I was responding to a silly post with a silly (though good faith) retort.
The OP posited that China's practice of selling animals in open air meat markets as being a cultural distinction that makes the US entirely different. There are plenty of open air meat markets in the United States, and we've had plenty of issues over time with this.
Maybe it would've been simpler to say "Making jokes and insinuations about bat soup (or whatever other Wuhan memes are currently popular) is to intentionally downplay what actually happened in this scenario. Congrats on the reductive racism, you've established that you're superior to others and your culture is surely blameless in the spread of this GLOBAL pandemic."
Woah. Easy there. Your assumption that my post was not in good faith is a bad one.
I disagree that it’s reductively racist to observe that bringing, selling, and butchering live, wild animals in wet markets is a bad hygienic practice. It is just a bad idea for the world we live in. That’s true regardless of the country or culture, though it is especially prevalent in Asia for historical reasons. I think that’s a reasonable statement in the interest of public health, just like I would argue against anti-vax cultures. Calling out behaviors that are not conducive to public health should not be shamed or called racist. My post was meant to be silly but in good faith, as you described yours was also meant to be.
Lastly, if you are aware of regular occurrences of comparable practices (butchering of live, wild animals) in markets in non-Asian geographies other than Mexico, then you should go add whole paragraphs to the geography section of the Wet Market Wikipedia page and enlighten us all here.
