Asians swamped with abuse in US

Thousands of cases logged in pandemic of racial slurs whipped up by Republicans

“A man harassed me on the train, forcing me out of the way and shouting racial slurs: ‘ I agree with Trump … it’s because of you, the Chinese, we have to wear masks.”

That was one of the more than 2,700 incidents that STOP AAPI Hate, a platform for people to report coronavirus- related instances of racism, has received from across the United States over the past eight months.

There were at least 46 racially motivated attacks in which US President Donald Trump is invoked, according to Russell Jeung, chair and professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, who compiled the incidents.

“Another said ‘ Trump’s going to f--- you, f------ Asian piece of ----’ … so there’s a lot of profanity,” said Jeung, who couldn’t finish reading the example at a recent webinar because of the expletives.

The rhetoric and policies of Trump and his Republican allies have resurrected the centuries- old “yellow peril” stereotype, as reflected by millions of racist retweets and thousands of anti- Asian incidents, Jeung said.

Researchers at the University of Michigan, the University of Washington, the University of Maryland and San Francisco State University recently conducted a study on how often politicians use the stigmatizing rhetoric about Asian Americans and the reach of that rhetoric by examining tweets issued by Democratic and Republican election candidates for the offices of president, vice- president and US senator.

The study focuses on the first eight months of the COVID- 19 pandemic to Aug 31, and searches specifically made for tweets that contain terms such as “Asian American”, “Wuhan” and “virus”. The search returned 1,227 tweets in total.

Of those tweets, 136 used or defended the use of stigmatizing terms such as “Chinese virus”, though the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advise against using terms that associate disease with a specific group of people or a place, said Melissa Borja, the lead researcher of the study, and assistant professor of American culture at the University of Michigan.

Partisan division

She noted there is “a very clear partisan divide” in how candidates talk about China and Asian Americans.

“Republicans account for all of the tweets that use stigmatizing rhetoric, and for almost all the tweets that criticized China,” Borja said.

“In contrast, Democrats did not use any stigmatizing rhetoric in their tweets. In addition, Democrats account for almost all of the tweets that showed support for Asian Americans, especially in relation to COVID- related racism.”

Trump and Republican senatorial candidates Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee accounted for 93 percent of the tweets that use stigmatizing rhetoric.

In the latest report by STOP AAPI Hate, Jeung identified 24 anti- Asian policies introduced or passed in 2020 that blame China for the COVID- 19 pandemic, bar Chinese international students and researchers from entering the US, restrict business and trade with China, and allow people to sue China in US courts.

“All these policies combined illustrate the anti- immigrant trend and pattern of discrimination employed by the Republican Party,” said Jeung.