STOP HATE CRIMES AGAINST AAPI , ALL LIVES MATTER

 STOP HATE CRIMES AGAINST AAPI

                                                    Photo credit Brooking Institution 

    If you haven't already heard by now, the rise of hate crimes against AAPI in the past year has skyrocketed since 2020 of last year when COVID-19 started. It saddens me that I have to write about this in the year 2021. According to the article " Stop AAPI hate national report," they reported that 3,795 incidents were reported from March 19, 2020, to February 28, 2021. This of course is only a fraction of the number of hate incidents that actually occur because most of the hate crimes go unreported. During the darkest times of last year, President Donald Trump would refer to COVID-19 as the  "china virus," and would make racist slur comments on air with fox news like  "Kung-flu." A paper I came across reading was called "The Effect of President Trump’s Election on Hate Crimes by  Griffin Edwards & Stephen Rushin in their paper it stated, "By using panel regression techniques, we show that counties that voted for President Trump by the widest margins in the presidential election also experienced the largest increases in reported hate crimes."Based on the evidence, there is obviously a correlation between Donald Trump and how the hate crimes against AAPI have skyrocketed.

                     

 

This image is taken from the paper of The Effect of President Trump’s Election on Hate Crimes by  Griffin Edwards & Stephen Rushin

The paper stated in " Figure 3 suggests that, at the county level, strong support for Trump during the presidential election was associated with a larger and more statistically significant uptick in the number of reported hate crimes from the end of 2016 through 2017.

Many may have forgotten the ugly history in the United States that took place in Los Angeles in 1871, 18 Chinese residents-10 percent of the Chinese population in L. A at the time were killed by the white mob (Wallace, 2017). This brings me to my statement of hate crimes against APPI started a long time ago, and still goes on now. The issue was always there but now, we have modern-day technology like a cell phone and social media that helps us voice out and be able to bring awareness of the hate crimes that have been going on. Not to mention it has amplified since the election of former president Donald Trump and all his comments about the APPI community. 

One of many incidents that had happened due to hate crimes this is was the bigger stories that finally caught the attention of the people to finally wake up and do something about it. On March 12, a 21-year-old-white man shot and murdered eight people in three Asian-owned spas in Atlanta according to the New York Times. “He was pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope. Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did,” Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, Capt. (Kornfield, Knowles, 2021). This incident brought a lot of backlash from everyone, saying he just murdered people because it was having a bad day, so does that make it okay? Of course not but it took the mass shooting of 8 people to finally get people to start noticing the problem and to finally bring awareness of what has been going on. "Across our nation, an outpouring of grief and outrage continues at the horrific violence and xenophobia perpetrated against Asian American communities, especially Asian American women and girls," the White House said in a statement. "As President Biden said during his first prime time address, anti-Asian violence and xenophobia are wrong, it's un-American, and it must stop." The White House said Biden will appoint a permanent director to lead the coordination of policies across the federal government — a request made by many community advocates.

 According to these images from Stop AAPI hate, the data from 2019 to 2020 shows which parts of cities in the united states got affected, what types of hate crimes, and what ethnicity got impacted the most. 245 incidents of hate in Los Angeles County were reported to Stop AAPI Hate, the nation-leading aggregator of COVID-19-related hate incidents against Asian Americans, from March 19- October 28, 2020.

 Types of Discrimination and examples of Discrimination all of the data was found from Stop AAPI Hate.

Verbal harassment (68.1%) and shunning (20.5%) (i.e., the deliberate avoidance

of Asian Americans) make up the two largest proportions of the total incidents

reported.

● Physical assault (11.1%) comprises the third largest category of the total

incidents.

● Civil rights violations — e.g., workplace discrimination, refusal of service, and

being barred from transportation — account for 8.5% of the total incidents.

● Online harassment makes up 6.8% of the total incidents. 

Verbal Harassment: 

Two white, middle-aged men, who have been my neighbors for over fifteen years, approached me threateningly on the street, pulled down the corners of their eyes and said, “Go back to Wuhan, b*tch and take the virus with you!” When I called them vile, they then called me a “Thai wh*re” and threatened to beat up my husband. (West Vancouver, Canada)

 Physical Assault:

My boyfriend and I were riding the metro into DC. When on the escalator in the transfer station, a man repeatedly punched my back and pushed past us. At the top, he circled back toward us, followed us, repeatedly shouted "Chinese b**ch" at me, fake coughed at, and physically threatened us. A few days later, we saw a news story about how the owner of Valley Brook Tea in DC was harassed and pepper sprayed by the same man, calling him "Covid-19" repeatedly. (Annandale, VA)

 Coughed/Spat 

On I am a Pacific Islander. I was at the mall with a friend. I was wearing a plumeria clip and was speaking Chamorro when a woman coughed and said, “You and your people are the reason why we have corona.” She then said, “Go sail a boat back to your island.” (Dallas, TX)

Refusal of Service/Barred From Establishment 

I was trying to enroll my daughter in a gymnastics class and had left several messages to call back. I was finally able to speak with the owner of the business and asked why he had not returned my phone calls, and was told that he did not like my name which is obviously Asian and he would not accept our daughter into his gym. I was so shocked at his blatant statement and hung up the phone. (Tustin, CA) 

Vandalism

 There was graffiti in front of a supermarket that said “CHINA OFF MY FACE.” It was written quite large for pedestrians to read as they walked by. (Astoria, NY)

Online Harassment 

I received a random email message from someone I don't know telling me to go back to China, blaming me for Chinese politics, calling Chinese "heartless robots" and telling me America doesn't need me to be part of the workforce. (Boston, MA)

This report covers the 3,795 incidents received by the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center from March 19, 2020, to February 28, 2021. The number of hate incidents reported to our center represents only a fraction of the number of hate incidents that actually occur, but it does show how vulnerable Asian Americans are to discrimination and the types of discrimination they face.

 ( Graphs from STOP AAPI HATE NATIONAL REPORT) 

Enough is enough... How many more people need to die before we can get past this and reunite. For too long, the AAPI community has been screaming into an empty void. We have been asking those outsides of our community to speak up about the escalating violence in the past year spurred on by racist rhetoric to stop blaming us for a virus that we had nothing to do with, to stop fetishizing our women, elderly, to stop portraying us as a negative stereotype in the media and to share out varied and diverse stories...We, like many marginalized groups, have always been made to feel like outsiders in our own country. Even now, we are still fighting to tell our stories. This affected my family and me greatly since we are Asian and now instead of hearing my mom say " be careful, don't go out there is covid" to her saying " be careful don't go out... you might get hurt." It sickens me that the elderly population has been targeted. the weakest, vulnerable, and the kindest people whose favorite job is to feed you multiple meals a day and to cook your favorite meals. My family taught me to keep our heads down, to not stir the pot, when we face abuse, laugh at jokes at our own expense, stay in our lane and do what is expected of us. There are countless other hate crimes against us that don't get reported due to this mindset that we have. This legacy of silence passed down through generations of our family's cultural values, must end now. Target the younger generation, don't prey on the weak and defensively grandparents. We must not forget that we are also American and we do belong here and we need to reunite to have a brighter future together as one whole community.

Protesters gathered for a rally against anti-Asian hate crimes at Hing Hay Park in Seattle on March 13, 2021. (Lindsey Wasson)

Photo credit Jim Wilson/ The New York Times

References 

Edwards, G., & Rushin, S. (2018, January 18). The effect of President Trump's election on hate crimes. Retrieved April 12, 2021, from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3102652

Fausset, R., & Vigdor, N. (2021, March 17). 8 people killed in Atlanta-Area massage PARLOR SHOOTINGS. Retrieved April 12, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/us/atlanta-shootings-massage-parlor.html

Jeung, R., Horse, A. Y., Popvic, T., & Lim, R. (20, March 19). STop AAPI HATE NATIONAL REPORT. Retrieved April 13, 2021, from https://secureservercdn.net/104.238.69.231/a1w.90d.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/210312-Stop-AAPI-Hate-National-Report-.pdf

Los Angeles County Report. (2020, March 20). Retrieved April 13, 2021, from https://secureservercdn.net/104.238.69.231/a1w.90d.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Los-Angeles-3.20-11.30-SAH-report-FINAL.pdf

Meryl Kornfield, H. (2021, March 22). Captain who said spa shootings suspect had 'bad day' no longer a spokesman on case, official says. Retrieved April 12, 2021, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/03/17/jay-baker-bad-day/

Rahman, K. (2021, March 17). Trump repeats "China Virus" slur on Fox news on same night as Atlanta Shootings. Retrieved April 12, 2021, from https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-said-china-virus-just-before-atlanta-shootings-1576756

Wallace, K. (2017, May 19). Forgotten Los angeles history: The Chinese massacre of 1871. Retrieved April 12, 2021, from https://www.lapl.org/collections-resources/blogs/lapl/chinese-massacre-1871

Wise, A. (2021, March 30). Biden announces new steps to TACKLE Anti-Asian violence and discrimination. Retrieved April 12, 2021, from https://www.npr.org/2021/03/30/982736783/biden-announces-new-steps-to-tackle-anti-asian-violence-and-discrimination