Sheila Jackson Lee: “I thank our distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, and I thank and applaud the gentlewoman from New…”

“I thank our distinguished chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, and I thank and applaud the gentlewoman from New York for her outstanding leadership and championing the rights of all Americans. Madam Speaker, from the unwarranted, unwanted allegations of hysterectomies in immigrant women around the Nation in detention centers, to the President of the United States taking to the bully pit to be able to call COVID-19 and the coronavirus the ``China virus,'' we are finding ourselves in the midst of confusion that is hurting the American people--hurting them in two ways: One, over 6 million COVID-19 infections in the United States, and now, predictions of upwards of 250,000 dead. Every one of them we, as Members of the United States Congress, should mourn because families, sadly, are having to bury family members having not seen them in their last days. What good is it to use that word--the ``Wuhan'' virus? That is not the scientific term. And out of that, we have created a hostile situation for our Asian-American friends, for Asian Americans who have been at the front lines fighting on behalf of this Nation. The use of anti-Asian terminology and rhetoric related to COVID-19, such as the Chinese virus, Wuhan virus, kung flu have perpetrated anti- Asian stigma and is reminiscent of dark and shameful chapters in America's past where Asian Americans were labeled as the ``yellow peril'' and interned in relocation camps.…”