Despite legislation, awareness of anti-Asian violence still lags

Amid all the violence of the past week, there was a case in Texas that should raise alarms for all of us, especially when considered in light of some recent studies reflecting a dark shift in public attitudes.

Last week, a person opened fire at a hair salon in Dallas’ Koreatown, wounding three women of Asian descent.

Initially local law enforcement quickly dismissed the idea that the attack was a hate crime. However, the chief of police walked that back days later, saying unequivocally police and the community view the incident as a hate crime and part of a larger pattern of violence that’s been directed toward the area’s Asian American Pacific Islander community. Earlier this month, Dallas saw two other shootings targeting Asian Businesses.

In an affidavit related to latest incident, the suspect’s girlfriend said the alleged shooter had delusions Asian Americans were out to harm him.

This attack — occurring a little over a year after a shooting spree in Atlanta left eight people dead, including six Asian women — provides a harsh reminder about many of our collective failures addressing this rise in hate.

Over the past two years, there has been much more public discussion about anti-Asian racism and violence. But even still, public consciousness and media coverage of the rise in hate we’ve seen targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islander community has been sporadic, often ebbing and flowing throughout the pandemic and in response to high-profile incidents of hate.

In fact, I myself am partly guilty of this. Although I’ve written about anti-Asian racism and violence multiple times — both with columns spotlighting the issue and as part of other pieces talking about hate crimes broadly — I haven’t focused a column exclusively on anti-Asian hate since last summer.

All the while, incidents of racism and violence directed

toward Asian Americans have continued, leaving a palpable fear that studies show is clearly being felt by many in the community.

From March 19, 2020, to Dec. 31, 2021, Stop AAPI Hate received reports of a total of 10,905 hate incidents against Asian American and Pacific Islander persons, about 4,100 of which occurred in California. Of all cases nationwide, about 6,870 involved verbal harassment, while 1,766 were physical assaults.

A survey by AAPI Data reflected something similar, finding that 1 in 8 Asian American adults experienced

a hate crime or hate incident in 2020, a rate that climbed to 1 in 6 adults in 2021.

This aggression, in turn, is creating a very real sense of distress for many Asian Americans, according to researchers.

A Pew Research Center report published earlier this month revealed that about 63 percent of Asian adults surveyed reportedly felt violence against Asian Americans in the U.S. is increasing, with many respondents saying fear of an attack is on their minds regularly to the point they are altering their behavior.

About 51 percent of Asian American adults surveyed say they sometimes worry they might be threatened or attacked

because of their race or ethnicity, and an additional 21 percent say they worry daily or almost daily about the same thing. Because of that fear, about a third of those respondents also say they have altered their daily schedule or routine in the past 12 months due to concern they might be threatened or attacked.

As incidents of hate have climbed and a sense of fear has spread, what’s made matters worse is how those of us outside the community collectively failed in truly taking to heart the lessons of the past two years.

By this I mean, despite the action of federal and state legislation focusing on the issue, impressive efforts by AAPI community organizations

to raise awareness, and increased, albeit inconsistent media attention about this trend in hate, the general populace’s knowledge about Asian Americans has continued to lag. And in some cases public attitudes about the community have grown even more negative.

Reflecting this is a national analysis of general public attitudes toward Asian Americans, led by nonprofits Leading Asian Americans to Unite for Change and The Asian American Foundation in collaboration with AAPI Data and Stop AAPI Hate.

The analysis found that 21 percent of U.S. adults say Asian Americans are at least partly responsible for COVID, and 33 percent say “Asian Americans are more loyal to their country of origin than to the United States.” Those figures represent 10 percentage point and 13 percentage point increases over what the researchers found when they conducted the analysis last year.

Additionally, nearly one-third of Americans overall are unaware that attacks against Asian Americans are increasing, and 42 percent cannot even think of a historical experience or policy related to Asian Americans.

That is a stunning trend. Those attitudes, in combination with the persistent violence we’ve seen, should enrage all of us and should serve as a call to action for us to be hypervigilant and more aggressive in standing in solidarity with our Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.

That means community leaders, such as elected officials and school administrators, must be more thoughtful with their rhetoric. We as a general public also need to do more and get involved supporting local AAPI community organizations, as well as back educational efforts to increase knowledge about America’s history of discriminating against Asian Americans. And it also means that folks in the news media — myself included — need to do a far better job of keeping these issues front and center.