#StopAsianHate Growing After 3,800 Hate Incidents Reported Across US

Since the inception of the coronavirus pandemic, thousands of Asian Americans have faced racist verbal and physical attacks or have been shunned by others, according to a report from the non-profit group Stop AAPI Hate.

The report documents 3,795 racially motivated attacks against Asian Americans from March to February, indicating that the number is just a fraction of the cases that may have actually happened as many people didn’t report their attack to the group.

With the encouragement of former president Donald Trump, the perception that Asians were responsible for the coronavirus, because of its origins in Wuhan, are said to have incited the attacks.

After a shooting spree in the Atlanta area that left eight people dead, many of them women of Asian descent, police across the country are monitoring threats.

Investigators are looking into whether the shooter targeted the Asian American community when he opened fire at three different spas Tuesday afternoon. Six of those killed were Asian American and, according to authorities, many of them were women.

South Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement Wednesday that its diplomats in Atlanta have had it confirmed from police that four of the victims who died were women of Korean descent.

What is Stop AAPI Hate?

The Stop AAPI Hate NPO – with AAPI standing for Asian American Pacific Islander – formed last March, so it did not collect data in previous years to show whether attacks against Asian have increased during the pandemic

About 68 percent of the anti-Asian attacks documented in the study were verbal harassment, 21 percent were shunning and 11 percent were physical assaults. About nine percent of the attacks were civil rights violations such as workplace discrimination or being refused service at a business. Nearly seven percent of the attacks were online harassment.

Most of the incidents occurred at businesses or on public streets. More than two-thirds of the attacks in the study were reported by women. More than 40 percent of the attacks were reported by Chinese Americans, 15 percent by Korean Americans and eight percent by Filipino Americans.

“We ask policymakers at the local, state and national level to partner with us on implementing community-based solutions that will help ensure Asian Americans have equal rights and access to opportunities,” said Manjusha Kulkarni, a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council.

What are examples of Asian American hate crimes?

The report includes descriptions of the incidents provided by victims.

At a subway station in Annandale, an Asian American woman was on an escalator when a man repeatedly punched her in the back and followed her, fake-coughing and shouting “Chinese b***h.”

In an example of shunning, a ride-hailing driver in Las Vegas said to an Asian American customer “Another Asian riding with me today, I hope you don’t have any COVID,” while leaning away from the client. The driver also told the person not to request any more rides from anybody.

In August, Hong Lee was waiting for tacos at a restaurant in the Pico-Union area of Los Angeles when a stranger approached her, handed her his business card and asked her to lunch. She explained that she was married and declined. Then, she said in an interview with The Times, “the man started screaming at me, telling me to go back to Asia, followed by two minutes of calling me every single derogatory word you could imagine”. Lee, a Vietnamese American non-profit worker in her mid-30s, remembered feeling cornered by the man and “asking for help, but no one stepped up”. Finally, an employee asked the man to move to the other side of the room. He collected his food and walked out, Lee said.

Her video of the incident, which she posted on Instagram and Facebook, went viral. She now volunteers as an ambassador for Los Angeles County’s “L.A. vs Hate” campaign, connecting victims to social services and mental health resources. She also reported the incident to Stop AAPI Hate.

Violent attacks against Asian senior citizens in the Bay Area and New York City have intensified the public outcry against anti-Asian hate crimes, though it is unclear whether many of those incidents were racially motivated.

“We need to reckon with both the historical and ongoing impact that racism, hate and violence are having on our community, especially on women, youth and seniors, who are particularly vulnerable,” said Cynthia Choi, a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action. Choi and others appealed to the public to report hate attacks.

Russell Jeung, a Stop AAPI Hate co-founder and professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University, referred to former president Trump’s use of the terms “kung flu” and “China virus.” Hatred against Asian Americans should not “be a legacy of COVID-19 or the last presidential administration” Jeung said.