The Impact of Covid-19 Blame Game Towards Anti-Asian Discrimination Phenomena

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explain how the relationship between foreign policies based on the 'Blame Game' could affect the social conditions of society, especially in terms of discrimination against people of Asian descent. The act of accusing each other by Western countries against China over who should actually be responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic has made international political conditions more tense and heated. China's defensive foreign policy strategy turned out to be aggressive and even creates a distortion of information regarding the truth of the origins of the pandemic. So the result is a Blame Game that is destructive, uncooperative, and actually makes problems unresolved where to deal with a global pandemic requires collective action. This is also leads to the increase of discrimination acts towards Asian community. This paper uses an explanatory-qualitative method, with data collection techniques through literature study. Constructivism theory and the concept of Political Racism are used as an analytical tool to explain how the relationship between the research variable. As the result, political elites create identities through the blaming game on various media platforms especially social media, which impacts on the creation of xenophobic perceptions towards the Asian community.