Newsom: AntiAsian attacks are ‘infuriating’

Discussing the recent attacks against Asian Americans in the Bay Area and across the country, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday drew parallels between the United States’ past xenophobic attitudes toward Chinese immigrants and the racist rhetoric people of Asian descent continue to endure today.

“The idea that we are today, in 2021, still having conversations we were having in 1881, the year before the Chinese Exclusion Act ... is painful and infuriating at the same time,” Newsom said at the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, referring to an 1882 law that barred Chinese laborers from emigrating to the United States. “The hell is wrong with us?” he said. Newsom’s comments came on the heels of several attacks that have injured Asian Americans in the Bay Area, and days after eight people, including six Asian women, were killed by a gunman at Atlantaarea spas.

“It breaks your heart ... it infuriates, I think, all of us, the idea that people have to live in fear because their race, their ethnicity, because of the language that they speak, because of their age or gender,” Newsom said.

Racism against Asian people, Newsom said, has been exacerbated since the beginning of the pandemic, saying the coronavirus has become politicized and used as a way to divide the country.

Cynthia Choi, the coexecutive director of San Franciscobased civil rights group Chinese for Affirmative Action and cofounder of Stop AAPI Hate, said parents are afraid to send their children to school and Asianowned private businesses are afraid of being targeted.

“We have been experiencing for so long violence, and crime, and racial bias,” she said. “This is not a new experience.”

Stop AAPI Hate has reported close to 3,800 incidents of verbal and physical attacks against Asian Americans in the past year, Choi said. Women were more than twice as likely to be harassed and verbally abused.

“We are seeing the intersections of racism and sexism being played out,” Choi said.