Deep-rooted problem

Legislation alone cannot stamp out racially prejudiced assaults against Asian Americans

All ethnic groups

Hating, even violently attacking, somebody just because of his or her ethnicity is one of the most deeply-rooted aspects of pernicious racism. Recently, an alarming rise in the number of such hate crimes across the United States and Canada has highlighted that racial prejudice is alive and well, even in places where it may be least expected.

The Stop AAPI Hate group, which tackles hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, reported 2,800 hate incidents last year alone. Of course, it must be admitted that every race and every country has both good and bad people.

The US Congress, acting on many unprovoked assaults in recent months on Asians living in the US and in order to deter hate crimes against Asian Americans, has just passed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. It was passed with a 364-62 vote in the House of Representatives on May 18 after the US Senate approved the bill with a 94-1 vote in April.

But legislation alone will not be enough to stamp out this deep-rooted problem from US society.

In a distressing recent video clip which was widely circulated on social media, a tall and hefty man was seen to knock an old Asian lady to the ground, and then proceed to kick her repeatedly in the face. Not the least loathsome aspect of such vile conduct was that it was an unprovoked attack, with the bully hurting a frail senior only a third of his weight.

More seriously, it is dreadful to note that many of these hate attacks against Asian Americans involve hefty younger Americans violently attacking frail old Asian people, many of them in their eighties or nineties. The mindset of these wicked attackers shocked other fair-minded observers: What can they possibly hope to achieve by beating up or knocking down an Asian granny or grandpa?

Such very distressing brutality was made all the worse by the lack of anyone near the scene of this attack — and there were several — daring to intervene to protect that poor old lady. To take no action to stop such attacks can be misread as support for such flagrant acts of racially motivated brutality; shame on the passive onlookers, for their inaction.

Such a viciously violent attack, on a public street in broad daylight, points to the brazen hatred of the assailant and also his confidence in surmising — correctly, as it turned out — that nobody would come to the aid of his frail, innocent victim. These and many more anti-Asian attacks seem to have become far more widespread in the US.

It is ironic that any ethnic minority should face prejudice in the US, which after all is a land of immigrants who played key roles in making the country the economic success that it is today. Most American families have been there for only a few hundred years at most; even the Native Americans are thought to have travelled from Central Asia just a few thousand years ago, via the Barents Sea land bridge.

All ethnic groups need to get along with each other, to coexist peacefully in the multicultural mix that exists in the US today. These anti-Asian hate attacks, preceded by generations of discriminatory government policies and interpersonal prejudices of White America against Native Americans and African Americans, show that there is still a very long way to go before it becomes a truly tolerant society.

In dealing with perpetrators of such hate crimes in the US legal system, those found guilty of such appalling crimes should receive sentences that prevent them from being able to repeat their crime, with long custodial sentences being handed out. Such deterrent sentences would also act, to some extent, to deter others from committing similar attacks.

But what motivates those committing such hate attacks is racial prejudice. And no legal sentence in the world can be a magic bullet that removes forever their feelings of hatred toward their targets.

Instead, we must go back to education, where at school level efforts should be made to familiarize them with people of different ethnicities. A level of ignorance about other races plays a large part in the development of racial prejudice.

To tackle that at school means, sadly, that even if these muchneeded measures are introduced quickly during education, it will take a number of years to produce the more-enlightened school graduates of the future.

That leaves us with a body of racially prejudiced and violent adults who are all-too-ready to attack someone of a different race. It is those shameful “ugly Americans’’ who need to be deterred from carrying out more assaults on Asian Americans by the reactivation of the strong arm of the law.

It would be interesting to learn just what the “Asian-bashers’’ have against their innocent victims, though it has been speculated that envy of Asian Americans’ general law-abiding nature and success in the workplace is a factor.

need to get

along with each

other, to coexist

peacefully in the

multicultural

mix that exists

in the US today.