When confronted with unfamiliar and dangerous infectious diseases, many Americans look for someone to blame — and historically, foreign people and countries have been a target. Although President Trump finally declared, in late March, that the novel coronavirus was not the “fault” of the “Asian American community in the United States,” he had spent several weeks using and defending the term “Chinese virus” instead of a more neutral, technical phrase, and even defended those who called it “Kung flu.” Some conservatives persist in calling it the “Wuhan virus.”

As the crisis mounted in this country, Asian Americans have reported being threatened, yelled at, spat on and attacked.

New data from a large national survey called Nationscape makes clear negative views of both Asian people and China specifically are on the rise, paralleling the reports of public attacks and slurs. The trend is evident among both Democrats and Republicans, though it appears to be more severe among members of the GOP.

Read on in The Washington Post.