Jaguar Jonze Opens Up About Racism She Endured After COVID Diagnosis
"I will no longer push past the feelings I’ve had over the year and allow it to continue to hurt those around me."
Brisbane artist Jaguar Jonze has opened up about the horrible racism she endured over the last year and condemned the ongoing hatred directed towards Asian people in the wake of COVID-19.
In a post shared across Instagram and Facebook, Jonze — real name Deena Lynch — said she’d been internally debating whether to open up about the hate directed at her and the community over the last year, as she thought “the society around me wasn’t ready for the brutal truth”.
“Today marks one year since I received my positive test result for COVID-19,” Jonze wrote. “I’ve been pushing past feelings that I’ve had as this date got closer…I had alluded to the racism I dealt with gently in interviews but the truth is, I knew that the society around me wasn’t ready for the brutal truth, and was struggling with the anxiety of a pandemic, so here I am, one year on, ready to join and share within the environment of so many other voices around me.
“The Asian hate and racism I dealt with from friends, the public and those who were looking for a place to project while I was trying to recover from COVID-19 was unacceptable. The Asian hate that the Asian community is dealing with right now in lieu of harmful comments being made in the media, on the internet and to our faces surrounding COVID-19, is unacceptable. The Asian hate through acts of extreme and unimaginable violence against Asian communities of people from all demographics and ages is unacceptable.”
She goes on to write that the pandemic has greatly increased the racism directed at the Asian community, and threatened Asian peoples safety to the point “where we can no longer be compliant and stay silent”.
“I will no longer push past the feelings I’ve had over the year and allow it to continue to hurt those around me,” she finished. “My body has healed but my heart remains broken. We NEED to make a change.”
Lynch was diagnosed with COVID-19 in March last year and spent 40 days in a “virtual hospital set-up” — she would wear a temperature tracker and have wireless vital sign readers that would feed data to the hospital in Sydney, checking in with nurses twice daily. She documented her illness and treatment closely on her socials.
Her statement yesterday comes after the outrage and mourning over the horrific, racially targeted murder of eight people in Atlanta, six of them Asian women; the number of hate incidents directed at the community has sky-rocketed since the beginning of the pandemic early last year.
Read Jonze’s full statement below.
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