We Can Stop Anti-Asian Hate Crimes
Photo by Tabitha Turner (Unsplash)
On March 19, 2021, in Atlanta, Georgia, President Biden and Vice President Harris addressed the startling rise in anti-Asian racism and offered condolences to families whose loved ones were murdered in Atlanta-area spas this week. Biden said, “too many Asian Americans have been walking up and down the streets and worrying. Waking up each morning the past year feeling their safety and the safety of their loved ones are stake.” What caused the dramatic uptick in hate crimes and bigotry against people of Asian descent and what can we do to protect our family, friends, and neighbors?
Words as weapons.
On March 17, 2020, Weijia Jiang, a White House correspondent, tweeted about a White House official who referred to coronavirus as the "Kung-Flu." That was just one of many instances where a U.S. government official referred to the coronavirus in a manner that blamed Asians for the pandemic. As a result of the derogatory rhetoric, California State University’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism recorded a nearly 150% increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans in 16 cities.
Offenders are often granted leniency.
Do you remember the video from Torrance, California? A woman, now identified as Lena Hernandez, accosted an Asian American jogger and told her to "go back" to Asia. That same day, she was caught on video harassing an Asian American man. When those videos went viral, another Asian American woman spoke up on social media, noting that she had been physically assaulted by Hernandez and the police failed to take action. In October 2020, Hernandez was finally charged and sentenced to 45 days in jail for misdemeanor battery.
Elderly Asian Americans are at risk.
Vichar Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old originally from Thailand, enjoyed long morning walks. During one such walk in late January 2021, a young man intentionally pushed him to the ground. He died from injuries sustained during that attack. There are numerous, recent stories of elderly Asian Americans being shoved, hit, pummeled, and pushed. This past Wednesday, March 17, 2021, an elderly woman was attacked by a young man in San Francisco. She fought back valiantly and the assailant ended up in the hospital. While she has been praised for her strength, please be aware that the video of the aftermath, as she tries to recover, is distressing.
Volunteer with a safety group. Organizations have emerged to protect Asian Americans, particularly the elderly. Compassion in Oakland provides volunteer chaperones in the Chinatown area of Oakland, California. Main Street Patrol does similar work in Flushing, New York.
Report incidents to Stop AAPI Hate. In response to the rise in violence and discrimination, the Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council (A3PCON), Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA), and the Asian American Studies Department of San Francisco State University created the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center. You can report incidents as a victim or witness. They offer multilingual resources and information about your right to be treated fairly and without discrimination. If you want to learn how to intervene as a bystander, you can take a free training offered by Hollaback! and Asian Americans Advancing Justice.
Educate yourself, family, and friends. One of the reasons given for referring to COVID-19 by a name that centers China is the 1918 pandemic. Here is why that is inaccurate: researchers are not sure where this flu originated, but they do know that one of the first confirmed cases was in the United States. Why was it called the "Spanish flu?" There were media blackouts during World War I, but as a neutral party Spain had the freedom to report on the pandemic. Spain detested the moniker and almost a century later the World Health Organization created guidelines for naming diseases that “avoid causing offense to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional or ethnic groups.”