San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Can America stop hate of Asians?
It’s been two years since a mass shooting in the Atlanta area shocked the country and thrust to the national forefront what many Asian Americans already knew: They were not immune to racism, and they were targets in a wave of violent hate that rose alongside the COVID pandemic — fueled in part by conspiracy theories about the coronavirus’ origin in China.
Six Asian American women were among the eight people killed in shootings at three spas in and around Atlanta. Robert Aaron Long, who is serving life in prison for four of those killings, didn’t blame his victims for the coronavirus. Instead, his belief in racist, misogynistic views that objectify Asian women appear to have played a role into why he went on a shooting spree.
Insidious stereotypes like Long’s views are at the root of the racism directed at Asian Americans, which runs far deeper than the bigotry-fueled coronavirus conspiracies fanned by Donald Trump during his presidency.
The U.S. is a nation of immigrants but also a country of xenophobia; each new group — from Asia, Europe and Latin America — has endured it and has been the scapegoat for whatever the country’s economic or social ills are at the time. Anti-Asian hate didn’t start with the pandemic. Instead, the sheer number of hate incidents since 2020 is a stark reminder — like George Floyd’s killing — that racism is alive and well in America.
Has our country risen to the challenge of confronting Asian hate since the Atlanta massacre?
The data says no. The advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate began tracking incidents in March 2020, and through March 2022 it received 11,500 self-reports of harassment and physical attacks. The reports are still coming in (Stop AAPI Hate hasn’t done a tally for 2023), and the group’s website became a place where people could convey “their everyday experiences with racism,” Cynthia Choi, one of the co-founders of Stop AAPI Hate, told the Editorial Board. The continued volume of incidents shows the
problem remains “pervasive” and “systemic,” she said.
Anti-Asian hate hasn’t ebbed, and that seemingly doesn’t bother much of the country’s political leadership and electorate. Renewed allegations that a lab in China leaked the coronavirus could add to that unending hate. And despite the national conversations the Atlanta killings and Floyd’s death sparked, there’s now a backlash against trying to further understand the experiences of people of color in this country.
“As long as we allow elected officials to use their outsized influence to spew racialized rhetoric, to scapegoat our communities or any other communities with impunity, this will continue,” Choi said. “So, we need to speak out at every turn.”
Most of the self-reported incidents Stop AAPI Hate have chronicled involve nonviolent, verbal abuse in public spaces
that aren’t prosecutable crimes but are still traumatizing.
There’s little recourse (other than yelling back) for this sort of abuse.
“When somebody drives by and tells you to ‘go back to China’ … there’s not much that can be done,” Choi said.
These types of incidents are particularly common on public transit. That’s why Stop AAPI Hate supported a California bill, SB1161, enacted last year, which mandated the creation of survey tools for public transportation agencies to track incidents in the hope the data can help them take action to combat this harassment.
The idea that someone who looks Asian can’t possibly be American and needs to “go back” to where they came from pervades the racism Asian Americans endure. The backlash against China, fanned by political leaders, reinforces this falsehood.
“On the one hand, we’re
perpetual foreigners. We’re not to be trusted. We are a threat,” Choi said.
“On the other hand, we are a model minority and being used to deny that structural racism exists in this country. Because if the Asians can make it, why can’t others?”
The Atlanta killings jolted Justin Zhu, who was the CEO of a tech company, to co-found the nonprofit Stand With Asian Americans to work on solutions to violent anti-Asian hate. The group took out a full-page ad on March 31, 2021, in the Wall Street Journal signed by 100 Asian American business leaders to announce a goal of raising $10 million to fund community organizations that fight racism. The group has raised $2 million so far.
“We need to get every company speaking up about this because there’s real racism that we’re facing,” Zhu told the Editorial Board.
Hate, racism, violence or
xenophobia directed at Asian Americans — or anyone — should jolt us. Teaching students about the history of that bigotry shouldn’t be banned or derided as “woke.” Yet new laws in Florida and elsewhere are curtailing history education about African Americans and other groups over fears the lessons are divisive or unpatriotic.
On the contrary, schools in every state should teach about the legacy of slavery and the full history and experiences of this nation of immigrants. If we don’t understand each other, we’ll never move past suspicions formed by racist stereotypes that can explode into hate and violence.
It’s an effort that will take more than $10 million and a few public transportation surveys. But it will be worth it.