HOW CAN AAPI COMMUNITIES HEAL IN THE WAKE OF SO MANY RACISM-FUELED TRAGEDIES? By Susan Thao and Marlina Gonzalez
Discrimination and acts of racism come in many forms.
decreased by 6% between 2019 and 2020, hate crimes against the AAPI community increased by nearly 150%. For many in the AAPI community, their experiences with racism within the past year were categorized as bias or hate incidents, which the U.S. Department of Justice defines as “acts of prejudice that are not crimes and do not involve violence, threats or property damage.” “One client who identifies as AAPI was working in her backyard, and a couple of folks harassed her… called her Chinese Virus or Kung Flu,” said Peevxwm Victor Yang of CAPI USA, an immigrant-led resource center. “Now she is even more afraid of doing something in her own backyard,” added Kristina Doan, the Director of Public Policy at CAPI USA. Artificially low numbers The reality is that the frequency of these attacks and bias incidents are likely underreported. Bo Thao-Urabe at the Coalition of Asian American Leaders (CAAL) explains that a long history of distrust in the government and law enforcement, on top of the low conviction rates, are reasons for the low reporting of hate crimes. (Editor’s note: Bo Thao-Urabe serves on TPT’s Community Advisory Committee.)
“What we know is that the hate crimes law is not implemented well. We need to do better at defining what constitutes as a hate crime…how could systems give benefit of the doubt to perpetrators?” she said. Both hate crimes and bias incidents go underreported in the AAPI community for a slew of reasons, including unwanted attention and retraumatizing of an incident, shame and lack of community support, language barriers, fear of retaliation, and even immigration status. “People feel it doesn’t matter. I think we’re just used to it. Many of us were told, ‘Keep your head down. Go with the flow,” said Nick Kor, the senior manager of movement building for CAAL.
In March 2021, a mass shooting in Atlanta killed eight people – six of whom were Asian women. In September 2020, a man of Chinese descent found the words ‘China Virus’ burned into his front lawn. In May 2020, a video posted on social media showed an Asian woman being harassed and violently kicked in the face by two teens. Since the start of the pandemic a year ago, discrimination and prejudice against the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community have increased significantly. Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition that tracks incidents of anti-Asian discrimination, reported that among the nearly 3,800 incidents recorded this past year, roughly 89% were verbal harassment and shunning, while 11% were physical assaults – which can be charged as a hate crime. Bias or hate crime? Discrimination and acts of racism come in many forms. But the most obvious one – and certainly the most punishable by law – is a hate crime. A report by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, reveals that, while the total number of hate crimes reported in America’s largest cities
His colleague, Julia Gay, the communications and marketing
coordinator for CAAL, agreed, adding, “Maybe we have dealt with it for so long that we don’t specifically identify it as anti-Asian anymore.” The toll of microaggressions Sometimes racism can be so subtle that the victim – or perhaps both parties – aren’t fully or instantly aware of the discriminatory acts.
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