Anti-asian bigotry long predates pandemic
When the first known COVID-19 infections were discovered in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, Katsuo Nishikawa Chávez started worrying.
He worried about how the connection to China would be interpreted in the U.S., a country where heated rhetoric from the White House on down already was aggravating racial divides.
An associate professor of political science at Trinity University, Nishikawa Chávez directs its Center for International Engagement. His work runs counter to division and animosity. It seeks to foster global understanding through education and by sending students out into the world.
He approaches race and bigotry through a historical lens, informed by a fascinating personal story.
His father was born in a Japanese internment camp in Mexico during World War II. Nishikawa Chávez himself was born in Mexico, outside the camp. He has lived in the United States for two decades, is biracial ( Japanese and Mexican) and is married to a Japanese woman.
Their children, ages 9 and 12, are “Asian looking,” he said.
“I take this personally,” he said of recent attacks on Asian Americans. “They’ve put a target on my kids’ backs.”
Hate crimes against Asians are on the rise, though incomplete data and incompatible reporting methods deny us a clear picture of what’s happening.
Asian Americans such as Nishikawa Chávez and others I interviewed this week say they see and feel the increased hostility. They are fearful and sometimes angry at former President Donald Trump, who often described the coronavirus as the “China virus,” “the China plague” and “kung flu.”
Rhetoric has an impact on the ground, where extremists are influenced by what they see on social media and on far-right news outlets.
Asian Americans say that attacks, both verbal and physical, haven’t been limited to those of Chinese descent. They say the bigotry has affected Asians whose families have been in the United States for generations as well as more recent arrivals.
One of the attacks occurred in San Antonio this past weekend, when a Northwest Side restaurant was targeted with racist graffiti.
The spray-painted messages included “No Mask,” “Hope you Die” and “Go Back 2 China” — and, yes, “kung flu.”
San Antonians responded by cleaning away the slurs and promising to spend their money at the restaurant.
The irony presumably was lost on the assailant. Mike Nguyen, owner of Noodle Tree, is Vietnamese. He likely was targeted because he told CNN his business would continue to require masks despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent decision to lift his statewide mask order.
Two days later in Atlanta, a white man bought a gun. He killed eight people in several spas. Six of the dead were Asian women.
A police spokesman added insult to injury by appearing to sympathize with the assailant, who was then in custody, saying he’d had “a bad day.” The officer also repeated the gunman’s claim that the attack was not racially motivated.
A thorough investigation and the judicial system will make that call, but Asian Americans and their allies mark the incident on a historical timeline of their American story.
Hate has long predated the pandemic.
The nation’s first anti-immigration legislation was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. That was followed by Japanese internment camps during World War II and then by discrimination against Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s.
Nishikawa Chávez and other Asians in San Antonio say it’s time for more Asians to stand up, speak out and report hate crimes and other incidents of bigotry. They hope non-asian allies join the trending call to #Stopasianhate.
Genaline Escalante-valdez , president-elect of the Asian-american Alliance of San Antonio, which represents 24 organizations, said that such an outcry would require Asian to overcome limits they’ve placed on themselves.
“We’d rather not make a big deal out of things,” said Escalante-Valdez, a Filipina who also heads the Alamo Asian American Chamber of Commerce.
Asians may be split on whether that’s true, but they agree on this: Many Americans lump Asians together and know little about their differences.
Escalante-valdez and Nishikawa Chávez believe education can help defeat racism and curb hateful rhetoric. “We’ve been growing this out of our kids,” the Trinity scholar said, referring to diversity training and efforts to increase cultural sensitivity.
Leadership always helps, but he thinks the real answer lies in understanding how economic policies that privilege the wealthy disadvantage members of all groups, especially the working class — regardless of race.
Workers of all stripes “suffer the same,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what color they are. No one is better off, because real wages have contracted over time.”
Nishikawa Chávez is hopeful. But he’s also wary. He believes “the country will try everything else before doing the right thing.”