Virus-era attacks leave lasting marks
For Asian American victims, new wave of assaults renews fears
Nearly a year after they were almost stabbed to death inside a Midland, Texas, Sam’s Club, Bawi Cung and his two sons all have visible scars.
But it’s the unseen ones that are harder to get over.
Cung can’t walk through any store without constantly looking in all directions. His 6-year-old son, who now can’t move one eyebrow, is afraid to sleep alone.
On a Saturday evening last March, when COVID-19 panic shopping gripped the nation, Cung was in search of rice at a cheaper price. The family was in the Sam’s Club meat section when Cung felt a punch to the back of his head. A man he didn’t know then slashed his face with a knife. The assailant left but soon returned to stab the boys. He wounded the 3-year-old in the back and slashed the 6-year-old from his right eye to a couple of inches past his right ear.
The attack brought home the dangerous climate Asian Americans have faced since the coronavirus entered the country, with racially motivated harassment and assaults occurring from coast to coast.
Now, just over a year and thousands of incidents later, some of the early victims find moving forward has been difficult or, at best, bittersweet. A recent wave of attacks on elderly Asian Americans, including the death of an 84-year-old San Francisco man, has fueled worries that hostilities have only worsened.
In Cung’s case, the man responsible for the attack believed the man from Myanmar and his children were Chinese and spreading the virus, according to the FBI.
Cung said he’s not sure what would have happened had a Sam’s Club employee, Zach Owen, not intervened.
“Maybe I might kill him. Maybe he might kill all of my family. I don’t know,” Cung said. “God protected my family, God sent Zach to protect my family right there at the right time.”
Owen, who was stabbed in the leg and deeply cut in his right palm, and an off-duty Border Patrol agent detained the suspect, Jose Gomez, 19.
In April, a confrontation in a Richmond, California, park left an irrevocable impact not just on Kelly Yang, 36, but her children. She was forced to discuss anti-Asian racism with her son, 10, and daughter, 7.
An elderly white couple, upset over her unleashed dog, called Yang, who is Chinese American, an “Oriental” and said the words many Asian Americans dread: “Go back where you came from.”
Her children thought the couple meant for them to go home. Torn, Yang eventually explained they meant “for us to go back to Asia.”
Her son burst into tears. Yang believes the couple felt emboldened by then-President Donald Trump’s use of racially charged terms like “Chinese virus.” She applauded President Joe Biden’s recent executive order condemning anti-Asian xenophobia as a good start.
But Yang is afraid a lot of non-Asians have already shrugged off the issue as though it ceased when Trump’s presidency did.
“I don’t know what can be done,” said Yang, who writes young adult novels and plans to weave her experience into her next book. “But I do know talking about it, acknowledging it, remembering — that’s what we do with wars — we have to remember what happened.”
Douglas Kim, chef and owner of Jeju Noodle Bar in New York City, is certain COVID-19-fueled racism was behind the April vandalizing of his Michelin-starred, Korean restaurant. Someone used a Sharpie to scrawl on the winter vestibule “Stop eating dogs,” referring to a stereotype about Asian cuisines. Ultimately, Kim decided not to report it.
“At the time it pissed me off, but I have more important things to worry about,” the 42-year-old Kim said.
He shared a photo of the graffiti on Instagram to call attention to hate crimes. There was a groundswell of support, but he feels like much of it has faded.
Yet, Kim is hopeful fewer people are stereotyping Asian Americans as foreigners who don’t belong in the United States.
“I think it’s all about education,” Kim said. “If you raise your children that way, they’re gonna learn that way. I think things are changing, but it’s not 100% yet.”
More than 3,000 incidents have been reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a California-based reporting center for Asian American Pacific Islanders, and its partner advocacy groups, since mid-March 2020. What’s frustrating is that the encounters don’t often rise to the legal definition of a hate crime. Still, police in several cities saw a sharp uptick in Asian-targeted hate crimes between 2019 and 2020, according to data collected by the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism, California State University, San Bernardino.
Before immigrating to the U.S. six years ago, Cung had never encountered racism. Now, it’s difficult for him to hear stories about anti-Asian American violence. Initially after the attack, Cung wrestled with how Gomez tried to kill him simply because of how he looked. Now, he prays for his attacker.
As for what should happen to Gomez, who remains jailed on three counts of attempted capital murder, Cung said that’s up to the courts.
“I can forgive him, but we cannot accept racism or that kind of terrorist attack,” Cung said.