whose costs accrue over the long term rather than the immediate future.
President Trump’s guidelines for reopening the country, by contrast, have sit-down restaurants and movie theaters coming back in Phase 1 and schools not returning until Phase 2. I miss going to the movies, but the movie theater industry simply doesn’t have a very strong claim to being important to the country’s long-term economic future. Nor is the closure of movie theaters fueling vicious class divides in American society.
Schools should reopen when it’s safe to do so. But getting them back up and running should be a relatively high priority, rather than an afterthought.


vox--2020-04-21--Cam sites are seeing a spike during quarantine, but not just because people are horny

With the majority of humanity now on lockdown in an effort to control the spread of the coronavirus , adult cam sites , which allow viewers to watch and interact with erotic performers in real time , say they ’ ve seen a massive viewership spike .
Gunner Taylor of Cams.com estimates his site and most others have “ seen about a 30 percent increase in traffic.
” Max Bennet of Stripchat says growth has only been accelerating in recent days , as lockdowns have expanded in scale and intensity .
“ We can tell the difference between social distancing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ traffic patterns , he said , with the latter leading to starker traffic increases .
“ We can see the degree of compliance ” with those measures , too .
Bennett and many other cam site operators and performers say there ’ s more to this boost than simple stir-crazy horniness .
They also suspect that the more and longer people are cooped up inside , the higher cam site traffic will likely continue to climb .
However , that may not necessarily mean a windfall for performers .
It is easy to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ byproduct of “ boredom , and masturbating out of boredom , ” as the cam performer Rebecca Vanguard puts it .
Traditional porn sites like Pornhub have reported traffic spikes in recent weeks too , especially in areas under lockdown .
It ’ s also easy to write off some new adult traffic as artificially induced .
Pornhub and many other sites that deal in traditional porn have been offering temporary free or discounted ( premium ) memberships to people affected by coronavirus .
Many cam sites already allow people to watch cammers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hundreds or thousands of other viewers .
But sites like Cams.com , CamSoda , Stripchat , and xHamsterLive have been offering free tokens , used to tip performers ( often to get them to perform a desired act ) or pay them to go into private chats , for people creating new accounts while under lockdown .
“ Many of us are alone and starved for human attention ” Yet Alex Hawkins of xHamster argues that “ many of us are alone and starved for human attention , ” and therein lies the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ big chunk of viewers .
“ It ’ s quite nice to be able to chat with someone .
Even if you are not home alone , it can be quite nice to talk to someone different.
” The quest for connection — especially the kind of one-sided and uncomplicated intimacy cam sites often provide — may well explain why Hawkins says that xHamster ’ s cam platform has seen traffic grow twice as fast as its flagship tube site .
Adult cam shows are often conceptualized as live , interactive porn , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cam connoisseurs and researchers have long noted that , while still adult entertainment , camming is distinct from porn because of the emphasis it puts on building relationships between viewers and performers .
Sure , some sites focus primarily on nudity and live sex , and Vanguard certainly thinks most of her viewers just want to get off .
Most cammers , though , say part of the secret to building large and lucrative followings is to foster a sense of intimate connection with viewers .
Even people who visit cams for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into the more emotional and personal aspects of the sites .
That ’ s why many cammers spend as much or more time clothed and chatting with viewers as they do getting naked and performing sex acts .
It ’ s why a number of high-earning performers only do non-nude shows .
It ’ s also why many individuals who try to cam fail , argues performer GuiltyCaprice : They simply get naked and act sexy , ignoring the specialized emotional and communicative skill sets and labor that go into crafting a successful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out that cam sites aren ’ t set up to monitor how viewers interact with performers , beyond how much time they spend in a room and how many tokens they spend .
So it is hard to know for sure whether the people flocking to these sites on lockdown are acting out of a sense of isolation and a search for connection , or whether they are just experimenting with new sites and erotic fixes , bopping around the internet aimlessly as many of us are wont to do when trapped at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are some indications , in both industry press materials and viewer requests made directly to performers , that the demand for cam-to-cam tools , which allow cammers to see their viewers rather than just their screen names and texts ( as is the norm on most sites ) , has been growing in recent weeks .
Some insiders take this as a sign of a thirst for connection , spurred by the isolation of lockdowns , over voyeuristic adult content consumption .
Cammers offer a unique form of connection , which may be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crisis Turning to cams for a sense of connection may seem odd when we have access to a myriad of videoconferencing tools that allow us to stay close to our friends and family , or even to date , during lockdowns .
Cammers note that they , as a distinct category of sex workers , offer a unique form of connection , though , which may be especially appealing in times of stress and crisis , when people want uncomplicated care and comfort .
“ A relationship with a friend is reciprocal , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ You vent to your friend , and it ’ s expected that your friend can in turn vent to you .
The intimacy a sex worker provides is one-way .
It is effortless on the part of the client .
They just have to pay the sex worker ’ s fee .
The focus is on the client ’ s experience , the client ’ s wants and needs.
” “ I don ’ t know about you , ” says performer Alex Coal , “ but I don ’ t feel like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worries with people in my personal life .
You don ’ t want to overload your loved ones , ” especially when they ’ re stressed , if you ’ re cooped up with them , or if they may themselves be a point of stress in your life .
“ Venting to a friend online is much more comfortable.
” A surge of scared viewers looking for undemanding and often one-sided digital contact and comfort may not be great news for cammers , many of whom Hawkins notes are living in lockdown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coping with stress and fear as well .
Sure , Cole notes , some regulars want to check in on their favorite performers , to make sure they are okay .
Many also don ’ t want to talk about the virus , says GuiltyCaprice .
They are “ looking for an escape ” on cams , not to dwell in their fears .
Still , performer Lauren Phillips says that a critical mass of her viewers “ want to talk about the coronavirus and how it is affecting us all.
” The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and burnout and depression among cammers is common in the best of times .
Funnel more anxiety and stress into a performer ’ s life from the external world and through their chatrooms , and emotional attrition may accelerate or amplify .
That ’ s why Cole warns performers to be especially aware in these times “ of their limits in absorbing other people ’ s distress , and practice self-care , ” taking time off if and as they can .
Starling adds while she and other performers who make traditional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seen increased sales figures on clip and tube sites , due to discounts and sales geared toward folks stuck at home , there is good reason to doubt that growing cam viewership will translate into new income for cammers .
Eyeballs , after all , do not always equal dollars in this industry .
People who are worried about their jobs and finances seem more likely to make use of the ample free content on cam sites and less likely to shell out on paid private shows or tips , GuiltyCaprice says .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ and spenders ’ patterns , says performer Red_Delicious .
Trapped at home with other people , and as such usually with less private time , many viewers are now logging on to cam sites for just a few minutes at a time , at irregular or odd hours .
These upheavals make it harder for cammers to profit .
Bennet and Taylor actually frame their sites ’ free token offers for new cam viewers as stimulus programs , trying to funnel money to cammers who may struggle with the way things are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spending rather than just viewing free content piecemeal .
“ We ’ ve seen from past free token offers that this is a good way to encourage spending , ” explains Taylor .
Eyeballs , after all , do not always equal dollars in this industry A few performers also worry that job insecurity caused by coronavirus lockdowns will lead to a spike in the number of people signing up to cam , potentially creating a glut of performers that may cut into existing cammers ’ profits .
Escorts , exotic dancers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in recent weeks that they are losing work to the virus and are considering camming for the first time to make up for it .
Off the Record Models , a cam performer agency , says it has seen a 25 percent spike in applications for management and representation since lockdowns began , and many more inquiries about getting into camming .
Stripchat has seen a 15 percent increase in new models registering on the platform since the start of the year , adds Bennet , but a nearly 300 percent increase in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in recent days .
Just behind Italy on the sign-up chart , US model registrations are up 45 percent .
“ I have been avoiding camming during this pandemic , ” says Starling , precisely because of the trouble that consumer austerity and a surge of new performers could pose to all performers ’ profits .
“ I ’ ve heard from many of my colleagues that cam business has been really slow.
” Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vox today .

With the majority of humanity now on lockdown in an effort to control the spread of the coronavirus, adult cam sites, which allow viewers to watch and interact with erotic performers in real time, say they’ve seen a massive viewership spike.
Gunner Taylor of Cams.com estimates his site and most others have “seen about a 30 percent increase in traffic.” Max Bennet of Stripchat says growth has only been accelerating in recent days, as lockdowns have expanded in scale and intensity. “We can tell the difference between social distancing and stay-at-home orders” based on regional traffic patterns, he said, with the latter leading to starker traffic increases. “We can see the degree of compliance” with those measures, too.
Bennett and many other cam site operators and performers say there’s more to this boost than simple stir-crazy horniness. They also suspect that the more and longer people are cooped up inside, the higher cam site traffic will likely continue to climb. However, that may not necessarily mean a windfall for performers.
It is easy to see this traffic bump as just another byproduct of “boredom, and masturbating out of boredom,” as the cam performer Rebecca Vanguard puts it. Traditional porn sites like Pornhub have reported traffic spikes in recent weeks too, especially in areas under lockdown.
It’s also easy to write off some new adult traffic as artificially induced. Pornhub and many other sites that deal in traditional porn have been offering temporary free or discounted (premium) memberships to people affected by coronavirus. Many cam sites already allow people to watch cammers for free, in public chatrooms with hundreds or thousands of other viewers. But sites like Cams.com, CamSoda, Stripchat, and xHamsterLive have been offering free tokens, used to tip performers (often to get them to perform a desired act) or pay them to go into private chats, for people creating new accounts while under lockdown.
“Many of us are alone and starved for human attention”
Yet Alex Hawkins of xHamster argues that “many of us are alone and starved for human attention,” and therein lies the true appeal of cam sites for a big chunk of viewers. “It’s quite nice to be able to chat with someone. Even if you are not home alone, it can be quite nice to talk to someone different.” The quest for connection — especially the kind of one-sided and uncomplicated intimacy cam sites often provide — may well explain why Hawkins says that xHamster’s cam platform has seen traffic grow twice as fast as its flagship tube site.
Adult cam shows are often conceptualized as live, interactive porn, offering bespoke and reactive experiences. However cam connoisseurs and researchers have long noted that, while still adult entertainment, camming is distinct from porn because of the emphasis it puts on building relationships between viewers and performers. Sure, some sites focus primarily on nudity and live sex, and Vanguard certainly thinks most of her viewers just want to get off. Most cammers, though, say part of the secret to building large and lucrative followings is to foster a sense of intimate connection with viewers. Even people who visit cams for a quick pornographic fix often find themselves sucked into the more emotional and personal aspects of the sites.
That’s why many cammers spend as much or more time clothed and chatting with viewers as they do getting naked and performing sex acts. It’s why a number of high-earning performers only do non-nude shows. It’s also why many individuals who try to cam fail, argues performer GuiltyCaprice: They simply get naked and act sexy, ignoring the specialized emotional and communicative skill sets and labor that go into crafting a successful cam persona or show.
Taylor points out that cam sites aren’t set up to monitor how viewers interact with performers, beyond how much time they spend in a room and how many tokens they spend. So it is hard to know for sure whether the people flocking to these sites on lockdown are acting out of a sense of isolation and a search for connection, or whether they are just experimenting with new sites and erotic fixes, bopping around the internet aimlessly as many of us are wont to do when trapped at home and bored.
However, there are some indications, in both industry press materials and viewer requests made directly to performers, that the demand for cam-to-cam tools, which allow cammers to see their viewers rather than just their screen names and texts (as is the norm on most sites), has been growing in recent weeks. Some insiders take this as a sign of a thirst for connection, spurred by the isolation of lockdowns, over voyeuristic adult content consumption.
Cammers offer a unique form of connection, which may be especially appealing in times of stress and crisis
Turning to cams for a sense of connection may seem odd when we have access to a myriad of videoconferencing tools that allow us to stay close to our friends and family, or even to date, during lockdowns. Cammers note that they, as a distinct category of sex workers, offer a unique form of connection, though, which may be especially appealing in times of stress and crisis, when people want uncomplicated care and comfort.
“A relationship with a friend is reciprocal,” explains performer Jessica Starling. “You vent to your friend, and it’s expected that your friend can in turn vent to you. The intimacy a sex worker provides is one-way. It is effortless on the part of the client. They just have to pay the sex worker’s fee. The focus is on the client’s experience, the client’s wants and needs.”
“I don’t know about you,” says performer Alex Coal, “but I don’t feel like I can share all my concerns and worries with people in my personal life. You don’t want to overload your loved ones,” especially when they’re stressed, if you’re cooped up with them, or if they may themselves be a point of stress in your life. “Venting to a friend online is much more comfortable.”
A surge of scared viewers looking for undemanding and often one-sided digital contact and comfort may not be great news for cammers, many of whom Hawkins notes are living in lockdown — effectively trapped at work — and coping with stress and fear as well. Sure, Coal notes, some regulars want to check in on their favorite performers, to make sure they are okay. Many also don’t want to talk about the virus, says GuiltyCaprice. They are “looking for an escape” on cams, not to dwell in their fears. Still, performer Lauren Phillips says that a critical mass of her viewers “want to talk about the coronavirus and how it is affecting us all.”
The emotional labor of camming can be draining, and burnout and depression among cammers is common in the best of times. Funnel more anxiety and stress into a performer’s life from the external world and through their chatrooms, and emotional attrition may accelerate or amplify. That’s why Coal warns performers to be especially aware in these times “of their limits in absorbing other people’s distress, and practice self-care,” taking time off if and as they can.
Starling adds while she and other performers who make traditional porn content as well as cam have seen increased sales figures on clip and tube sites, due to discounts and sales geared toward folks stuck at home, there is good reason to doubt that growing cam viewership will translate into new income for cammers. Eyeballs, after all, do not always equal dollars in this industry.
People who are worried about their jobs and finances seem more likely to make use of the ample free content on cam sites and less likely to shell out on paid private shows or tips, GuiltyCaprice says. Lockdowns have also messed with regular viewers’ and spenders’ patterns, says performer Red_Delicious. Trapped at home with other people, and as such usually with less private time, many viewers are now logging on to cam sites for just a few minutes at a time, at irregular or odd hours. These upheavals make it harder for cammers to profit.
Bennet and Taylor actually frame their sites’ free token offers for new cam viewers as stimulus programs, trying to funnel money to cammers who may struggle with the way things are shifting, and to push consumers into spending rather than just viewing free content piecemeal. “We’ve seen from past free token offers that this is a good way to encourage spending,” explains Taylor.
Eyeballs, after all, do not always equal dollars in this industry
A few performers also worry that job insecurity caused by coronavirus lockdowns will lead to a spike in the number of people signing up to cam, potentially creating a glut of performers that may cut into existing cammers’ profits. Escorts, exotic dancers, and traditional porn performers especially have noted in recent weeks that they are losing work to the virus and are considering camming for the first time to make up for it.
(Many legal brothels and strip clubs have closed down in the name of social distancing. Those that remain open have lost clientele and workers to coronavirus fears. Most porn performers are still shooting indie and solo content, but over the past month, most major studios have shut down production in response to the pandemic. These shoots are still vital to many performers’ income or visibility, so long-term studio freezes will still hurt many performers’ bottom lines.)
Off the Record Models, a cam performer agency, says it has seen a 25 percent spike in applications for management and representation since lockdowns began, and many more inquiries about getting into camming. Stripchat has seen a 15 percent increase in new models registering on the platform since the start of the year, adds Bennet, but a nearly 300 percent increase in the number of Italian models signing up in recent days. Just behind Italy on the sign-up chart, US model registrations are up 45 percent.
“I have been avoiding camming during this pandemic,” says Starling, precisely because of the trouble that consumer austerity and a surge of new performers could pose to all performers’ profits. “I’ve heard from many of my colleagues that cam business has been really slow.”


vox--2020-04-21--How the coronavirus is surfacing America’s deep-seated anti-Asian biases

There ’ s been a surge in harassment toward Asian Americans in recent weeks : According to Stop AAPI Hate , an organization that ’ s been tracking self-reported incidents , more than 1,100 physical and verbal attacks against Asian Americans have been documented since late March .
The high number of reports , which have been submitted over just two weeks , is especially striking since people across the country have predominantly been sheltering in place .
The incidents — logged through the Stop AAPI Hate website , which launched on March 19 — are wide-ranging .
In one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off her bike by a bystander at a park .
In another , a family at a grocery store was spat on and accused of being responsible for the coronavirus .
For some , including one Japanese restaurant owner , the harassment has come in the form of vandalism .
Among these reports , which come from 46 states , there are notable patterns : women were more likely than men to say they were targeted , several incidents involved children , and harassment was more likely to occur at retail stores and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are sheltering in place .
“ So many of us have experienced it , sometimes for the first time in our lives , ” says Manjusha Kulkarni , the executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council , the group that helped set up this tracker .
“ It makes it much harder to go to the grocery store , to take a walk , to be outside our homes.
” Such incidents are taking place as the US grapples with the coronavirus pandemic , and as President Donald Trump continues @ @ @ @ @ @ @ name for the virus and associating it with Asian Americans .
In a tweet last Thursday , Trump appeared to equate Chinatowns in American cities to the country of China , criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for promoting businesses in Chinatown after he restricted travel from China earlier this year .
The latest uptick in racism , however , isn ’ t just fueled by the pandemic .
Although the uncertainty of the outbreak — coupled with the president ’ s rhetoric — has amplified it , this prejudice is rooted in longstanding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ since some of the earliest immigrants came to the US generations ago .
“ I think the recent surge is [ driven by ] the rhetoric that political leaders have been using ... but I don ’ t think we would have seen the spike in anti-Asian bias without a pretty strong foundation rooted in the ‘ forever foreigner ’ stereotype , ” says University of Maryland Asian American studies professor Janelle Wong .
The “ forever foreigner ” idea Wong references is one that ’ s been used to “ other ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : It suggests that Asians who live in America are fundamentally foreign and can ’ t be fully American .
Enduring tropes that have associated Asian Americans with illness and the consumption of “ weird ” foods , which have reemerged in relation to the coronavirus , are among those that play into this concept .
The revival of these stereotypes and the recent spike in harassment are having a pointed effect : they ’ re forcing a reckoning about the existence of anti-Asian racism in the US .
The current xenophobia is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americans In fact , it was enshrined into law when some of the earliest generations of Asian Americans were immigrating to the United States in the 1800s .
The Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 , two of the country ’ s first immigration laws , were designed explicitly to bar Chinese American laborers from entering the country because of widespread xenophobia and concerns about workplace competition .
These laws — along with others that made it impossible for immigrants to reenter the country if they visited China @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Asian American immigrants as foreigners who didn ’ t belong in the US .
“ Whereas in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof , ” read the first lines of the Exclusion Act .
In addition to limiting immigration , the act guaranteed that Chinese Americans could not become US citizens for decades .
“ Very early on in the history of this country , Chinese Americans were seen as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out , ” says Yale sociology professor Grace Kao .
And immigration policy wasn ’ t the only place where such discrimination was apparent .
As illnesses including smallpox and the bubonic plague spread in the late 1800s , San Francisco ’ s Chinese residents were repeatedly used as “ medical scapegoats , ” according to San Francisco State public health researcher Joan Trauner .
When the city grappled with a smallpox outbreak in 1875- ’ 76 , for example , officials blamed the “ foul and disgusting vapors ” — and “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for fueling it , according to Trauner .
Even after the epidemic continued following the city-ordered fumigation of all the homes in Chinatown , the blame persisted .
“ I unhesitatingly declare my belief that the cause is the presence in our midst of 30,000 ( as a class ) of unscrupulous , lying and treacherous Chinamen , who have disregarded our sanitary laws , concealed , and are concealing their cases of smallpox , ” city health officer J.L .
Meares wrote at the time .
Similarly , when the city encountered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , one of which was detected in Chinatown , San Francisco attempted to quarantine roughly 14,000 Chinese Americans who lived in that part of the city .
At one point , city officials proposed sending Chinese residents to a detention camp where they could be cordoned off from other members of the public , though a circuit court rejected this plan .
In both cases , the vitriol toward Chinese Americans was driven by explicit racism , a fundamental lack of medical knowledge , and pushback toward the influx of Chinese laborers competing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Policy prescriptions were actively informed by assumptions that Chinatowns were a “ laboratory of infection , ” Trauner explains .
“ A common trope in American popular culture was that the Chinese ate rats and lived in filthy , overcrowded quarters , ” says Princeton University history professor Beth Lew-Williams .
“ In the 19th century , San Francisco routinely banned Chinese from public hospitals.
” The recurring association of Chinese Americans with the ideas of being “ dirty ” or illness-ridden is inextricably tied up with xenophobia — and as Nylah Burton @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an association that ’ s been used to “ other ” many people of color , including Mexican Americans and African Americans .
And now , because the origins of the coronavirus have likely been traced back to a wet market in Wuhan , China , where people purchase groceries , this information has renewed racist jokes and statements about the type of food that Asian Americans eat .
It ’ s a sentiment that ’ s so common , it was a plot line of the ABC television show Fresh Off the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Asian American protagonist of the show , is shunned after consuming his lunch in front of his white classmates because they see the noodles in it as “ gross ” and “ nasty.
” This treatment of Asian foods is simply another plank of the othering of Asian American people : By deeming anything that ’ s different or unfamiliar as exotic or disgusting , the idea that Asian people are fundamentally foreign is further reinforced .
The effects of the “ forever foreigner ” trope , briefly explained While the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 1940s , the racism it embodied played a central role in shaping how the United States continues to view Asian Americans .
The idea that Asian Americans are “ forever foreigners ” helped lay the groundwork for Japanese internment during World War II , when Japanese American citizens were sent to detention camps solely on the basis of their ethnicity , due to suspicions that they were abetting the Japanese government in some way .
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks , Islamophobia toward Muslim Americans and prejudice toward South @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that people were not loyal to the United States because of their religion , ethnicity and external appearance .
“ It ’ s always easily activated , it ’ s very tenacious , it ’ s very familiar to many Americans , ” says Wong of this assumption .
“ I ’ m sixth-generation Chinese American in the US and I still feel it.
” Because the hostility that Asian Americans have faced is rooted in this question of belonging in the US , some — including former presidential candidate Andrew Yang — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prejudice by proving their patriotism and commitment to their community .
It ’ s a misguided argument founded on “ respectability politics ” that further puts the onus on Asian Americans to demonstrate how American they are — and it ’ s revealing of how much some people still think Asians need to compensate for looking “ different.
” “ Very early on in the history of this country , Chinese Americans were seen as a group of people we wanted to keep out ” Political pushback toward China , including its handling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conflated with hostility toward Chinese Americans in a way that historic US tensions with Asian nations have been projected onto people of Asian descent in the past .
Recently , former Washington Gov .
Gary Locke — who is Chinese American — was featured in a Trump attack ad against former vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden .
Because of the way it ’ s framed , the ad appears to imply that Locke , who once served as the US ambassador to China , is a Chinese official and not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — whether you ’ re second- , third- , or fourth-generation , will always be viewed as foreigners , ” Locke told the Atlantic .
“ We don ’ t say that about second- or third-generation Irish Americans or Polish Americans .
No one would even think to include them in a picture when you ’ re talking about foreign government officials.
” Although racism toward Asian Americans has persisted for generations , it ’ s rarely explicitly confronted or talked about .
“ Asian discrimination tends to be overlooked and widely tolerated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ University of Pennsylvania English professor Josephine Park told Penn Today .
There are many reasons for this , according to Asian American studies scholars .
Relative to other people of color , including black Americans and Latino Americans , Asian Americans have faced discrimination of a different degree .
According to a 2017 survey from the Harvard School of Public Health , Asian Americans reported facing less bias in areas including housing , employment and criminal justice , compared to other minority groups .
Additionally , because of the diversity within the Asian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 15 ethnic groups — there is a breadth of experience that isn ’ t always all the same .
“ It ’ s rare to see all parts of the Asian American community equally affected by an issue , ” says UC Riverside political science professor and head of AAPI Data Karthick Ramakrishnan .
The toxic perpetuation of the “ model minority ” myth , which was introduced by sociologist William Petersen in a New York Times Magazine piece in 1966 , has further complicated the conversation about Asian Americans and racism .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ pits minority groups against one another and argues that Japanese Americans were able to attain economic success in the face of injustice and discrimination in a way that other groups , which Petersen dubbed “ problem minorities , ” were not .
It ’ s a fictitious argument that ’ s been used repeatedly as a “ wedge ” between minority groups , Kat Chow reported for NPR .
By branding Asian Americans as a “ model minority , ” writers like Petersen also sought to evade responsibility for systemic injustices that have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this idea ultimately reduced the visibility of racism against Asian Americans as well .
In the years since , the “ model minority ” myth has repeatedly been leveraged to obscure the diversity within the Asian American community — giving rise to stereotypes about Asian Americans as a homogeneous group that ’ s focused exclusively on studies and certain professions , like those in science and technology .
That emphasis on homogeneity , in turn , reinforces the idea that Asian Americans can be perceived as a monolithic group of people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Comments like “ Where are you really from ?
” or “ Go back to your country ” and jokes about how all Asian people look the same remain commonplace .
“ The dominant culture ’ s belief in the ‘ model minority ’ allows it to justify ignoring the unique discrimination faced by Asian Americans , ” writes Robert Chang , in his book Disoriented : Asian Americans , Law and the Nation-State .
Now , the recent rise in harassment is sparking a new conversation about the type of prejudice that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it marks one of the rare times they are confronting this problem in such an explicit way .
“ I haven ’ t been harassed for my race for years and years .
It ’ s been a really long time , so it felt like it came out of nowhere , ” California resident Julie Kang told Vox ’ s Catherine Kim .
Experts see these incidents compelling people to talk about discrimination toward Asian Americans more openly .
“ I think there is a newfound understanding for a lot of folks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hope this will spur more dialogue and more action , frankly.
” Some also think it has the potential to improve solidarity between Asian Americans and other people of color , many of whom deal with racist harassment and violence — including from the police — on a regular basis .
“ I hope that we realize that this kind of process happens to other groups all the time , ” says Ramakrishnan .
The response from some lawmakers has helped underscore this solidarity : A few weeks back , a group of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and Hispanic caucuses unequivocally denounced anti-Asian rhetoric and violence .
“ In times of crisis , it ’ s important for us all to stand together , ” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries ( D-NY ) .
“ It ’ s particularly important for leaders of every race , every religion , every background to raise your voices as we are doing today to make it clear we will not tolerate anti-Asian rhetoric or violence against the community.
” The attacks Asian Americans are facing across the country are bringing the dialogue about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as Americans are having more frank conversations about race and institutional biases — even as the president promotes xenophobia — they aren ’ t as easy to ignore as they have been in the past .
“ Addressing ... these kinds of dominant stereotypes that are really pervasive , that are so easily activated , requires public education and the broader public committing to understand race in America , ” says Wong .
“ There ’ s a way that it could be a really potent reminder that Asian Americans are racialized in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t go it alone.
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Harassment toward Asian Americans has spiked in the last year: According to Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that’s been tracking these reports, over 2,800 incidents were documented in 2020. And more recently, a wave of violent attacks against elderly people has renewed focus on this issue.
These incidents — which include everything from getting shunned at work to physical assaults — have been wide-ranging.
In February, a 27-year-old Korean American man was assaulted in Los Angeles and targeted with racial slurs. Last winter, a 16-year-old student in the San Fernando Valley was beaten so badly by his classmates that he had to go to the emergency room. And this past March, a restaurant in Yakima, Washington, was vandalized with racist language.
The reports to Stop AAPI Hate describe other forms of harassment, too, such as getting spat on at a restaurant, verbally attacked at the park and denied service at different establishments. “I was in line at the pharmacy when a woman approached me and sprayed Lysol all over me,” one account reads. “She was yelling out, ‘You’re the infection. Go home. We don’t want you here!’”
Among these attacks, there are notable patterns: Women were more likely than men to say they were targeted, several assaults involved children, and harassment was more likely to occur at retail stores and pharmacies since people have been limiting their activities during the pandemic.
“So many of us have experienced it, sometimes for the first time in our lives,” says Manjusha Kulkarni, the executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, a group that helped set up this tracker. “It makes it much harder to go to the grocery store, to take a walk, to be outside our homes.”
This rise in anti-Asian harassment has occurred as the US continues to grapple with Covid-19, and it follows months of xenophobic rhetoric by former President Donald Trump, who frequently used racist names for the virus and associated it with Asian Americans.
The broader uptick in racism, however, isn’t just fueled by the pandemic. Although the uncertainty of the outbreak — coupled with the former president’s rhetoric — has amplified it, this prejudice is rooted in longstanding biases toward Asian Americans that have persisted since some of the earliest immigrants came to the US generations ago.
“I think this surge is [driven by] the rhetoric that political leaders have been using ... but I don’t think we would have seen the spike in anti-Asian bias without a pretty strong foundation rooted in the ‘forever foreigner’ stereotype,” says University of Maryland Asian American studies professor Janelle Wong.
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The “forever foreigner” idea Wong references is one that’s been used to “other” Asian Americans in the US for decades: It suggests that Asians who live in America are fundamentally foreign and can’t be fully American. Enduring tropes that have associated Asian Americans with illness and the consumption of “weird” foods, which have reemerged in relation to the coronavirus, are among those that play into this concept.
The revival of these stereotypes and the recent spike in harassment are having a pointed effect: They’re forcing a reckoning about the existence of anti-Asian racism in the US.
The current xenophobia is built on deeply rooted racism toward Asian Americans
Racism toward Asian Americans goes back a long time.
In fact, it was enshrined into law when some of the earliest generations of Asian Americans were immigrating to the United States in the 1800s. The Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, two of the country’s first immigration laws, were designed explicitly to bar Chinese American laborers from entering the country because of widespread xenophobia and concerns about workplace competition.
These laws — along with others that made it impossible for immigrants to reenter the country if they visited China — were among the earliest that tagged Asian American immigrants as foreigners who didn’t belong in the US. “Whereas in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof,” read the first lines of the Exclusion Act.
In addition to limiting immigration, the act guaranteed that Chinese Americans could not become US citizens for decades. “Very early on in the history of this country, Chinese Americans were seen as a group of people we wanted to keep out,” says Yale sociology professor Grace Kao.
And immigration policy wasn’t the only place where such discrimination was apparent. As illnesses, including smallpox and the bubonic plague, spread in the late 1800s, San Francisco’s Chinese residents were repeatedly used as “medical scapegoats,” according to San Francisco State public health researcher Joan Trauner.
When the city grappled with a smallpox outbreak in 1875-’76, for example, officials blamed the “foul and disgusting vapors” — and “unwholesome” living conditions of Chinatown — for fueling it, according to Trauner. Even after the epidemic continued following the city-ordered fumigation of all the homes in Chinatown, the blame persisted.
“I unhesitatingly declare my belief that the cause is the presence in our midst of 30,000 (as a class) of unscrupulous, lying and treacherous Chinamen, who have disregarded our sanitary laws, concealed, and are concealing their cases of smallpox,” city health officer J.L. Meares wrote at the time.
Similarly, when the city encountered cases of the bubonic plague in 1900, one of which was detected in Chinatown, San Francisco attempted to quarantine roughly 14,000 Chinese Americans who lived in that part of the city. At one point, city officials proposed sending Chinese residents to a detention camp where they could be cordoned off from other members of the public, though a circuit court rejected this plan.
In both cases, the vitriol toward Chinese Americans was driven by explicit racism, a fundamental lack of medical knowledge, and pushback toward the influx of Chinese laborers competing with white workers for job opportunities. Policy prescriptions were actively informed by assumptions that Chinatowns were a “laboratory of infection,” Trauner explains.
“A common trope in American popular culture was that the Chinese ate rats and lived in filthy, overcrowded quarters,” says Princeton University history professor Beth Lew-Williams. “In the 19th century, San Francisco routinely banned Chinese from public hospitals.”
The recurring association of Chinese Americans with the ideas of being “dirty” or illness-ridden is inextricably tied up with xenophobia — and as Nylah Burton writes for Vox, it’s an association that’s been used to “other” many people of color, including Mexican Americans and African Americans.
And now, because the origins of the coronavirus have likely been traced back to a wet market in Wuhan, China, where people purchase groceries, this information has renewed racist jokes and statements about the type of food that Asian Americans eat. It’s a sentiment that’s so common, it was a plot line of the ABC television show Fresh Off the Boat, when a young Eddie Huang, the Asian American protagonist of the show, is shunned after consuming his lunch in front of his white classmates because they see the noodles in it as “gross” and “nasty.”
This treatment of Asian foods is simply another plank of the othering of Asian American people: By deeming anything that’s different or unfamiliar as exotic or disgusting, the idea that Asian people are fundamentally foreign is further reinforced.
The effects of the “forever foreigner” trope, briefly explained
While the Chinese Exclusion Act was ultimately repealed in the 1940s, the racism it embodied played a central role in shaping how the United States continues to view Asian Americans.
The idea that Asian Americans are “forever foreigners” helped lay the groundwork for Japanese internment during World War II, when Japanese American citizens were sent to detention camps solely on the basis of their ethnicity, due to suspicions that they were abetting the Japanese government in some way. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Islamophobia toward Muslim Americans and prejudice toward South Asian Americans was similarly fueled by assumptions that people were not loyal to the United States because of their religion, ethnicity, and external appearance.
“It’s always easily activated, it’s very tenacious, it’s very familiar to many Americans,” says Wong of this assumption. “I’m sixth-generation Chinese American in the US, and I still feel it.”
Because the hostility that Asian Americans have faced is rooted in this question of belonging in the US, some — including New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang — have suggested that Asians can combat this prejudice by proving their patriotism and commitment to their community.
It’s a misguided argument founded on “respectability politics” that further puts the onus on Asian Americans to demonstrate how American they are — and it’s revealing of how much some people still think Asians need to compensate for looking “different.”
“Very early on in the history of this country, Chinese Americans were seen as a group of people we wanted to keep out”
Political pushback toward China, including its handling of the virus, has also been conflated with hostility toward Chinese Americans in a way that historic US tensions with Asian nations have been projected onto people of Asian descent in the past.
Last year, former Washington Gov. Gary Locke — who is Chinese American — was featured in a Trump attack ad against President Joe Biden. Because of the way it’s framed, the ad appears to imply that Locke, who once served as the US ambassador to China, is a Chinese official and not an American one.
“Asian Americans — whether you’re second-, third-, or fourth-generation, will always be viewed as foreigners,” Locke told the Atlantic. “We don’t say that about second- or third-generation Irish Americans or Polish Americans. No one would even think to include them in a picture when you’re talking about foreign government officials.”
Recent incidents are forcing a dialogue about racism
Although racism toward Asian Americans has persisted for generations, it’s rarely explicitly confronted or talked about. “Asian discrimination tends to be overlooked and widely tolerated, even among educated classes,” University of Pennsylvania English professor Josephine Park told Penn Today.
There are many reasons for this, according to Asian American studies scholars. Relative to other people of color, including Black Americans and Latino Americans, Asian Americans have faced discrimination of a different degree.
Additionally, because of the diversity within the Asian American community — which includes more than 30 ethnic groups — there is a breadth of experience that isn’t always all the same. “It’s rare to see all parts of the Asian American community equally affected by an issue,” says UC Riverside political science professor and head of AAPI Data Karthick Ramakrishnan.
The perpetuation of the “model minority” myth, which was introduced by sociologist William Petersen in a New York Times Magazine piece in 1966, further complicated the conversation about Asian Americans and racism.
As part of his piece, Petersen pits minority groups against one another and argues that Japanese Americans were able to attain economic success in the face of injustice and discrimination in a way that other groups, which Petersen dubbed “problem minorities,” were not. It’s a fictitious argument that’s been used repeatedly as a “wedge” between minority groups, Kat Chow reported for NPR.
By branding Asian Americans as a “model minority,” writers like Petersen obscured how systemic injustices have disproportionately hurt Black Americans. The term, too, reduced the visibility of racism against Asian Americans as well.
“The dominant culture’s belief in the ‘model minority’ allows it to justify ignoring the unique discrimination faced by Asian Americans,” writes Robert Chang, in his book Disoriented: Asian Americans, Law and the Nation-State.
Now, a rise in harassment is sparking a new conversation about the type of prejudice that Asian Americans experience. For some, it marks one of the rare times they are confronting this problem in such an explicit way.
“I haven’t been harassed for my race for years and years. It’s been a really long time, so it felt like it came out of nowhere,” California resident Julie Kang told Vox’s Catherine Kim.
Experts see these incidents compelling people to talk about discrimination toward Asian Americans more openly. “I think there is a newfound understanding for a lot of folks,” says Kulkarni. “We hope this will spur more dialogue and more action, frankly.”
Some also think it has the potential to improve solidarity between Asian Americans and other people of color, many of whom deal with racist harassment and violence — including from the police — on a regular basis. “I hope that we realize that this kind of process happens to other groups all the time,” says Ramakrishnan.
The response from some lawmakers has helped underscore this solidarity: A few weeks ago, a group of House Democrats representing the Black, Asian, and Hispanic caucuses unequivocally denounced anti-Asian rhetoric and violence.
“The Asian American community is facing a crisis of hatred that we cannot tolerate,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY). “We will not tolerate anti-Asian bias, we will not tolerate anti-Asian bigotry, we will not tolerate these hate crimes. All of us stand with the Asian American community until we can put this scourge to an end.”
The attacks Asian Americans are facing across the country are bringing the dialogue about longstanding prejudices to the fore. And as Americans are having more frank conversations about race and institutional biases, they aren’t as easy to ignore as they have been in the past.
“Addressing ... these kinds of dominant stereotypes that are really pervasive, that are so easily activated, requires public education and the broader public committing to understand race in America,” says Wong. “There’s a way that it could be a really potent reminder that Asian Americans are racialized in the US and that we can’t go it alone.”