When hate hurled, fight back with love, support

Vitriol, violence and vandalism are calling cards of hate delivered by messengers of bigotry. Since last March, Asian Americans have been verbally and physically targeted with greater frequency, a rise in attacks paralleling COVID-19’S growing threat and dominance over our lives. Throughout 2020, the messenger of bigotry with the largest platform was President Donald Trump, who repeatedly referred to the coronavirus as the “China flu” and “Kung flu.” According to Stop AAPI Hate, which tracks antiasian attacks, there have been nearly 3,000 incidents over the past year, ranging from physical violence to racial slurs and being spat on. The range and frequency are so alarming President Joe Biden denounced the racism in his Thursday night speech on the pandemic recovery as “vicious hate crimes against Asian Americans who have been attacked, harassed, blamed and scapegoated.”

“At this very moment,” he said, “so many of them, our fellow Americans, they’re on the front lines of this pandemic trying to save lives, and still, still, they are forced to live in fear for their lives, just walking down streets in America. It’s wrong, it’s un-american, and it must stop.”

It hasn’t stopped. Mike Nguyen, one of our fellow Americans and fellow San Antonians, has been targeted. Nguyen, a restaurateur, made national news last week by speaking out against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to reopen the state 100 percent, which included rescinding the state’s mask mandate.

Nguyen said that masks would still be required in his Utsa-area restaurant, “Noodle Tree.” Over the weekend, the windows and outdoor tables were defaced with red spray-painted messages like “No Masks” “Go Back 2 China” and “Kung Flu.”

Through no fault of his own, Nguyen has been victimized by the worst of politics, pandemic and racism. In a CNN interview last week, he said he’d closed Noodle Tree for nearly six months amid COVID-19 but reopened with a commitment to follow the safety protocols outlined by the Texas Department of State Health Services. He accused Abbott of caring about himself, not the interests of Texans.

Nguyen also, specifically, discussed anti-asian hate.

“We have seen a lot of attacks on Asian Americans. And that’s a huge concern for me because I have a bull’s-eye on my back,” he said. “Those (mask enforcement) confrontations open up the opportunity.”

Anti-asian racism doesn’t receive the notoriety of attacks against African Americans and Latinos, but it’s no less pernicious and it isn’t new. An increase of Chinese immigrants into the United States during the mid-19th century fed ignorance and fear among white Americans about the threats to jobs and racial “purity.” This led to the explicitly named Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the only federal legislation in U.S. history that singled out a specific ethnic group to ban from these shores.

During World War II, Japanese Americans were rounded up and imprisoned in internment camps — in these United States — solely because of their ethnicity.

There is no decade in our nation’s history in which you won’t find bigotry and hate crimes against Asian Americans, but the enormity of COVID-19 and the willingness of political leaders to link ethnicity with the virus inflame the hate and encourage acts of violence.

Not that it would matter to the racists who told Nguyen to go back to China, though Nguyen isn’t Chinese. He’s half-vietnamese and half-french. One of the red spray-painted messages left for Nguyen said, “Hope U Die.”

Nguyen, who’s battling lymphoma, wishes death on no one, which is why he will continue to require masks for anyone coming to his restaurant. On Sunday, strangers from throughout the city showed up at Noodle Tree to help him clean up, as well as to dine or pick up meals. The restaurant sold out.

“I’ve always believed San Antonio is a close-knit community … and when they came out, that just showed the support,” he told us. “The community is here, no matter what. Our positivity, our love, our support is going to outweigh the negativity.” The only way to lessen the damage of the calling cards of vitriol, violence and vandalism delivered by messengers of bigotry is for the messengers of love, support and understanding to arrive and stay in greater numbers.