# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Across the United States right now, people are feeling isolated and afraid. As schools and businesses close, people are worrying about their health, their families, their jobs and their future. All of these worries make sense, and of course there's nothing wrong with being afraid. But as people share news, fears and concerns, some people are sharing something else, as well: racism and xenophobia.

Obviously, Chinese people are not responsible for a virus simply because the first reported cases were in China. But some politicians and media figures have taken to referring to the "Chinese Coronavirus." They've used stereotypes about the different foods people eat around the world or made jokes that rely on "Chinese-sounding" words or phrases to make light of the crisis and somehow suggest that Chinese people are to blame. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that China should apologize for the virus.

While it might be tempting to think we should just shake this kind of language off and focus on larger concerns, the truth is that racist and xenophobic words have real-world effects. Across the U.S., Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders report being harassed at school, in stores, on the streets and on the subway. Last month in London, a Singaporean man was assaulted, kicked and punched by a man who said, "I don't want your coronavirus in my country."

We know that racist "jokes" can quickly become racist rants, and those rants can turn to violence. So it's up to all of us to make it clear that we're not OK with racist responses to this crisis.

To do that, Teaching Tolerance recommends a four-step process for speaking up against bias:
Interrupt
Question
Educate
Echo
Here's what speaking up against racism during the coronavirus might look like now.

Interrupt

Interrupting means taking a time out. It shows the person you're talking, texting or chatting with that what they've said is important enough to pause your conversation to address-that you need to talk about the racism before you talk about anything else. Here are a few phrases to try:

"Hang on. I want to go back to what you called the virus."
"Just a second-let's get into your point that the virus is somebody's fault."
"Before we talk about that, I want to talk about the language you just used."

Question

We're all familiar with "questions" that are really warnings: What did you just say to me? or Are you really going to do that? But in this context, the goal of questioning really is to better understand why the person said what they did. You might ask:

"Why did you call it the 'Chinese Coronavirus'?"
"Why do you think that?"
"Where did you get that information?"

One note: Asking someone to explain why a racist joke is funny is a great way to stop them from making racist jokes to you again. But if you want to have a real discussion about what they've said, it might work better to ask something like, "What made you say that?"

Educate

The key to educating is to continue the conversation. The goal here isn't to just provide facts about the topic generally to the person you're talking to with, but to explain why what they've said needs rethinking.

That means that, to educate folks around racism associated with the coronavirus, we need to understand not only the virus but also the racism.

For example, you might explain that it's actually not common anymore to name a disease after its place of origin, that there's a long, bad history of associating diseases with specific groups of people and that the name COVID-19 was chosen very carefully to avoid repeating those mistakes.

If someone doesn't understand why a comment they made was racist, you can educate them about the long history of stereotyping immigrants-and Asian people, specifically-as people who bring disease. You can explain how this stereotype is both wrong and harmful.

And if someone tries to play down racist phrases as "just a joke," you can educate them about the discrimination and racism many AAPI folks are facing right now, so they better understand the impact of their words.

Echo

It takes an effort to speak up against racist ideas and language. This is particularly true of people who are targeted by that language. That's why we need to have each other's backs. When someone else speaks up, echo them. Thank them, and emphasize or amplify their message any way you can. This not only encourages more speaking up-it also ensures that no one thinks your silence in response to biased ideas or language means you're OK with it.

Of course, echoing is harder while we're social distancing, but there are many ways to do it. Online, we can re-share antiracist messages. And in chats or conversations, we can respond to offer support and agreement.

In the coming weeks, we're all going to have to make an effort to take care of one another. We'll probably need to make some more sacrifices to ensure that our communities stay as safe and healthy as possible. Speaking up against bigotry, particularly if you're not the target, costs very little.

If we all commit to interrupting, questioning, educating and echoing to fight racist rhetoric, we can start making our communities safer and healthier today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Across the United States right now, people are feeling isolated and afraid. As schools and businesses close, people are worrying about their health, their families, their jobs and their future. All of these worries make sense, and of course there's nothing wrong with being afraid.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Asian Americans Advancing Justice is a national affiliation of five leading organizations advocating for the civil and human rights of Asian Americans and other underserved communities to promote a fair and equitable society for all. The affiliation's members are: Advancing Justi

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"With all of the turmoil and racism occurring everywhere since the onset of COVID-19, having stories about the long-overlooked histories of Asian Americans is more timely and needed than ever. As the Engagement and Education Partner for the film, we are equally proud to also serve as the lead in developing the curriculum of 36 lesson plans. We hope our curriculum will continue the dialogue inspired by the film and further stimulate the current perspectives and future actions of students all over the nation."

-Stewart and Patricia Kwoh

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Asian Americans K-12 Education Curriculum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"With all of the turmoil and racism occurring everywhere since the onset of COVID-19, having stories about the long-overlooked histories of Asian Americans is more timely and needed than ever. As the Engagement and Education Partner for the film, we are equally proud to also serve as the lead in developing the curriculum of 36 lesson plans.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Profile.
Brief profiles of people and events from Asian American and Pacific Islander people's history.

Themes: Asian American, Immigration, Imperialism, Labor, Laws & Citizen Rights, Organizing, Pacific Islander

Here are more than 20 Asian Americans and events of note in people's history for the curriculum and as a starting point for students to do further research. There is a list of recommended books for pre-K to 12 about Asian Americans at Social Justice Books.

To suggest a name or event to be added to this list, email zep@zinnedproject.org.

Wong Kim Ark

On March 28, 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, holding that children born in the United States, even to parents not eligible to become citizens, were nonetheless citizens themselves under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants who were barred from ever becoming U.S. citizens under the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, Wong Kim Ark was denied re-entry to the United States after a trip to China, on the grounds that the son of a Chinese national could never be a U.S. citizen. Wong sued the federal government, resulting in the Supreme Court's seminal decision that the government could not deny citizenship to anyone born in the United States. [Adapted from Asian Americans Advancing Justice and PBS's " Becoming American: The Chinese Experience."]

Learn more about this case at the Asian American Heroes website (PDF) and read the 1882 Exclusion Act at OurDocuments.gov.
Back to Top

Grace Lee Boggs

A prominent activist her entire adult life, Grace Lee Boggs (June 27, 1915 - October 5, 2015) was born in Rhode Island, the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She studied at Barnard College and Bryn Mawr, receiving her Ph.D. in 1940. Her studies in philosophy and the writings of Marx, Hegel, and Margaret Mead led not to a life in academia, but rather to a lifetime of social activism.

Lee's activism began in Chicago, where she joined the movement for tenants' rights, and then the Workers Party, a splinter group of the Socialist Workers Party. In these associations, as well as in her involvement with the 1941 March on Washington, Lee focused on marginalized groups such as women and people of color. In 1953, Lee married Black auto worker and activist James (Jimmy) Boggs and moved to Detroit, where the two continued their activism. Jimmy died in 1993.

Boggs has rejected the stereotypical radical idea that capitalist society is just something to be done away with, believing more that "you cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it."

She believed that it is by working together in small groups that positive social change can happen, not in large revolutions where one group of power simply changes position with another. With this philosophy, she and her husband founded Detroit Summer in 1992. In a YES! Magazine interview, Boggs explains, "We wanted to engage young people in community-building activities: planting community gardens, recycling waste, organizing neighborhood arts and health festivals, rehabbing houses, painting public murals. Encouraging them to exercise their Soul Power would get their cognitive juices flowing. Learning would come from practice, which has always been the best way to learn."

Boggs continued to write books and be an activist. She died in 2015 at the age of 100. [From Americans Who Tell the Truth.]

Learn more in the documentary " American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs" and from her books, Living for Change: An Autobiography and The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century.
Back to Top

May Chen

In 1982, May Chen led the New York Chinatown strike of 1982, one of the largest Asian American worker strikes with about 20,000 garment factory workers marching the streets of Lower Manhattan demanding work contracts.

Chen, then affiliated with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, was one of the strike organizers.

"The Chinatown community then had more and more small garment factories," she recalled. "And the Chinese employers thought they could play on ethnic loyalties to get the workers to turn away from the union. They were very, very badly mistaken."

Most of the protests included demands for higher wages, improved working conditions, and for management to observe the Confucian principles of fairness and respect. By many accounts, the workers won. The strike caused the employers to hold back on wage cuts and withdraw their demand that workers give up their holidays and some benefits. It paved the way for better working conditions such as hiring bilingual staff to interpret for workers and management, initiation of English-language classes, and van services for workers.

[Description by Cristina DC Pastor, from the Feet in Two Worlds website.]

Read more about Asian immigrants in the workforce at the Feet in Two Worlds website.
Back to Top

Ibrahim Chowdry

"I talk for those of our men who, in factory and field, in all sections of American industry, work side by side with their fellow American workers to strengthen the industrial framework of this country."

-Ibrahim Chowdry, in a letter given for testimony during the U.S. Congressional Committee on Immigration and Naturalization hearings in 1945

Ibrahim Chowdry was a community organizer in New York, who worked across racial and religious lines to build coalitions between Bangladeshi immigrants and Puerto Rican and Black communities. Chowdry escaped a British crack down over his political activities in East Bengal and settled in New York City in the 1920s, where he and his fellow East Bengalis initiated numerous community organizations which included pooling their money to help open restaurants and small businesses, starting organizations to empower their communities, and offering social support for new immigrants who moved in.

In the book Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America, Chowdry's son and daughter, Noor and Laila, recall his impact as a community leader by helping "ex-seamen with immigration problems," "went from one New York-area hospital to the next, meeting with staff and asking them to call him whenever anyone was admitted with the surnames Meah, Ullah, Uddin, or Ali," and "Bengali countrymen would call him on the phone and he would run off. If someone was sick or if someone died, he would make their funeral arrangements." [From " Lost and Found: The Legacy of the Bangladeshi Sons of New York " by Nadia Hussain at Hyphen.com.]

Read more about the history of South Asian Americans in Vivek Bald's book, Bengali Harlem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America.
Back to Top

Silme Domingo & Gene Viernes

In 1981 the labor leaders Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes were gunned down in a drive-by shooting. Domingo and Viernes were Filipino American activists and fishing cannery Local 37 union members who were involved in union reform and fighting for workers' rights.

In an effort to address the discrimination and segregation towards Filipinos that had been going on for decades in the Alaskan seafood industry, organizers needed proof. Domingo and a partner posed as students from the University of Washington's School of Fisheries and requested to document the canneries for a project. Instead, they gathered evidence of discrimination.

On Nov. 28, 1973, the Alaska Cannery Workers' Association (ACWA, which Domingo and Viernes helped found) filed a class action lawsuit against several Alaskan fish companies, including one of the largest, the New England Fish Co. (NEFCO). It was the first time such an enormous seasonal migratory labor force was represented in a significant way with more than 700 plaintiffs in all. ACWA won a multi-million dollar settlement, and as a result NEFCO filed for bankruptcy.

Initially, the murders appeared to be retributions for reform efforts within Local 37 that threatened entrenched interests. But after a wide-ranging legal investigation launched by family, friends, and community groups, in 1989 a federal jury found that former Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos conspired to silence political opponents in the U.S. that resulted in the murders of Domingo and Viernes. The conspiracy involved the Marcos government, the president of Local 37, and a network of Marcos' intelligence agents that operated within the United States since 1973, monitoring and harassing Marcos' opponents in the U.S. [From " The 'Cannery Murders' of 1981 still haunt local labor activists" and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.]

Learn more in the book Remembering Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes: The Legacy of Filipino American Labor Activism by Ron Chew and the documentary One Generation's Time: The Legacy of Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes.

Back to Top

Frank S. Emi and Draft Resisters

Frank Emi, a grocer from Los Angeles and Japanese-American, was an activist during World War II. He was a leading figure of the Fair Play Committee, an ad hoc group that protested the drafting of Japanese Americans during World War II, and served an 18 months sentence for refusing the draft.

From the Densho Encyclopedia:

On March 25, 1944, U.S. Marshals arrested twelve young men at Heart Mountain who were no-shows for their draft physicals but that did not put an end to resistance. As dozens more refused to report, Emi and two other FPC leaders attempted to walk out of camp without a pass to prove that they were indeed prisoners. In all, sixty-three Heart Mountain resisters were found guilty on one count each of draft evasion and sentenced to federal prison...

Convicted of conspiracy to violate the Selective Service Act, Emi served 18 months in a federal penitentiary.

Emi later explained: "I could not believe that the government could actually put us in camp, strip us of everything . . . and then order us into the military as if nothing had happened."

He added, "We could either tuck our tails between our legs like dogs or stand up like free men and fight for justice. Some of us chose the latter. We were going to resist."

Learn more about Frank Emi's interrogation while incarcerated in Wyoming.

Executive Order 9066

On Feb. 19, 1942, Executive Order 9066 was issued by President Franklin Roosevelt. It authorized the incarceration (internment) of U.S. citizens of Japanese descent. About 122,000 people were sent to concentration camps. Many of their homes, businesses, and farms were confiscated.

We refer to the internment as incarceration. This choice of language is recommended by the Densho Encyclopedia, because "One of the strategies employed by the federal government to sell the forced removal and confinement of Japanese American from the West Coast during World War II was the use of euphemistic terms that masked the true nature of what was being done." Read their full statement, Do words matter?

Learn more about the incarceration of Japanese-Americans in our This Day in History entry for Feb. 19.

Gidra

During its 1969 to 1974 run, Gidra chronicled the dramatic changes in the Asian American community, and was itself a catalyst for many of these changes.

The roots of Gidra stem from a group of students at UCLA who approached the administration about starting an Asian American community newspaper in 1969. Rebuffed, the five each kicked in $100 to produce their own paper. Tracy Okida came up with the name, which came from a giant three-headed dragon from Japanese monster movies of the 1960s. Initially based at the newly formed Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, Gidra helped define the terms of the Asian American Movement for many and covered the fight for ethnic studies on college campuses, along with rising activism in Asian American communities. Though pan Asian American in its orientation, it was largely a Sansei enterprise with three-quarters or more of the staff being Japanese American. As the publication evolved and moved off campus to an office in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles, its scope broadened to encompass an Asian American perspective on the international anti-imperialist movement, linking the war in Vietnam to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to other movements in Asia including Okinawa, the Philippines, and Korea. [From the Densho website.]

Continue reading about the history of Gidra newspaper by Brian Niiya, Densho Content Director.

View the online archives at the Densho Digital Repository.
Back to Top

The International Hotel Struggle

On August 4, 1977, after battling eviction for over nine years, the community of mostly Filipino and Chinese low-income senior tenants of the International Hotel (I-Hotel) was brought to a violent end in the early morning hours. At around 4 a.m., over 300 riot-equipped police and sheriff's deputies, cordoned off the surrounding streets, encircled the hotel, and began to forcefully evict the residents. De Guzman, then the president of the International Hotel Tenants Association, described what happened: "Once the police and sheriffs got into the building, they broke into the tenants' rooms. Then they started breaking things up, stealing, taking what the manongs [Filipino males] had, broke the toilets that way there were no toilet facilities, so the tenants could never return."

Outside, more than 2,000 community activists and protesters created a human barricade trying to prevent the eviction. Shouting "We won't move!" I-Hotel defenders-that included not only Filipinos but other Asian Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, student activists, religious groups and organizations, gays and lesbians, leftists, and community activists - lined up nine rows deep as the police started their frontal assault. The police were brutalizing people outside in front of the hotel, said De Guzman. They would run their horses up front and hit people with their clubs. They just tore people up, hitting them on the head, and jabbing them with nightsticks.

The building was eventually sold with plans to build a parking garage. However, the lot remained empty, and in 2005 a new International Hotel - now on the register of historic buildings - was built containing 105 low-income apartments for senior housing, thanks to the ongoing activism and advocating for fair housing. [Adapted from James Sobredo's " The Battle for the International Hotel" and " I-Hotel Eviction Summary " posted on FoundSF.org.]

Read more at ShelterForce and Manilatown Heritage Foundation's " International Hotel's Final Victory [PDF]".

Browse lessons on housing and displacement.
Back to Top

Larry Itliong

Born in San Nicolas, Pangasinan in 1913, Larry Itliong immigrated to the United States in 1929 and worked as a laborer and farmhand in several states including Washington, Alaska, Montana, South Dakota, and California. During his time in Alaska, he earned the nickname "Seven Fingers" after losing three of his fingers in an accident at the cannery where he worked. Seeing the plight of his fellow Filipinos and immigrants who were mistreated and paid poorly, Itliong joined strikes and helped set up labor unions including one in Alaska.

On September 8, 1965, Larry Itliong, a member of the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, called a strike against the Delano, California, grape growers in order to demand salaries equivalent to the federal minimum wage and the right to form their own union. Led by Itliong, more than one thousand Filipino workers walked out of their grape farms to picket, however, farmers replaced them with Mexican workers. As fellow striker Andy Imutan recalls, "There was no unity between the Mexicans and the Filipinos. The growers were very successful in dividing us and creating conflict between the two races. Larry Itliong and I decided to take action by seeing Cesar Chavez, the leader of the National Farm Workers Association. We met to come up with a plan that would be beneficial for everyone, including the Mexican workers."

A week after the strike, they were joined by the Mexican-dominated National Farm Workers led by Cesar Chavez. The two groups merged together to create the United Farm Workers Union, with Cesar Chavez as director and Larry Itliong as assistant director. This strike would be known as the Delano Grape Strike of 1965 and would last five years. [From FilipiKnow biography and the United Farm Workers.]

Watch a remembrance clip from Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

Since 2015, October 25 in California is known as Larry Itliong Day.

Learn more about Larry Itliong in the documentary " The Delano Manongs" and in the NPR news report, " Grapes of Wrath: The Forgotten Filipinos Who Led a Farmworker Revolution."
Back to Top

Fred Korematsu

Fred Korematsu (Jan. 30, 1919-Mar. 30, 2005), a U.S. citizen and the son of Japanese immigrants, had refused to evacuate when President Roosevelt ordered the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII. Korematsu, age 23, was arrested, convicted, and sent to the Topaz Internment Camp in Utah. Persuaded by Ernest Besig, then executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California, Korematsu filed a case on June 12, 1942. The premise of the lawsuit was that Korematsu's constitutional rights had been violated and he had suffered racial discrimination. However, the court ruled against Korematsu and he was sentenced to five years probation. Determined to pursue his cause, Korematsu filed an appeal with Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and, later, to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1944, in Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled against him, and confirmed that the denial of civil liberties based on race and national origin was legal.

In 1983, Prof. Peter Irons, a legal historian, together with researcher Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, discovered key documents that government intelligence agencies had hidden from the Supreme Court in 1944. The documents consistently showed that Japanese Americans had committed no acts of treason to justify mass incarceration. With this new evidence, a pro-bono legal team that included the Asian Law Caucus re-opened Korematsu's 40-year-old case on the basis of government misconduct. On November 10, 1983, Korematsu's conviction was overturned in a federal court in San Francisco. It was a pivotal moment in civil rights history. [From the Fred T. Korematsu Institute website and Of Civil Wrongs and Rights website.]

On Jan. 30, 2011, the state of California celebrated Fred Korematsu Day, the first day named after an Asian American in the U.S., now recognized by six states.

Learn more about the case and additional resources on the Japanese internment.
Back to Top

Yuri Kochiyama

Yuri Kochiyama (May 19, 1921 - June 1, 2014) was a tireless political activist who dedicated her life to contributing to social change through her participation in social justice and human rights movements.

She was born and raised in San Pedro, California. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, her father, just out of surgery, was arrested and detained in a hospital. "He was the only Japanese in that hospital," Kochiyama recalls, "so they hung a sheet around him that said, 'Prisoner of War.'" He died shortly thereafter. In 1943, under President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, Kochiyama and her family were sent to a concentration camp in Jerome, Arkansas, for two years. This experience and her father's death made Kochiyama highly aware of governmental abuses and would forever bond her to those engaged in political struggles. After being released, she moved to New York and married Bill Kochiyama, veteran of the all-Japanese American 442nd combat unit of the U.S. Army.

Kochiyama's activism started in Harlem in the early 1960s, where she participated in the Asian American, Black, and Third World movements for civil and human rights, ethnic studies, and against the war in Vietnam. She was a fixture in support movements involving organizations such as the Young Lords and the Harlem Community for Self Defense. As founder of Asian Americans for Action, she also sought to build a more political Asian American movement that would link itself to the struggle for Black liberation. "Racism has placed all ethnic peoples in similar positions of oppression poverty and marginalization." In 1963, she met Malcolm X. Their friendship and political alliance changed her life and outlook. She joined his group, the Organization for Afro-American Unity, to work for racial justice and human rights. Yuri was present on the day he was tragically shot and killed in 1965. In the Life magazine article "Death of Malcolm X," she can be seen crouched in the background, cradling Malcolm X's head.

In the 1980s, Kochiyama worked in the redress and reparations movement for Japanese-Americans along with her husband Bill. Support for political prisoners-African American, Puerto Rican, Native American, Asian American, and progressive whites-has been a consistent thread in her work. [From Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Women of Hope: Asian Americans.]

Learn more about Kochiyama in:

Watch this remembrance clip from Asian Americans Advancing Justice.
Back to Top

Kiyoshi Kuromiya

Born in the Heart Mountain, Wyoming, internment camp in 1943, Kiyoshi Kuromiya (May 9, 1943 - May 10, 2000) was a lifelong activist participating in several movements including civil rights, protesting the Vietnam War, LGBT rights, and AIDS/HIV advocacy.

In 1968, as an architecture student at the Univ. of Pennsylvania, he and some friends held a demonstration against the use of napalm in Vietnam by announcing that a dog would be burned alive with napalm in front of the university library. Thousands turned up to protest, only to be handed a leaflet reading: "Congratulations on your anti-napalm protest. You saved the life of a dog. Now, how about saving the lives of tens of thousands of people in Vietnam."

Kuromiya spent the spring and summer of 1965 in the South fighting for civil rights, and became friends with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When King was assassinated, Kuromiya helped take care of the King children.

Kuromiya participated with the Gay Pioneers in the first organized gay and lesbian civil rights demonstrations, " the Annual Reminders," held at Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell each Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969. He was one of the founders of Gay Liberation Front-Philadelphia and served as an openly gay delegate to the Black Panther Convention that endorsed the gay liberation struggle. Diagnosed with AIDS in 1989, Kuromiya became a self-taught expert on the disease, operating under the mantra "information is power." He founded the Critical Path Project, which provided resources to people living with HIV and AIDS, including a newsletter, a library and a 24-hour phone line. [Adapted from LGBT History Month, NBC News, and ACT UP-New York.]

Learn more about Kuromiya in this remembrance video by friend Alfredo Sosa.
Back to Top

Corky Lee

For nearly fifty years, Corky Lee documented the lives of Asian Pacific Americans at work, at leisure, and as activists. Born in Queens, New York, to Chinese immigrants, Lee grew up seeing very few people who looked like him or shared his family's culture and he grew into awareness of how this harmed Asian Americans living in the United States. His photography became a corrective to narratives that erased Asian Americans and a journalistic record of political activism.

Lee died in early 2021 from complications due to COVID-19. In an obituary, Vulture writers Ming Lin and Alexandra Tatarsky describe his activism and rise to prominence in the 1970s:

One of the earliest pictures he sold was an image of a bloodied Chinese American man named Peter Yew, who was beaten by police after trying to intervene in their assault on a Chinese teenager. It ended up on the front page of the New York Post in 1975, and 2,500 Chinatown residents marched on City Hall in protest of police brutality. Lee would show up at protests against the Vietnam War or the construction of a jail, or join picket lines with Chinatown workers protesting their exploitative employers. Rallying fellow artists and activists he met, he helped found influential community groups and collectives, including Basement Workshop.

Learn more about Corky Lee's photography in an exhibition review from 2013 and in the New York Times' series "Those We've Lost."

Martha and Berda Lum

At the start of the school semester in September 1924, Chinese-American sisters Martha and Berda Lum were barred from attending their local middle school in Rosedale, Mississippi, and their exclusion set off a lawsuit that challenged (unsuccessfully) the "separate but equal" doctrine. Their parents, Katherine Lum and Jeu Gong Lum, were determined that their children would receive the best education available and appealed this restriction all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Three years later, on Nov. 21, 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that state's rights and Plessy v. Ferguson applied to Asian American students, or as the court said, students of the "yellow race."

See this story's This Day in History post for related resources and more.

Patsy Mink

Congresswoman Patsy Mink (December 6, 1927 - September 28, 2002) was the first Asian American woman elected to Congress, and ran 18 political campaigns since 1956. Through it all, Mink has consistently taken moral stands on behalf of Asian Americans, women, and children-even at potential risk to her political career.

She attended the University of Nebraska and discovered that the "International House" dormitory where she was placed was designated solely for students of color because they were not allowed to live in the regular dorms. She protested and rallied the support of students, parents, and university trustees. Within months, the policy of segregated housing was abolished.

Mink originally planned to attend medical school, but her 25 applications were rejected because medical schools were all male. Instead, she went to the University of Chicago law school, married John Francis Mink, and had a daughter, Wendy. The family returned to Hawaii after Mink's graduation, when in 1953, she became the first Japanese American woman admitted to the practice law in Hawaii. However, she could not find work as women were expected to be full-time mothers. Determined to practice law, Mink set up her own law office.

In 1956, she ran for the House of Representatives, won, and established herself as an independent voice. On her very first day, she offered a resolution protesting British nuclear testing in the South Pacific; the resolution passed.

Mink was selected to speak at the 1960 Democratic National Convention. In her speech to the convention, she stated, "If to believe in freedom and equality is to be a radical, then I am a radical."

During her 12-year congressional tenure, she consistently voted for a progressive agenda. She introduced the first comprehensive Early Childhood Education Act (later vetoed by President Richard Nixon), authored the Women's Educational Equity Act, criticized the Vietnam War, and spoke out against the secret bombing of Southeast Asia. In 1972, Mink played a key role in the enactment of Title IX of the Higher Education Act Amendments, which prohibited gender discrimination by federally-funded institutions. This legislation has been an important factor in ensuring equity for women in all educational programs, particularly school sports.

Mink was concerned about a woman's movement that focuses too much on middle-class white women. "The 'glass ceiling' is an upper-class glass ceiling for those aspiring to be bank presidents and executives, not those who can never rise above the minimum wage. The majority of people working at minimum-wage jobs in the United States are women. That's the glass ceiling I am committed to doing something about." [From Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Women of Hope: Asian Americans.]

Learn more about Mink in the documentary Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority. Trailer:
Back to Top

Peter Yew/Police Brutality Protests, 1975

In April 1975, Peter Yew, a young Chinese-American living in New York City's Chinatown, asked police to stop beating a 15-year-old whom they had stopped for a traffic violation. For his concern, Yew was savagely beaten right on the spot, taken back to the police station, stripped, beaten again and arrested on charges of resisting arrest and assault on a police officer.

His beating was the last straw as 15,000 Chinatown community members took to the streets to fight back against police attacks and brutality against their community. Virtually every shop and factory in Chinatown was closed on May 19th for the demonstration and signs reading "Closed to Protest Police Brutality" were put in windows and on doors. The community united around demands for the dismissal of all charges against Yew, an end to discrimination of the Chinese community, and an end to discrimination in employment, housing, education, health, and all other social services for all minorities and working people.

A week before the May 19th demo, several thousand people had marched on City Hall under an action sponsored by the Asian Americans for Equal Employment (AAFEE), raising demands similar to those raised at the May 19th action. The local business community and establishment refused to publicize or endorse the AAFEE action. A week later, the Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA) called the May 19th action, bringing out old and young in one of the most united and militant actions ever taken by Chinatown residents. Although the CCBA tried to keep demands focused just on Peter Yew, the people of Chinatown clearly saw the broader issues, the fact that police repression was coming down in communities all across the U.S. This was shown by the slogans raised such as "Fight Police Brutality, Fight all Oppression!"

When the cops attacked the march, the people responded immediately and fought back. As the police tried to drag off one of the demonstrators, others in the march jumped the cops and fought them tooth and nail. When two of the people were arrested and taken to the police station, the crowd surrounded the station and secured the release of their friends. [From Vietnam Veterans Against the War.]
Back to Top

Ai-Jen Poo

When Poo started organizing domestic workers in 2000, many thought she was taking on an impossible task. Domestic workers were too dispersed, spread out over too many homes. Even Poo had described the world of domestic work as the "Wild West." Poo's first big breakthrough with the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) happened on July 1, 2010, when the New York state legislature passed the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. The bill legitimated domestic workers and gave them the same lawful rights as any other employee, such as vacation time and overtime pay. Though the bill was considered a major victory, the NDWA did not stop there, expanding operations to include 17 cities and 11 states.

Read more about the NDWA here: www.domesticworkers.org.

[Description from Americans Who Tell the Truth website.]
Back to Top

Jung Sai Garment Workers Strike, 1974

On July 15, 1974, workers at the Jung Sai factory (manufacturers of popular teen clothing brand Esprit de Corps) in San Francisco went on strike after Frankie Ma, a union activist, was fired for "unsatisfactory work." Workers at Jung Sai endured appalling conditions: they earned $2 per hour and their work days often stretched to ten hours with few breaks, and no overtime pay. They had just voted in the union and saw this firing as an act of retaliation. The workers-most of them middle-aged Chinese immigrant women-protested the firing and unfair labor practices, and demanded better working conditions and the right to organize. This united body of immigrant workers inspired popular support from community, student, and working-class populations throughout the San Francisco Bay area.

Their interaction with hundreds of Asian-American activists and supporters became an important turning point for Asian-American activism in the San Francisco Bay Area. The strike lasted six months and encouraged further immigrant activism, energizing a grassroots movement among Chinese immigrant workers facing similar unfair labor practices. After the plant closed down, claiming bankruptcy, the workers brought a suit before the National Relations Labor Board and won nearly 10 years later.

[Adapted from The Asian American Movement, FoundSF.org, Rethinking the Asian American Movement, and " Union Women's Alliance to Gain Equality (1971-1982)."
Back to Top

Rinku Sen

"I learned a lot about how human beings change, about the sense of worth that has to be activated in order for people to demand more out of society, and the sense of connection that has to be activated for people to stand up together and for each other."

Rinku Sen is the president and executive director of Race Forward: The Center for Racial Justice Innovation, and the publisher of the award-winning news site Colorlines. As a racial justice activist and community organizer, Sen's leadership at Race Forward has generated some of the most impactful racial justice successes, including the Drop the I-Word campaign aimed at media outlets to stop referring to immigrants as "illegal." This resulted in the Associated Press, USA Today, L.A. Times, and many more dropping the i-word, affecting millions of readers every day.

Born in India, her family moved to upstate New York when she was five. Some of Sen's earliest recollections of life in India were tinged by race, Sen told NBC News. "One of my earliest memories was of being in the bath scrubbing myself when I was four-ish, trying to get as light as my cousin, whose mother is Dutch," she said.

Sen started her organizing career as a student activist at Brown University, fighting race, gender, and class discrimination on campuses. Majoring in Women's Studies and receiving a Master's degree in Journalism, Sen has written extensively about the race and gender dimensions of community organizing and is the author of Stir It Up: Lessons in Community Organizing and The Accidental American: Immigration and Citizenship in the Age of Globalization. [Adapted from Race Forward, NBC News, and Stir It Up.]

Learn more about Sen and the work of Race Forward at raceforward.org.
Back to Top

Ronald Takaki

Ronald Toshiyuki Takaki (April 12, 1939 - May 26, 2009) was the author and editor of more than 20 books, including Strangers From a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (1989) and A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (1993).

Takaki established UC Berkeley's PhD program in ethnic studies, the first of its kind in the nation. "Ron Takaki elevated and popularized the study of America's multiracial past and present like no other scholar, and in doing so had an indelible impact on a generation of students and researchers across the nation and world," according to Don T. Nakanishi, director of UCLA's Asian American Studies Center.

Born in Honolulu on April 12, 1939, he was the grandson of a Japanese immigrant who went to Hawaii in 1886 to work in the sugar cane fields. After his father died, Takaki, who was seven, was raised by his mother and Chinese stepfather. He attended the College of Wooster in Ohio, where he was one of two Asian Americans on campus. This experience gave him a new awareness of himself as an ethnic American. Takaki recalled in a 2000 Lincoln Journal Star interview that one of his professors "asked me how long I'd been in this country, where did I learn to speak English. I told him I was from Hawaii and he says, 'But how long have you been in this country?' I guess I didn't look American."

Takaki went on to earn a master's degree in 1962, and a Ph.D. in history in 1967 from UC Berkeley, where he became drawn to campus activism, including the Free Speech Movement. "I was born intellectually and politically in Berkeley in the '60s," he told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter in 2003.

In 1966, he was hired to teach UCLA's first Black history course in the wake of the explosive Watts riots. When a student in the Black history class asked him which revolutionary tools he could teach them, Takaki replied: "We're going to study the history of the U.S. as it relates to African Americans. We're going to strengthen our critical thinking skills and our writing skills. These can be revolutionary tools if we make them so."

In 1971, Takaki returned to UC Berkeley as the Department of Ethnic Studies' first full-time teacher. He became wildly popular, filling auditoriums with hundreds of students hungry for perspectives on the struggles of America's minority groups. Takaki served as chair of ethnic studies from 1975-77, and in the mid-1980s established at UC Berkeley the nation's first doctorate program in ethnic studies. He then turned his attention to ensuring that each student satisfy an American Cultures requirement to graduate. He was a vigorous proponent of multicultural education and a vocal opponent of Proposition 209, the 1996 California ballot initiative that rolled back affirmative action policies in state-funded institutions. [From Los Angeles Times and UC Berkeley News.]

Learn more about Ronald Takaki.
Back to Top

Philip Vera Cruz

'The movement should be the most important thing. ... The movement must go beyond its leaders."

Philip Vera Cruz (December 25, 1904 - June 12, 1994), a Filipino immigrant, worked in the midwest then moved to California in 1943 becoming a farm worker. He joined the Agricultural Worker Organizing Committee (AWOC) and soon became a leader in farm worker's rights. In 1965, he was an active force in the AWOC decision to strike against grape growers in Delano, California. The strike and boycott soon won the support of Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers of America, and led to the eventual merging of the two groups to form the United Farm Workers. Vera Cruz was elected a vice president of the union, a position he held until he left the union in protest in 1977. Cruz also formed the Farm Workers Credit Union and created Agbayani Village, a retirement community for older farm workers.

Throughout his career Vera Cruz worked for migrant and farm worker rights, and was active in the Asian American, especially Filipino, rights movement and community.

Vera Cruz once wrote, "Leadership, I feel, is only incidental to the movement. The movement should be the most important thing. If the leader becomes the most important part of the movement, then you don't have a movement after the leader is gone. The movement must go beyond its leaders. It must be something that is continuous, with goals and ideals that the leadership can build on." [Adapted from the Walter P. Ruether Library biography.]

Watch this remembrance clip from Asian Americans Advancing Justice:

AAPI Civil Rights Heroes - Philip Vera Cruz from Advancing Justice - ALC on Vimeo.
Back to Top

Yick Wo v. Hopkins

On May 10, 1886, Lee Yick won a Supreme Court case that ensured that all people -citizens and non-citizens - had equal protection under the law.

Lee Yick and Wo Lee, Chinese immigrants, ran laundries in San Francisco. In 1880, San Francisco passed a law requiring a permit for laundries housed in wooden buildings as they were more vulnerable to fires. Of the 320 laundries in San Francisco, 310 were in wooden buildings, and most of them - 240 - were owned by Chinese persons. Not one Chinese laundry applicant was issued a permit. When Sheriff Hopkins tried to arrest Yick and Lee for not having a permit, they refused to pay the $10 fine, and were jailed. Each sued, arguing that the fine and discriminatory enforcement of the ordinance violated their rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Their cases, compiled under the name Yick Wo v. Hopkins, was argued at the Supreme Court in 1886 (Yick Wo was the name of the laundry that Lee Yicked worked at).

In an unanimous opinion authored by Justice T. Stanley Matthews, the court concluded that, despite the impartial wording of the law, its biased enforcement violated the Equal Protection Clause. According to the court, even if the law is impartial on its face, "if it is applied and administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand." The kind of biased enforcement experienced by the plaintiffs, the court concluded, amounted to "a practical denial by the state of that equal protection of the law" and therefore violated the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment. [Adapted from PBS's " The Strange Case of the Chinese Laundry," Oyez.org, and the Human Rights and Constitutional Rights website.]
Back to Top

Merle Woo

In 1982, Merle Woo challenged UC Berkeley after being fired from her job as a lecturer in Asian American Studies/Ethnic Studies (AAS). Woo, a member of the Freedom Socialist Party, Radical Women, an open lesbian, and a renowned poet, was fired after criticizing the increasing conservatism of tenure-track faculty in UC's Asian American Studies Department. Her 1982 federal and state lawsuits charged the university with discrimination based on race, sex, political ideology, and sexual orientation. As Woo explained in a news release, "They fired me because I was visible. I took my protected free speech rights seriously, spoke out against the imminent death of Ethnic Studies, spoke out about who I am, totally and fully and with dignity." Woo's supporters included Angela Davis, Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Barbara Smith, Congressman Ron Dellums, Gloria Steinem, and Mitsuye Yamada.

Woo won the free speech/multi-discrimination case against UC Berkeley and was reinstated in 1984, only to be fired again in 1986. In 1989, she won a union arbitration against UC Berkeley. [Adapted from Proud Heritage: People, Issues, and Documents of the LGBT Experience, Freedom Socialist: Voice of Revolutionary Feminism, and The Merle Woo Project Prize.]
Back to Top

Find more resources for the classroom and this day in history posts below.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Asian Americans in the People's History of the United States - Zinn Education Project

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Profile. Brief profiles of people and events from Asian American and Pacific Islander people's history. Themes: Asian American, Immigration, Imperialism, Labor, Laws & Citizen Rights, Organizing, Pacific Islander Here are more than 20 Asian Americans and events of note in people's history for the curriculum and as a starting point for students to do further research.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A conversation about coronavirus is happening among young people right now, and the focus isn't solely on health. When reports of this novel virus-first detected in China in December of 2019-started spreading to other countries, racialized fear began to manifest in public discourse.

Since the virus began to spread, people who identify as Asian American or Pacific Islander (AAPI) have been subjected to racist comments and jokes online or in person, and to isolating behavior from those who are afraid of catching the virus.

Times like these remind us that we must continuously disrupt and address issues of hate and bias, which often find their way into schools.

It's important to get ahead of harmful discourse because we know students are watching or listening to this rhetoric online and on social media. Many children spend hours a day on devices, so information-and misinformation-is likely in the hands of most of your students.

What Our Students Are Hearing

So we can assume our students are seeing posts like this one from a college student who considered dropping a class because "only Asians" were in the classrooms, stating, "I hope I don't catch coronavirus."

They may also observe the racist tropes that falsely point to Chinese people's eating habits as the cause of the spread of the virus.

And these messages don't come only from misinformed youth or social media trolls. For example, the University of California at Berkley apologized after an official Instagram account shared a post that was supposed to inform students about the virus. Instead, it listed xenophobia when "interacting with someone who might be from Asia" among "common" or "normal" reactions to anxiety around the illness.

Anti-Chinese sentiment and any racist or xenophobic rhetoric about the AAPI community is not new. Associating this marginalized group of people with disease is also not new.

Educators need to understand the historical context as they prepare to address this narrative in the classroom or other school spaces.

The Historical Context

Members of the AAPI community are targets right now because public health events have always been racialized. Pandemics that originate in areas populated by mostly people of color get more scrutiny, such as SARS in China or Ebola in West Africa. However, when pandemics occur in the United States and other western countries, such as the novel H1N1, citizens in those countries were not viewed as innately diseased. Many people die yearly from the flu, but Westerners aren't seen as suspicious.

Anti-Chinese sentiment in the United States related to disease goes back to when Chinese people began immigrating here. In efforts to bar Chinese workers from entering the country in the late 1800s, white labor unions argued that Chinese people carried diseases that were more virulent than those found in white people.

In the same way junk science was used to justify enslaving Africans, junk science about people from Asia was used to justify laws leading to exclusion and exploitation of Asian immigrants. It solidified fear and phobia against Chinese people. The " yellow peril " narrative was born. It's a racist term that plays on the idea that Asian people would disrupt or harm Westerners' way of life.

These racist tropes are directly tied to the oppression of Asians and Asian Americans in the United States. They were used to justify the Page Act of 1875, which restricted East Asian women from immigrating to the U.S. And they served, in part, as justification for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned most Chinese people from immigrating to the U.S.

Coupled with racist tropes about health and culture, these laws led to racist violence against Asian Americans. The remnants of that legacy remain in public discourse today.

Interrupting Racism

Educators have a responsibility to interrupt any anti-AAPI and xenophobic narratives. Since students may be exposed to racist posts on social media or racist comments about the coronavirus, you might hear some of this discourse in your classroom or throughout the school building. It is imperative that you interrupt it every time it occurs.

Right now, it's important to have a heightened sense of what your students are saying in spaces inside and outside of the classroom. Respond immediately to any news of a student repeating racist or xenophobic language. It's also vital to attend to any students or colleagues who have been harmed by anti-AAPI speech or rhetoric.

Our Responding to Hate and Bias at School guide can help you address issues at any phase of a hate or bias incident.

Educating Students

Because you won't always catch xenophobic or racist comments as they occur, it's important to equip students with the historical context and relevant skills to discern when something is biased and how they can respond.

Our Speak Up at School guide provides resources to help both educators and students tackle discussions about bias and stereotypes. helps guide educators in facilitating critical conversations.

Even if no incident has occurred yet in your school or classroom, you must still be proactive. Create a welcoming and hate-free environment by ensuring that students can identify hate and bias and then encouraging them to disrupt it. Teachers can use our lessons about upstanders, which show students how to respond to hate speech.

This is also an important time to emphasize the necessity of digital literacy, as students may become aware of hateful or biased speech online. Students must learn how to glean credible news sources and spot biased reporting. Spend time going through the pitfalls of the internet and help sharpen their digital literacy skills with lessons and activities.

Even if your students do not represent the identities likely to be harmed by racist comments around the coronavirus, or you believe they're not spreading misinformation and repeating racist tropes, exploring anti-AAPI rhetoric around the virus is still worthy of critical conversations in the classroom.

The truth is all students are affected by hate and bias. It's up to educators to protect those who are targeted by it and give students and other adults the tools to stop perpetrating harm in the future.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Speaking Up Against Racism Around the Coronavirus

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A conversation about coronavirus is happening among young people right now, and the focus isn't solely on health. When reports of this novel virus-first detected in China in December of 2019-started spreading to other countries, racialized fear began to manifest in public discourse.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Responding to Anti-Asian Violence and Georgia Shootings

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After a shooting spree in Georgia took the lives of eight people—including six Asian American women—it’s important to pause, check in and prioritize care.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
We are not a stereotype | Learning Together

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The term Bamboo Ceiling was coined by Jane Hyun, an Executive Coach and Global Leadership Strategist. Her book "Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling" provides career strategies for Asian Americans. To learn more about Hyun's work click here .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Racially motivated harassment of Asian Americans is a longstanding issue in the U.S., but in the year since COVID-19 entered the country, incidents have been on the rise.

What has contributed to the surge in racism and hate crimes towards Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and how can the issue be addressed?

PBS NewsHour's Amna Nawaz, AAPI activist Helen Zia and Rise founder Amanda Nguyen took your questions and discussed the history of AAPI hate crimes and how communities are responding now.
Watch the discussion in the player above.
Several studies point to the connection between hateful rhetoric and increased hate-motivated actions, and advocates and experts point to the way former President Donald Trump spoke about the COVID-19 virus as a direct contributor to the increased crime. But under the new Biden administration, the hate incidents have continued, prompting leaders and advocates to actively call for coalition building, better incident tracking and increased education about AAPI communities.

Between mid-March and the end of 2020, Stop AAPI Hate, a project run by a coalition of organizations, received 2,808 reports of racism and discrimination against Asian Americans. The Anti-Defamation League has tracked dozens of incidents in detail, from anti-Asian verbal harassment on New York's subway to racist signs in California and New Mexico.

In 2021, the incidents have only continued. On Tuesday, a man of Malaysian descent was reportedly attacked in a New York City subway station. This month, police there arrested a suspect in the violent assault of an Asian American woman outside a Queens bakery. In Southern California, an Asian American teacher's aide waiting for a bus was attacked, ending up with a severed finger.
READ MORE: 'Words matter' as Asian American leaders urge action against hate crimes
In the Bay Area, which has one of the highest concentrations of Asian Americans in the country, law enforcement arrested a suspect in early February in connection with assaults on three elderly individuals. The Alameda County District Attorney in Oakland is creating a special response unit focused on anti-Asian American crimes. In nearby San Francisco, prosecutors have charged a suspect in the fatal Jan. 28 assault of 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee, an immigrant from Thailand. The suspect pled not guilty to charges of murder and elder abuse.

The anti-Asian hate has generated condemnations across the country, as community leaders and public officials - including Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - call for increased awareness. President Joe Biden issued an official memorandum within a week of taking office that condemned the rhetoric and acknowledged the harm on AAPI communities must be addressed. Biden's memo addresses political leaders' role in promoting xenophobic rhetoric through referencing the pandemic by its geographic origin, as Trump and others mimicking his framing of the virus so often did.

How has the recent spike in hate affected AAPI communities?

As a result of the uptick in hate, many Asian Americans feel a "fog of terror," Nguyen says. "When people walk out the door, they don't know if they're going to get attacked and from where they're going to get attacked," Nguyen said. "If you hear these stories - they're in grocery stores, they're people walking on the street, they're people living their daily lives."

In order for people to recognize the full humanity and dignity of Asian Americans, more stories need to be told in a responsible manner, Nguyen said, because stories are empathy machines. "Silence is violence," she said. "In order for us to be treated as human, people need to speak us into the consciousness of this country."

Zia said many important stories are missing because parts of the community have tried to disappear from the public during the pandemic because of fears of violence. People are scared to go to the doctors, get tested for COVID-19 or get vaccines, she said. "This is a terrible situation of a community that's been driven underground by fear of real attacks that are happening," said Zia, author of "Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People."

To what degree is a lack of education and awareness about the history of Asian Americans contributing to this sentiment today?

Zia says that part of the problem is the invisibility of Asian American communities and lack of understanding of the racism they have faced. "It's part of the systemic racism of depriving all Americans - including Asian Americans - of our own history," Zia said. "I call it 'missing in history.'"

Zia points to problematic and popular depictions of people of Asian descent. Many are cartoon-like and portrayed as subhuman, animalistic or enemy invaders.

The absence of accurate knowledge about AAPI history, Zia said, keeps people fighting with each other instead of coming together to ensure that no one is demeaned or attacked.

Are there any measures being taken to combat the rise of anti-Asian crimes?

Nyugen said she is still waiting for elected officials to take more explicit, concrete action to address anti-Asian hate. "When you 'other' a group of people, there is a higher chance of violence towards that group of people," Nguyen said.

To help combat the problem, Nguyen said, the most powerful tool we all have is our voice. "Even if structural places have locked us out, we have platforms now, in the 21st century, to make our voices heard. So please speak up"

"In order for there to be true peace, one must hold up a light to the darkest corners of our experience," Nguyen added. "In order for us to heal as a nation we must learn, we must acknowledge where we are at now, and then together working cross-community, we're able to move forward into a more equitable future."

Do you find that violence against other groups has sometimes obscured the reality Asian American communities are facing?

It's important to not just compare issues across communities, but rather work together in solidarity, activists say. "Justice is a fabric that has threads from all different communities," Nguyen said.

The violence and harassment are part of structural, systematic erasure of AAPI people, Nguyen said. Though task forces and memos are good first steps, they "cannot undo centuries of omission and erasure" of Asian Americans, she added.

"In order for us to truly tackle the root of this problem, it must be done in all of the places that hold the keys to telling our stories," Nguyen said. That includes teaching AAPI history, covering these communities in the news and telling their stories in Hollywood. "The problem is invisibility, therefore the solution has to be informed, thoughtful visibility."

Zia says there have been many historical examples of solidarity between Asian Americans fighting alongside Black Americans, Latino Americans and Indigenous Americans, as well as for issues like women's rights and against homophobia.

Zia says while task forces addressing anti-Asian hate are steps forward, there has to be more widespread understanding that these are issues that didn't start yesterday. "Otherwise it'll be just acts to put band-aids on a much larger issue."

Zia believes that real change can be made through education. Schools should teach the reality of what America looks like today.

"Very sadly it's taking seeing videos of 84-year-old and 90-year-old people ... getting knocked down and killed. That's what now is bringing attention to what has been a longstanding problem," Zia said.
WATCH: Author Charles Yu on using satire to point out Asian American stereotypes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How to address the surge of anti-Asian hate crimes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Racially motivated harassment of Asian Americans is a longstanding issue in the U.S., but in the year since COVID-19 entered the country, incidents have been on the rise. What has contributed to the surge in racism and hate crimes towards Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and how can the issue be addressed?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As COVID-19 infections increase, so too does racism and xenophobia. Use our "Speak Up" strategies to let people know you're not OK with racist or xenophobic comments about coronavirus or anything else.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Amid the pandemic, Asian American people continue to experience racism, violence and harassment. These resources can help you teach the historical precedents for this moment, introduce ways for students to recognize and speak up against coronavirus racism, and start conversations with even the youngest learners about recognizing and acting to address injustice.

# data[].attributes.body
The Toolkit is a project hosted by Asian American Pacific Islanders for Civic Empowerment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
All racial identities are interrelated. This timeline places Asian American history in the context of race, colonialism, and capitalism. Starting in 1441, time periods are marked by major historical shifts, and events are organized by overlapping struggles over land, labor, and empire.

# data[].attributes.body
From PBS: a five part documentary "Asian Americans"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
About the Show

Asian Americans is a five-hour film series that will chronicle the contributions, and challenges of Asian Americans, the fastest-growing ethnic group in America. Personal histories and new academic research will cast a fresh lens on U.S. history and the role Asian Americans have played in it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The history of identity, contributions, and challenges experienced by Asian Americans.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
New data has revealed over the past year, the number of anti-Asian hate incidents - which can include shunning, slurs and physical attacks - is greater than previously reported. And a disproportionate number of attacks have been directed at women.

The research released by reporting forum Stop AAPI Hate on Tuesday revealed nearly 3,800 incidents were reported over the course of roughly a year during the pandemic. It's a significantly higher number than last year's count of about 2,800 hate incidents nationwide over the span of five months. Women made up a far higher share of the reports, at 68 percent, compared to men, who made up 29 percent of respondents. The nonprofit does not report incidents to police.

Russell Jeung, professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University and the forum's founder, told NBC Asian America that the coalescence of racism and sexism, including the stereotype that Asian women are meek and subservient, likely factors into this disparity.

"There is an intersectional dynamic going on that others may perceive both Asians and women and Asian women as easier targets," he said.

The data, which includes incidents that occurred between March 19 of last year and Feb. 28 of this year, shows that roughly 503 incidents took place in 2021 alone. Verbal harassment and shunning were the most common types of discrimination, making up 68.1 percent and 20.5 percent of the reports respectively. The third most common category, physical assault, made up 11.1 percent of the total incidents. More than a third of incidents occurred at businesses, the primary site of discrimination, while a quarter took place in public streets.

According to the data, Asian women report hate incidents 2.3 times more than men. A further examination of the submitted reports showed that in many cases, the verbal harassment that women received reflected the very intersection of racism and sexism.

One Chinese American woman reported that a "man on the subway slapped my hands, threatened to throw his lighter at me, then called me a 'c---- b----.' He then said to 'get the f--- out of NYC.'" Another woman, who's Filipino American, reported that while in a Washington, D.C., metro station with her boyfriend, a man shouted "Chinese b----" at her, coughed at the couple and physically threatened them.

Jeung emphasized that women have always dealt with harassment from men and public safety issues more broadly. But the pandemic, he said, has provided another "excuse" for people to target Asian women.

"We've noticed that from the very beginning, it's been a real consistent pattern," Jeung said. "Bullies attack who they think are vulnerable, and we see this in our elderly and youth populations."

Jeung cautioned against describing the latest numbers as a sudden "surge" in hate incidents because many of the 2020 incidents were reported retroactively in 2021, according to the report, and there has always been a "clear" issue of underreporting in the community.

"We thought we had a lull or it seemed like there was a lull over the summer, but I think people were just reporting less and that it became sort of normalized," he explained. "But now with increased attention, I think people are reporting again. I think that there's been a continued harassment of Asians and now we're continuing to see that reported."

The wave of violence directed at Asian American seniors at the beginning of the year, particularly the graphic attacks that have been captured on video, have likely prompted more attention from both the community and mainstream media, Jeung said. And it's galvanized a vocal response that's likely led to more reporting.

While these attacks on elders have catalyzed calls for action, Jeung made a distinction between this particular violence, most of which has not been found to be explicitly racially motivated, and the racism those in the community have been facing due to the problematic link between the virus and Asian Americans.

"I think there are separate trends, the violence that we're seeing now and the racism we saw last year, but they are related," Jeung said. "We're really careful to note that this violence against Asian Americans in high-crime neighborhoods has always been high. And so the combination of both the racism from last year and crimes against Asian elderly are now significant enough to get national attention."

The scholar noted that this doesn't negate the possibility of implicit bias in these attacks on elders, but he cautioned against grouping the two trends as one issue.

"That's the problem - people conflate it," he said. "So decoupling them then helps diagnose different solutions."

Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder and director of demographic data and policy research nonprofit AAPI Data, previously also warned against defaulting to a "simplistic understanding of what's going on," adding that the violence cannot be neatly summed up by solely the heightened anti-Asian sentiment witnessed throughout the pandemic. He said a confluence of factors, including the effects of poverty and financial struggle exacerbated by the pandemic, as well as opportunity, could have played into it.

"There's a complex variety of factors, but the fundamental reality is that there's an increase in the number of Asian Americans who feel unsafe," he said.

Such issues have been elevated to the executive branch as President Joe Biden has addressed the issue of anti-Asian attacks. In addition to referencing the violence in his first national prime-time address Thursday night, he also signed a memorandum earlier this year that in part issued guidance on how the Justice Department should respond to the heightened number of anti-Asian bias incidents.

Jeung said addressing the root cause of the violence requires more education, more expanded civil rights protections and more restorative justice models. The memorandum - which focuses on hate incidents, rather than hate crimes - allows for a more holistic approach to combating racism against Asian Americans in public streets, transit, private businesses and other settings, he said.

"If you just narrowly focus on hate crimes, you only address a sliver of the racism that Asian Americans are experiencing," Jeung said. "Biden's memo that actually addresses hate incidents rather than hate crimes is actually helpful, because that gives us the opportunity to frame the issue comprehensively."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
There were 3,800 anti-Asian racist incidents, mostly against women, in past year

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
New data has revealed over the past year, the number of anti-Asian hate incidents - which can include shunning, slurs and physical attacks - is greater than previously reported. And a disproportionate number of attacks have been directed at women.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, a national organization founded in 1974, protects and promotes the civil rights of Asian Americans.

You're invited to "Japanese American Legacy Lawyers," a program that pays homage to past and present attorneys of Japanese heritage who have contributed to bettering the lives of Japanese Americans and all Americans. The attorneys being recognized are Shirley Ann Higuchi, Stuart Ishimaru, Erika Mori...

Join AALDEF staff and supporters as we raise a glass (or two) to the summer! We will be returning to the rooftop bar atop 230 Fifth Ave (corner of 27th St).

Mark your calendars for Thursday, May 4, 2023, 3pm ET. With primaries around the corner, tune in to hear the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) share its findings on the issues Asian American voters care about and the barriers they faced in exercising their right to vote in the...

Stay in touch with AALDEF

Get occasional updates via email, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

99 Hudson St, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10013-2815

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, a national organization founded in 1974, protects and promotes the civil rights of Asian Americans.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, a national organization founded in 1974, protects and promotes the civil rights of Asian Americans.

# data[].attributes.headline
Racial Microaggressions and the Asian American Experience

# data[].attributes.subject
Racial Microaggressions and the Asian American Experience

# data[].attributes.body
Asian American Journal of Psychology. Dr. Derald Wing Sue et al.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Racial Microaggressions and the Asian American Experience.pdf

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Our communities stand united against racism. Hate against Asian American Pacific Islander communities has risen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, we can stop it.

Report a hate incident in:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Our communities stand united against racism. Hate against Asian American Pacific Islander communities has risen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, we can stop it. Report a hate incident in:

# data[].attributes.body
A national report with data on the over 3700 incidents reported to StopAAPIHate in the past year

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Asian American community has long struggled for visibility and equity, and now faces additional physical and mental health harms due to the increase in anti-Asian hate. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Asian American community saw a sharp increase in anti-Asian hate crimes and hate incidents due to the misattribution of the coronavirus to our community. However, anti-Asian hate is not a new phenomenon: from the time our communities first immigrated to the U.S. to present day, Asian Americans have experienced discrimination in many forms, from mistrust, verbal abuse, and harassment to civil rights violations, anti-Asian legislation, and even physical violence.

What Can You Do?

If you have witnes sed or experienced anti-Asian hate, we encourage you to report your story to our website Report and help us document hate and harassment: www.StandAgainstHatred.org (accessible in Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese).
Report your story of witnessing or experiencing harassment
Bystander Intervention Training

Advancing Justice | AAJC has partnered with R ight To Be (formerly Hollaback!) to provide free trainings to equip people with techniques on how to safely intervene when they see or experience anti-Asian harassment.

Resources

Asian Resource Hub

Crime Victims' Compensation

Counseling

Lost wages

Transportation costs

Funeral and burial support

eku@advancingjustice-aajc.org.

Reports

Stay Updated

Follow Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC to receive updates about our work, including ways to get directly involved in our advocacy efforts.

Media Placements

Download the FAQ for frequently asked questions on anti-Asian hate and our work with Stand Against Hatred.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC has been working to raise awareness about increased racism and discrimination against Asian Americans.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to presenting stories that convey the richness and diversity of Asian American experiences to the broadest audience possible.

# data[].attributes.body
Asian Americans have been targeted by racism and xenophobia related to the coronavirus or COVID-19. We offer the following resources in response to this hate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Facts, Not Fear

For health information, please refer to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization.

In addition, the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum has been compiling multilingual resources on the coronavirus and COVID-19 in their Community Library: Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander In-Language Resources for Coronavirus.

Resources to Document and Address Hate

We encourage reporting to our website, www.StandAgainstHatred.org, which is accessible in Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese.

Asian Americans Advancing Justice created this site in January 2017 to capture information about the increase in hate we observed in the lead-up to the 2016 election. Through this website, we document hate crimes, harassment, and discrimination experienced by our community. As we state on the site, when people submit reports, they are aiding our efforts to monitor and push back against hate. "By sharing what you experienced or witnessed, you can educate the public, empower others, show service providers where help is needed, and strengthen advocacy efforts for hate crimes response and prevention."

The following resources are available through Stand Against Hatred:

We partner with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and their Stop Hate project to provide assistance to those impacted by hate. Assistance with legal and social services is available through the Stop Hate hotline (1-844-9-NO-HATE), which is accessible in a number of languages.

Asian Americans Advancing Justice is part of Communities Against Hate, a diverse coalition of civil rights organizations led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Read the report Hate Magnified published by the coalition in January 2019 that details reports submitted to Communities Against Hate.

Discrimination should never be acceptable anywhere. We encourage our communities and allies to learn about ways to respond:

Bystander Intervention Virtual Trainings

One way we can take action to protect our communities is to learn ways to intervene effectively as a bystander without compromising safety. We're excited to announce that Hollaback! and Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC are partnering for a virtual workshop on bystander intervention.

The one-hour, interactive training will teach you Hollaback!'s 5 D's of bystander intervention methodology.

We'll start by talking about the types of disrespect that Asian and Asian American folks are facing right now -- from microaggressions to violence -- using a tool we call the "spectrum of disrespect."

You'll learn what to look for and the positive impact that bystander intervention has on individuals and communities.

We'll talk through five strategies for intervention: distract, delegate, document, delay, and direct; and how to prioritize your own safety while intervening.

We'll have time at the end for practice, and you'll leave feeling more confident intervening the next time you see Anti-Asian and Asian American harassment online or in-person.

Saturday, May 2nd at 2:00pm ET / 1:00pm CT / 12:00pm MT / 11:00am PT / 8:00am HST. Register here.

Tuesday, May 5th at 3:00pm ET / 1:00pm CT / 1:00pm MT / 12:00pm PT / 9:00am HST. Register here.

Thursday, May 7th at 7:00pm ET / 6:00pm CT / 5:00pm MT / 4:00pm PT / 1:00pm HST. Register here.

Wednesday, May 13th at 2:00pm ET / 1:00pm CT / 12:00pm MT / 11:00am PT / 8:00am HST. Register here.

Thursday, May 21st at 7:00pm ET / 6:00pm CT / 5:00pm MT / 4:00pm PT / 1:00pm HST. Register here.

Saturday, May 30th at 2:00pm ET / 1:00pm CT / 12:00pm MT / 11:00am PT / 8:00am HST. Register here.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. The training is currently only offered in English but we are seeking funding to expand it into other languages.
More Resources from Hollaback!

Show Up, Your Guide to Bystander Intervention, by Hollaback! in collaboration with CUP

How to Respond to Street Harassment, by Hollaback!. Written to respond to gender-based harassment but the tactics are applicable to all forms of harassment. We'll be adapting these for the Asian/American community in the coming weeks.

Responding to Online Harassment, Do's and Don'ts by Hollaback! in collaboration with #ICANHELP, Project HEAR, and the Dangerous Speech Project.

Self care guide to healing from Online Harassment, by Hollaback!

Digital Safety Guide, by Hollaback!

HeartMob, a platform where you can get support managing online harassment and/or support others experiencing it, by Hollaback!

Additional Resources

Words Matter

We are working with the media, Congress, and partner organizations to inform around the harm of this xenophobia.
Media Hits Social Media Toolkit

The National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA), of which Advancing Justice | AAJC is a member, put together a social media toolkit of many of the resources mentioned here that you can use to amplify to your networks.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Coronavirus/COVID-19 Resources to Stand Against Racism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For health information, please refer to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization. In addition, the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum has been compiling multilingual resources on the coronavirus and COVID-19 in their Community Library: Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander In-Language Resources for Coronavirus.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
There has been a sudden and rapid increase in hate crimes against Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities over the last year, and yet you may be hearing about it for the first time right now. One reason for this lack of national attention is that this violence does not fit neatly into narratives that are ascribed to AAPI communities.

As of August of 2020, the United Nations estimated 1,800 racist incidents, including acts of physical violence, against Asian Americans in the United States. The rate of these racist acts has not slowed in 2021. Last month, videos circulated on social media showing a disturbing violent attack on a 91-year old Chinese man in Oakland's Chinatown and the violent killing of an 84-year old Thai man in a residential neighborhood in San Francisco.

These attacks are terrifying, and they are close to home. Oakland's Chinatown is about two miles from my grandparent's home, where my mother grew up, and where I spent time while attending UC Berkeley. AAPI students and faculty at Yale, where I now work, have expressed concerns both in public and in private about this uptick in racist violence. One chilling, and often ignored, aspect of this violence is how consistent it is with the history of AAPI communities in the US.

"Model minority mythologies of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community obscure how precarious our standing is in American society, and downplay and delegitimize concerns about racist rhetoric linking AAPI communities to foreignness and disease."

There is a through line in U.S. history in which AAPI communities are conceived of as foreign, dirty, and disease ridden. Horace Greeley, a prominent political figure of the 19th century, called Chinese Americans "uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception." There are clear similarities between this rhetoric and the Trump administration's messaging about COVID-19. One spokesperson for the twice-impeached former president said that "he wants everybody to understand, and I think that we need Americans to understand, that this virus originated in China."

The history of AAPI rhetoric about foreignness and disease has coincided with violence across U.S. history. In 1875, San Francisco public health officials blamed Chinese Americans for an outbreak of smallpox and fumigated Chinatown by force, with no impact on the actual outbreak. In 1900, a bubonic plague outbreak in Honolulu led health officials to set fire to 41 buildings specific to Chinatown. In subsequent acts of racist violence against AAPI communities-including the murder of Filipino American Fermin Tobera, the forced internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans, and the 300 cases of documented violence and hate against Sikh Americans after the September 11 attacks-rhetoric around foreignness and/or disease has been close by. The violence happening now is part of a predictable and ugly recurring pattern in our nation's history.

As a social psychologist, I study narratives and how they can sometimes distort our understanding of opportunity and justice in the United States. My family was drawn to this country by American Dream narratives. My great grandfather, Shigeshi (Jimmy) Yamamoto, came to the U.S. around 1915 by jumping from a shipping boat from Japan. He came here in search of a better life and I think many families are similarly motivated. But, as is often the case, those narratives are compelling because they promise a better life and provide motivation for striving-not because of their basis in reality. Because American Dream narratives focus on stories of striving and success, they often paper over racism. In these narratives, some of which I and my co-authors have studied in our research, respondents expect racial inequality to linearly, and automatically, vanish across time. According to the narrative, racist violence of the past is a relic and progress is a guarantee.

AAPI communities as a whole have had some collective progress in the United States, measured in real economic gains. Researchers pin this group-wide success on the hyper selectivity of some higher-status Asian immigrant groups. Nevertheless, American Dream mythology has ascribed other interpretations to this success, referring to Asian Americans as a so-called model minority. In this specific mythology, AAPI community success implies the end of racism and the inherent and erroneous superiority of AAPI communities and values. In psychology research, we see adoption of this mythology in surveys where high status aspects of AAPI communities tend to be more top-of-mind for most American respondents than for other racial groups.

Model minority mythologies of the AAPI community obscure how precarious our standing is in American society. These narratives downplay and delegitimize concerns about the racist rhetoric linking AAPI communities to foreignness and disease, perpetrated by our government, that continue to put our communities at risk. These mythologies make media coverage of affirmative action lawsuits, advanced about AAPI communities but not in their collective interests, more common than coverage of the instances of violence that threaten our elders. These mythologies also stand as a barrier to solidarity with other communities of color who are persistently vulnerable to structural racism and who have historically stood against that racism for the benefit of us all.

It is my hope that we work to discard these American mythologies that cast racism as a problem of our ancestors. Racism is a problem for right now, one that we all share, and we must never be silent about it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How American Mythologies Fuel Anti-Asian Violence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
There has been a sudden and rapid increase in hate crimes against Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities over the last year, and yet you may be hearing about it for the first time right now. One reason for this lack of national attention is that this violence does not fit neatly into narratives that are ascribed to AAPI communities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
We use legal advocacy to influence key civil rights issues that have significant impact on Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and immigrant communities. Support our litigation campaign.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Asian Americans Advancing Justice - AAJC: Home

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We use legal advocacy to influence key civil rights issues that have significant impact on Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and immigrant communities. Support our litigation campaign.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Posted on March 16, 2021 13:00

Among the social issues exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic is the rise of anti-Asian violence. In February 2020, in Los Angeles, a middle school child was physically attacked and verbally assaulted in the schoolyard. He was accused of having COVID-19 simply because he was Asian-American and was told to go back to China. When he said he wasn't Chinese, he was punched in the face 20 times.

Stop AAPI Hate, the nation's leading coalition documenting and addressing anti-Asian hate and discrimination amid the COVID-19 pandemic, received over 2,808 firsthand accounts of anti-Asian hate incidents from 47 states and the District of Columbia between March 2020 and December 2020.

For educators who are looking for resources to address this unsettling trend, here are some expert tips for addressing anti-Asian racism and discrimination in the classroom:

REPORTING INCIDENTS AS A VICTIM OR BYSTANDER
211 LA County provides hate crimes reporting for people of all ages in Los Angeles County through the Anti Hate Reporting Hotline.

Reporting is the first step to stop hate. By understanding how and where hate is occurring, our communities can respond with appropriate resources and support. The Anti Hate Reporting Hotline takes reports (by phone or online) of hate crimes, hate acts, and incidents of bullying which have occurred within Los Angeles County; regardless of whether a crime has been committed.

There are no geographic limitations. Individuals can call (800) 339-6993 toll free or dial 211 in LA County.

Because racism is complex and contentious, many of us are afraid to even broach the subject. CONVERSATIONS ABOUT RACE
Racial Justice in Education, published by the National Education Association (NEA), provides useful information for creating the space to talk about race in your school.

The Morningside Center for Teaching Social Responsibility has IN CLASSROOM DISCUSSIONS
basic guidelines on how to counter biased or uninformed student responses to the novel coronavirus. The guide provides educators with language they can use to address hate incidents and an overview of the different school-based resources that can support the social-emotional wellbeing of targeted students.

Education Week interviewed five educators who are working to support Asian and Asian-American students in the aftermath of the shootings in Georgia earlier this month. Their suggestions move from more immediate responses to longer-term reforms to curriculum and coursework.

Discussions about discrimination, violence, and racism are complex. It is important to create a safe space for holding difficult conversations. Facing History has some IN LESSONS PLANS
great tips for how you can prepare your students to acknowledge one another's complicated feelings during these discussions.

Resources that educators can use when creating lesson plans are:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Addressing Anti-Asian Racism and Discrimination: Resources for Educators

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Posted on March 16, 2021 13:00 Among the social issues exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic is the rise of anti-Asian violence. In February 2020, in Los Angeles, a middle school child was physically attacked and verbally assaulted in the schoolyard. He was accused of having COVID-19 simply because he was Asian-American and was told to go back to China.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Since the onset of COVID-19, Asian American and Pacific Islanders have reported experiencing microaggressions, racial profiling, hate incidents and hate violence. Reports in our communities have spiked.

We know because of Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center (StopAAPIHate.com), which is designed to collect and track incidents of anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander hate crimes.

Russell Jeung, PhD is the co-launcher of Stop AAPI Hate and the chair of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University.

Now, in coordination with the Asian Pacific Islander Caucus and the Council for Racial & Social Justice at California Faculty Association, Jeung takes it one step further: how to combat this hate in the age of COVID-19.

This educational video, as well as a forthcoming curriculum guide, is built for classrooms across the country, intended to guide students and educators how to combat against hateful rhetoric, bullying and hate violence in our communities.

Educational Curriculum and Videos for High Schools and Higher Education

Educational curriculum: Combating Anti-Asian Racism in the Age of Coronavirus

Video: Combating AAPI Racism in Age of Covid-19

Video: Radio Free CSU l CFA and COVID-19, Episode 2: Vulnerable CSU Populations

Websites and Resources

Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Combating AAPI Hate in Age of COVID-19 - California Faculty Association

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Since the onset of COVID-19, Asian American and Pacific Islanders have reported experiencing microaggressions, racial profiling, hate incidents and hate violence. Reports in our communities have spiked. We know because of Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center (StopAAPIHate.com), which is designed to collect and track incidents of anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander hate crimes.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teaching About Anti-Asian Racism and Xenophobia - Educators 4 Social Change

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Introduction As the first wave of covid-19 spread across the globe, xenophobia and anti-Asian racism followed. The United States has a long history of racism against Asian Americans, including passing the notorious Chinese Exclusion Act and ordering Japanese Americans into internment camps during Wo…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Cpl. George Bushy, left, holds the youngest child of Shigeho Kitamoto, center, as she and her children are forced to leave Bainbridge Island, Wash., in 1942. They were sent to an internment camp. (AP)

A gunman killed eight people at three Atlanta-area spas Tuesday night; six of the victims were women of Asian descent, sparking fears among advocacy groups that the killings may have been racially motivated.

Anti-Asian hate crimes have spiked 150 percent since the pandemic began, according to a recent study.

Suspect charged with killing 8 in Atlanta-area shootings that targeted Asian-run spas

People of Asian descent have been living in the United States for more than 160 years, and have long been the target of bigotry. Here is a look at the violence and racism that Asian immigrants and Asian Americans have faced since before the Civil War.

People v. Hall

Chinese immigrants began coming to the United States in significant numbers in the 1850s, largely to California and other Western states, to work in mining and railroad construction. There was high demand for these dangerous, low-wage jobs, and Chinese immigrants were willing to fill them. Almost immediately, the racist trope of "Asians coming to steal White jobs" was born. And in 1854, the California Supreme Court reinforced racism against Asian immigrants in People v. Hall, ruling that people of Asian descent could not testify against a White person in court, virtually guaranteeing that Whites could escape punishment for anti-Asian violence. In this case, it was murder: George Hall shot and killed Chinese immigrant Ling Sing, and the testimony of witnesses was rejected because they were also Asian.

Chinese massacre of 1871

On Oct. 24, 1871, following the murder of a White man caught in the crossfire between rival Chinese groups, more than 500 White and Hispanic rioters surrounded and attacked Los Angeles' small Chinese community, centered in a red-light district known as Negro Alley. At least 17 Chinese men and boys were lynched, including a prominent local doctor. They were hanged across several downtown sites, anywhere the rioters could find a beam to string a noose. Eight of the rioters were eventually convicted of manslaughter, but their convictions were overturned. No one else was ever punished.

Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

Economic woes in the 1870s spawned another spike in anti-Asian racism and scapegoating. In 1882, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese immigration for 20 years. President Chester A. Arthur vetoed it, but then signed another version with a 10-year ban. The first law placing a restriction on immigration to the United States, it was extended for more than 60 years before it was repealed in 1943.

'Cheap slaves': The ugly history of the Chinese Exclusion Act

Rock Springs massacre, 1885

In Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, long-standing aggression against Chinese miners exploded in September 1885, when 100 to 150 vigilantes surrounded and attacked Chinese mineworkers, killing 28 people and burning 79 homes. Hundreds fled to a nearby town, then were tricked into boarding a train they were told would take them to safety in San Francisco. Instead, it took them back to Rock Springs, where they were forced back into the mine. Federal troops stayed for 13 years to impose order.

San Francisco plague outbreak

In 1900, an outbreak of bubonic plague struck San Francisco. It is likely that the outbreak began with a ship from Australia, but since the first stateside victim was a Chinese immigrant, the whole community was blamed for it. Overnight, the city's Chinatown was surrounded by police, preventing anyone but White residents from going in or out. Chinese residents were also subjected to home searches and property destruction by force. The episode was a prelude to the racism that has been aimed at Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic, which former President Donald Trump frequently called "the China virus," "the Wuhan virus," and the "Kung Flu."

The 1943 film "Japanese Relocation" tried to justify the government's decision to move people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast to internment camps. (Video: U.S. Office of War Information)

Japanese internment during World War II

By the 1940s, tens of thousands of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans had built lives in the United States. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II, the U.S. government forced all of them into internment camps for the duration of the war over suspicions they might aid the enemy. Conditions in the camps were extreme, blazing hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. No spies were ever found. When they were freed, many returned to find their homes and businesses vandalized or confiscated. In 1988, survivors received a presidential apology and $20,000 each in reparations.

Secret use of census info helped send Japanese Americans to internment camps in WWII

Vietnamese shrimpers and the KKK

At the close of the Vietnam War, the United States resettled many Vietnamese fleeing the communists. In Texas, many of those immigrants took up shrimping. "We like the weather, we like the shrimping, we like a chance to start our own businesses," Nguyen Van Nam told The Washington Post in 1984. As they worked hard and began to dominate the industry, the trope of Asians coming to take White jobs returned, and this time it was wearing a white hood. Ku Klux Klan leader Louis Beam trained his members in commando-style attack s; they patrolled the waters in their regalia and set boats owned by Vietnamese people on fire.

The murder of Vincent Chin

Vincent Chin was out on the town. On June 19, 1982, the 27-year-old Chinese American was about to marry and was celebrating with friends in Detroit. Then two White men picked a bar fight, blaming Chin for "the Japanese" taking their auto-industry jobs. Outside the bar, the men beat Chin with a baseball bat. He died several days later. His assailants took a manslaughter plea bargain, which carried a possible sentence of 15 years. Instead, the judge gave the men probation and a $3,000 fine. The lenient sentence outraged and galvanized the Asian American community, helping to unite them across ethnic lines and work for civil rights.

The L.A. riots

Tensions had been building between the Black and Korean American communities in Los Angeles for years. Then came the April 29, 1992, acquittal of the police officers caught on camera beating Rodney King. As the city erupted in riots, Korean American businesses became targets; thousands were damaged during the unrest.

'Burn, baby, burn': What I saw as a black journalist covering the L.A. riots 25 years ago

9/11-inspired hatred

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, hate crimes spiked against Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim, including people of South Asian descent. Only four days after the attacks, aircraft mechanic Frank Silva Roque murdered Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh American gas station owner originally from India, whom Roque mistook for Muslim. The post-9/11 period led to greater awareness and advocacy between the South and East Asian communities.
Read more: What one family's story reveals about reparations 'A Japanese Schindler': The remarkable diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during WWII Why you've never heard of the six Chinese men who survived the Titanic The U.S. hid Hiroshima's human suffering. Then John Hersey went to Japan. 'Cheap slaves': Trump, immigration and the ugly history of the Chinese Exclusion Act

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The long, ugly history of anti-Asian racism and violence in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Anti-Asian hate crimes have spiked 150 percent since the pandemic began, according to a recent study. But racism and violence against Asians has always come in waves throughout U.S. history.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You may be wondering what you can do to help the Asian and Asian-American communities, amid an ongoing wave of attacks against Asian Americans that coincided with the spread of the coronavirus across the U.S.

Authorities arrested a man who they say is suspected of stabbing two Asian women without warning in downtown San Francisco in May. In another recent incident, two Asian women were attacked in New York City by a stranger who demanded they remove their masks before striking one in the head with a hammer, police said.

And eight people - most of them women of Asian descent - were killed in March in three shootings at Atlanta-area spas.

Stop AAPI Hate, a group that tracks acts of discrimination and xenophobia against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, found nearly 3,800 incidents of hate, discrimination or attacks on Asian Americans from March 2020 through February 2021.

The Senate passed with overwhelming bipartisan support a hate crimes bill to address a drastic increase in violence and discrimination directed at Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here are some key ways you can aid the communities, from donating to organizing.

Where to donate to help Asian communities, and how to organize

A host of organizations could use your donations, including but not limited to:

New York Magazine has a list of over 50 ways you can support the Asian communities.

Read before you share resources. As is typical with social media, many people share social posts on platforms like Instagram and Twitter offering statistics, resources and places to donate. Make sure the posts you're sharing are rooted in facts, because even the most well-intentioned person could spread misinformation. Also consider whether groups are advocating for unity between minority groups, like Black and Asian people.

Learn how to organize. Actor Daniel Dae Kim told USA TODAY in March that a lot can happen on a local level: "We need to be able to contact our local (district attorneys) and the Department of Justice to discuss how we can deter (these crimes) and how we can prosecute them properly. There's a lot we can do to foster understanding among communities. There are many community groups that have been created out of the ashes of this, like Compassion in Oakland, where they're escorting Asian-American elders from place to place so that they feel safe."

Not everyone believes further law enforcement and policing are the answers, however.

"We cannot conflate police and incarceration with justice or public safety," writer Sam Lew said in online magazine The Bold Italic. They do not keep us or our elders safe, even as much as we wish they could.

Reach out to your Asian friends and colleagues - but don't ask them to educate you

Anti-Asian racism, like any form of racism, isn't new.

Read up on the history of and present day anti-Asian racism in the U.S. This can be done through news articles. Consider documentaries and news programs that feature information on the subject. Netflix's " Amend" touches on anti-Asian history in its sixth episode. Consider reading books by Asian American and Pacific Islander authors, too.

"The Real" host Jeannie Mai told USA TODAY in February she doesn't think white Americans are educated enough about Asian history or culture.

"I don't think our school system is catered around educating us what we really need to know," she said.

Remember that racism can be unlearned. Mai added: "Racism is taught. And it may not be your parents sitting you down telling you specifically like, 'Don't trust those Asians. Don't be friends with Black people.' No, I think it's in every grain of your upbringing."

In order to unlearn racism, you need to question your own privileges, take a look at the media you consume and accept the fact you will make mistakes. Also, apologize and own up to your mistakes.

Margaret Cho, in a recent NBC News segment, said there is room for improvement when it comes to Asian representation in entertainment.

"Just now, we're starting to see more Asian Americans in TV shows, in movies, but on a very peripheral basis," she said. "And it's not exactly a stereotype, but we're not all super rich and we're not all crazy rich. It's not all 'Bling Empire,' which, I love those shows and movies, but at the same time, it enforces this narrative that we are untouchable and invisible, which is kind of a volatile combination when it comes to violence."

Movies like "Minari," "Raya and the Last Dragon" and "Boogie" feature different types of portrayals.

Sometimes your first instinct may not be the best instinct when reaching out to friends or colleagues. CNBC's "Make It" has a helpful tips for those looking for guidance in the workplace.

One key point: Don't ask "How are you feeling?" or "Is there anything I can do for you?" as this puts the onus on them. Consultant and author Kim Tran suggests saying something more like: "I know the news is stressful. Can I help you with anything workwise?"

What to do if you see anti-Asian racism

Get proper training. Hollaback!, an organization working to end harassment, is working with Asian Americans Advancing Justice on free bystander intervention training geared to aiding the Asian and Asian American communities. You can sign up here for that as well as conflict de-escalation training.

Follow safety tips. Stop AAPI Hate recommends these five safety steps if you are a witness to anti-Asian racism:

Take action. Go to the targeted person and offer support.

Actively listen. Before you do anything, ask - and then respect the targeted person's response. If need be, keep an eye on the situation.

Ignore attacker. Try using your voice, body language or distractions to de-escalate the situation (though use your judgment).

Accompany. Ask the targeted person to leave with you if whatever is going on escalates.

Offer emotional support. Find out how the targeted person is feeling and help them determine what to do next.

Contributing: USA TODAY staff and The Associated Press

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
There's been a rise in anti-Asian attacks. Here's how to be an ally to the community.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You may be wondering what you can do to help the Asian and Asian-American communities, amid an ongoing wave of attacks against Asian Americans that coincided with the spread of the coronavirus across the U.S. Authorities arrested a man who they say is suspected of stabbing two Asian women without warning in downtown San Francisco in May.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On the evening of April 28, 1997, Kuan Chung Kao, a thirty-three-year-old Taiwan-born engineer, went to the Cotati Yacht Club near Rohnert Park, a quiet suburb in Sonoma County, California, where he lived with his wife and three children. Kao went to the bar a couple of times a week for an after-work glass of red wine; on this evening, he was celebrating a new job. According to a bartender working that night, Kao got in an argument with a customer, who mistook him for Japanese. "You all look alike to me," the man said. Tensions simmered, and, later in the evening, the man returned to needle Kao some more. "I'm sick and tired of being put down because I'm Chinese," Kao shouted back. "If you want to challenge me, now's the time to do it."

An altercation followed, and someone called the police. When they arrived, the bartender, who later described Kao as a "caring and friendly" patron, helped defuse the situation and assured them that causing a ruckus was out of Kao's character. He was sent home in a cab. Still livid, Kao shouted outside his house late into the night, alarming his neighbors, who placed about a dozen calls to 911. When two officers arrived, Kao was standing in his driveway, holding a stick. One of the officers ordered him to put it down. When he responded with profanities, the officer shot him. His wife, a nurse, tried to save him, but was restrained. A police spokesman later said that he had been waving the stick "in a threatening martial-arts fashion." The other described the pudgy, five-foot-seven-inch Kao as a "ninja fighter." Kao was not a ninja, and he had no martial-arts training. A warrant to search Kao's house for evidence of martial-arts expertise turned up nothing.

At the time, I was a college student at Berkeley. A few days after the incident, a friend and I procured a megaphone and stood on the steps of the campus plaza, shouting to passersby about Kao's death. We were trying to get our classmates to think about the indignities of this man's final night, and to see the racial animus involved in assuming that he was some kind of martial-arts master. But we were neither succinct nor persuasive, and people continued on their way. It felt like we were passing a rumor between ourselves, something small and insignificant that only mattered to Asian Americans like us, rather than bearing witness to an instance of racial violence. The Sonoma County District Attorney's office declined to charge the officers. When a vigil was organized outside Kao's home on the one-year anniversary of his death, some of the neighbors, who had supported the police's account of the night's events, flew American flags, which was perceived at the time as a show of hostility.

The California attorney general looked into it and concluded that the officers had acted in self-defense. An F.B.I. examination did not lead to charges either. Years later, a civil suit was settled for a million dollars, which was split between the family and the four legal firms that had represented them. Over time, and in the face of an official narrative of events that drained that night of its complexity, it became difficult to fit Kao's killing into any discernible pattern that might demand a reckoning; instead, it came to seem like a random occurrence. I soon forgot that it had happened at all.

I was reminded of Kao in the past few weeks, as frustrations have escalated around a recent string of attacks against Asian Americans. In the past year, there has been a steady increase in such attacks. Last spring, there seemed to be a constant stream of stories: verbal confrontations and fights, knifings, even an acid attack, much of it seemingly attributable to Donald Trump 's anti-Asian rhetoric, particularly to his sneers about the "China flu." Advocacy groups nationwide recorded between two and three thousand racist incidents in 2020.

Recently, fears of another wave of anti-Asian violence have arisen following a string of viral videos depicting attacks against Asian Americans. In late January, a clip circulated of Vicha Ratanapakdee, an eighty-four-year-old man originally from Thailand, being assaulted as he walked down a street in San Francisco. He died days later. Around this time, another clip, showing a ninety-one-year-old Asian man in Oakland's Chinatown being shoved to the ground while walking down the street, made the rounds. The actors Daniel Dae Kim and Daniel Wu offered rewards for information on the assailants. A few days later, Kim, Wu, and the activist Amanda Nguyen appeared on MSNBC, in part to chastise the mainstream media for being slow to cover these attacks. Even as outlets began reporting on these videos, attacks continued: a Filipino-American man's face was slashed in New York; a Korean-American man was beaten in Los Angeles's Koreatown while assailants shouted slurs at him. About a week ago, another viral clip circulated, this one of a fifty-two-year-old Asian-American woman being shoved to the ground in Flushing, Queens.

For some Asian Americans, the videos provided proof of what they have been feeling for some time, namely, that they are increasingly targeted on the basis of their appearance. But within this was a sense that their concerns would never be taken seriously. In the cases of the San Francisco and Oakland attacks, some officials, and even local community members, questioned whether these attacks were random rather than racially motivated. The attacker captured in the Queens video was released, and no hate-crime charges were brought against him. Beyond pressing for media coverage, however, the demands around what to do next were sometimes contradictory. Calls for more protection in Asian neighborhoods struck critics of police brutality as the wrong answer; in particular, Kim and Lee's so-called bounties were perceived to undermine the efforts of Asian-American organizers already working toward community-oriented solutions to public safety. Villainizing the suspects, at least two of whom were Black, seemed to play into racist narratives of inner-city crime. Some felt dismayed that Black and brown community leaders had not rushed to the defense of Asian Americans; others claimed that such standards construed the fight for justice as quid pro quo. Calls to center and protect Asian "elders" drew criticism for playing into a respectability politics that casts a kindly grandma or grandpa as a sympathetic, innocent victim. I saw someone on Instagram acerbically wonder whether these were the same elders whom we had recently been urged to lecture about their racism?

Visibility matters. Yet obsessing over it sometimes obscures the long-standing challenges of organizing Asian Americans around a single, shared story. It's difficult to describe anti-Asian racism when society lacks a coherent, historical account of what that racism actually looks like. The parameters of activism often get defined by hashtags-#StopAAPIHate, #ProtectOurElders, #NotYourModelMinority-rather than a sense of history. In the age of Black Lives Matter, the desire to carve out a crisp, pithy position is greater than ever. But the past weeks' conversations have illustrated how the Asian-American experience doesn't always fit neatly into conventional understandings of victimhood.

For decades, Asian people in America tended to identify more with their own nationality and ethnicity than with a broad Asian-American community. But, in the sixties and seventies, a more inclusive sense of Asian-American identity grew out of a desire for political solidarity. This new identity assumed a kind of cross-generational ethos, as younger people forged connections with older immigrants, helping them to navigate social services and to understand their rights. And it found clarity through collective struggle, as when, in 1977, in San Francisco, Asian-American community organizers, aided by a multiracial coalition of allies, came to the defense of a group of elderly Asians, mostly Filipino men, who were being evicted from their longtime homes in the I-Hotel. But the real turning point came in 1982, when two white men, one of whom had been laid off from his job as an autoworker, followed Vincent Chin, a young Chinese-American draftsman, from a Detroit bar to a nearby McDonald's and beat him to death. Witnesses said that the three had initially fought at the bar, and that during the altercation the men had allegedly mistaken Chin for Japanese and blamed him for the American auto industry's decline. The men later claimed that it was a fight that had gotten out of hand, and that they were not motivated by Chin's race. They were given probation and fined. The lenient sentencing sparked a national campaign against anti-Asian racism and inspired an Oscar-nominated documentary, "Who Killed Vincent Chin?"

In contrast to racism against other groups, anti-Asian racism has rarely been as gruesome and blatant as it was in the Chin killing. There have of course been other violent incidents, like the "Chinese massacre" that occurred in Los Angeles, in 1871, or the Sikh-temple shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, in 2012. But the history of Asian victimhood in America is varied and muddled. A presumption of foreignness might link exclusionary immigration policies of the nineteenth century to the internment of the Japanese during the Second World War; the paranoia around Asian-American scientists, which resulted in the mistreatment of a Taiwanese-American nuclear scientist named Wen Ho Lee, in the nineteen-nineties; and post-9/11 Islamophobia. Yet even the effects of these broad patterns of discrimination aren't uniformly felt. And the needs and disadvantages of refugee communities and poor Asian Americans have been obscured as much by the myth of Asians as the "model minority" as by the movements, particularly among the professional class, to resist this myth.

The current moment underscores the in-between space that Asian Americans inhabit. It's hard to prove bias in a hate crime, and it's typically done by showing how a particular crime draws on recognizable histories of violence or neglect. This becomes difficult when people are mystified by the idea of anti-Asian racism. In Chin's case, the culprits were white men who espoused racist ideas, which made it easier to recognize the assault as a hate crime and to organize the community around it. Some recent attacks also make legible the ways in which systemic injustices afflict Asian Americans. In late December, police officers killed a Chinese-American named Christian Hall in Monroe County, Pennsylvania; soon after, a Filipino-American man named Angelo Quinto died, after a police officer choked him by kneeling on his neck in Antioch, California. Both Hall and Quinto were suffering from mental-health episodes at the time. Officers claimed that Hall, who was standing on an overpass, pointed a gun in their direction. Quinto died as his family, who had called the police out of concern, looked on. Campaigns fighting for the officers to be held accountable fluidly align with the movement for Black lives, and the criticism of the criminal-justice system's overreach and potential for brutality.

The videos circulating now are more difficult to parse. In the case of the ninety-one-year-old who was injured in Oakland, the culprit was a man with what a judge called "significant mental-health issues" who seemed to target people indiscriminately. Local community leaders in the Bay Area warned against drawing overly simplistic conclusions from these incidents. "These crimes and violent situations that happen in Chinatown have been happening for a while," Alvina Wong, a director at the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, explained to the Oaklandside. The attack captured on video was one of more than twenty tallied by the president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce in a two-week span. We might instead read these videos as part of a larger set of stories. The gutting of local reporting and newspapers has made it harder for communities to stay informed about city politics and the conditions driving local crime. Economic policies that once extracted resources from cities have now caused them to gentrify and crowd out the poor, making enemies of neighboring communities. Mayors and politicians who don't at all fear losing the support of their Asian constituency rarely feel the need to proactively work on their behalf. Meanwhile, a tattered social safety net does little to help those struggling with mental health.

Some have wondered if these horrific, viral videos constitute a wave, or if they were just random incidents. When your concerns have gone unrecognized for decades, it's understandable why some within the Asian-American community remain so invested in using these highly visible moments as an opportunity to call attention to hate, even if the incidents seem more varied than that. The wave in question isn't just two or three incidents. It's a broader history that stretches past Trump and the pandemic. It's easy for these incidents to fade from memory. While digging through old articles about Kao, I realized that one of the first reported pieces I'd written, in 2000, was about anti-Asian violence on college campuses. The same month as Kao's killing, in 1997, a group of mostly Asian students were beaten up in the parking lot of a Denny's in Syracuse, after complaining that the staff seemed to be seating white customers first. The staff allegedly didn't intervene as a group of white patrons went outside and assaulted them, shouting racial slurs. A police officer who arrived on the scene reportedly said that it appeared to be nothing more than a parking-lot fight. The local D.A. declined to press charges. There were similar incidents at other colleges, and Asian-American advocacy groups questioned whether they were hate crimes. A few years prior, in the early nineties, Yoshi Hattori, a Japanese exchange student in Baton Rouge, had showed up at the wrong door for a Halloween party. The owner deemed him threatening-Hattori was dressed in a white suit, inspired by John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever"-and shot him dead. Hattori's shooter, Rodney Peairs, expressed remorse but was eventually acquitted, thanks to Louisiana's laws around self-defense in cases of trespass. Peairs's lawyers claimed that he and his wife felt threatened by Hattori's "kinetic," "antsy," and "scary" way of moving. Hattori's father surmised that his son was having trouble seeing anything, on account of a lost contact lens. His English wasn't strong, so Hattori may not have understood what Peairs was saying to him. He probably had no idea what was going on, or why this was happening, as he died.

These moments didn't coalesce into a movement. The assailants often got the benefit of the doubt and were let off scot-free. They have since been forgotten. Understanding this history won't bring back Ratanapakdee, Hall, or Quinto. A plea for context won't defuse tempers between strangers in the street. But nothing is random, even if the logic of American life tries to persuade us otherwise. These histories may help us see patterns that, eventually, others might see, too.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Muddled History of Anti-Asian Violence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On the evening of April 28, 1997, Kuan Chung Kao, a thirty-three-year-old Taiwan-born engineer, went to the Cotati Yacht Club near Rohnert Park, a quiet suburb in Sonoma County, California, where he lived with his wife and three children.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Danny Satow was walking home from a stroll around her neighborhood in Federal Way, a suburb just south of Seattle, when a heavy object slammed into her chest. A car whizzed by and a disembodied voice yelled a racial slur against Chinese people. The car melted into the rush of traffic, and Danny leaned over to pick up the liter of water that had hit her. Her collarbone stung, but she told herself it didn't matter, she was fine. She stood still on the sidewalk and tried to channel her grandmother.

Growing up in New York, Danny rarely felt bigotry because of her Japanese heritage. But in the house she shared with her grandparents in Brooklyn, the past engulfed her imagination. Her grandfather, Eisaku "Ace" Hiromura, barely spoke of his experiences in World War II, but the medals hanging on his wall told of combat with the 442 nd Infantry Regiment, a highly decorated unit of second-generation Japanese Americans. Her grandmother, Haruka "Alice" Kikuchi, regaled Danny with stories about being 20 years old and going to jitterbug dances held at the Tanforan Racetrack in California, where she and nearly 7,800 other Japanese-Americans were interred by the U.S. government. She and seven siblings slept on cots in horse stables.

Internment, she told her granddaughter, was a mistake. But she wasn't bitter. We need to do better, Alice would say.

So when the water bottle hit her chest and the slur rang out, Danny, a 33-year-old physician assistant, thought of the optimism and poise her grandmother had maintained through her 101 years and counting. She kept walking. She was four blocks from home, but she burst into tears before she got to the end of the street.

In the months since the coronavirus pandemic began, thousands of Asians in the U.S. have become targets of harassment and assault. The racist incidents began as the first cases of coronavirus spread across China last December and disinformation reigned. As infections appeared in the U.S., President Trump repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the "China virus" and "Chinese flu," and pushed a disproved theory that it had originated in a Chinese lab. By April an IPSOS poll found that three in 10 Americans blamed China or Chinese people for the virus.

For Asians in America, there is a new tension to daily life. Asian businesses and property have been vandalized with racist tags. Random individuals have been physically assaulted, verbally harassed, and shunned across the country. There's no official tally for how many incidents have occurred, but in late March, California Congresswoman Judy Chu estimated 100 hate crimes were being committed against Asian Americans each day.

This fear isn't new. In the past century and a half, the United States has made laws and national policies out of discrimination against ethnic groups, from the Chinese Exclusion Act to Japanese internment during World War II. Historians and activists fear that today's targeted political rhetoric and harassment mirrors moments in U.S. history when racism became state-sanctioned.

THE DISINFORMATION WAR

In mid-February, when there was only a single confirmed case of coronavirus in Los Angeles, a 16-year-old student was accused by another student of bringing the virus into his school from China. When he replied that he wasn't Chinese, his classmate punched him in the head 20 times. He ended up in the emergency room.

Manjusha Kulkarni was surprised. As the executive director of the Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council (A3PCON), a coalition of organizations that represents 1.5 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Los Angeles County, she has a deep knowledge of anti-Asian racism in America. So, she was surprised to even feel surprised. Compared to African Americans and Latinos, Asians experience overtly violent racism less frequently, she says. (In fact, the "model minority" stereotype often pits Asian Americans directly against other minorities.) Plus, this was in a school. And the virus hadn't yet gripped LA.

"So what does that say about the spread of the contagion of racism?" Kulkarni says. "It actually moves much more quickly than the disease."

As the incidents of harassment against Asians rose, A3PCON asked the California attorney general's office to collect data. It declined, so the organization built its own reporting pipeline. Within two weeks of launching on March 19, the Stop AAPI Hate tracker had received nearly 700 reports. From across the country, people described being spit on in grocery stores, yelled at on their jogs, and called racist names while waiting in line. (As of August, they have collected over 2,600 incidents.)

It would be a mistake to think of these as isolated incidents. There is a recipe for growing seeds of hatred into exclusionary national policy, Kulkarni says: Begin with political leadership that elevates the fear. Stir in media support. Top off with popular culture that perpetuates stereotypes.

"You really need that whole ecosystem, but it's very easy, when there are these underlying beliefs, for America to snap back into it," says Kulkarni. "It's a constant fight because these racist tropes are really part of the American fabric. They're more American than not."

A HISTORY OF EXCLUSION

In the past century and a half, the United States has enshrined discrimination against ethnic groups into laws and national policies. In the 1880s, "yellow peril"-fear of an Asian invasion and resentment of the cheap labor coming from China-paved the way for the Chinese Exclusion Act, banning both new immigrants and existing residents from becoming U.S. citizens. At the turn of the century, a rise in Indian immigration sparked "dusky peril," a fear of what a Washington newspaper then described as "Hinduhordes invading the state." By 1917, after decades of pressure from anti-immigrant movements like "100 percent Americanism," the Asiatic Barred Zone Act put a halt to most Indian and Asian immigration. It wasn't until the Immigration Act of 1965 that the race-specific barriers were removed.

During World War II, another perfect storm led to Japanese internment: Editors at newspapers like the Los Angeles Times voiced their support for the policy, while war propaganda depicted Asians as crafty and cunning. In one Dr. Seuss cartoon, rows of Japanese Americans line up on the West Coast to collect a brick of TNT. "Waiting for the signal from home..." the tagline says. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt ordered more than 120,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps.

In the 1980s, Asian communities in America starting mobilizing to fight for their civil rights. The trigger was a murder: In 1982, Chinese-American Vincent Chin was beaten to death by two white men a few days before his wedding. The men held him responsible for Japan's powerful auto industry at a time when America was losing manufacturing jobs.

After 9/11, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, many of whom were South Asian, documented scores of revenge-motivated crimes in the U.S. Among the first killed were Sikh gas station owner Balbir Singh Sodhi in Arizona, and Vasudev Patel and Waqar Hasan, two South Asians in Texas.

"Then you had the same thing you're seeing now," Kulkarni says. "Which is racist rhetoric employed by political figures, which then gets translated into extremely problematic policies."

Today, the Trump Administration has continued directing blame for the virus toward China. A 57-page memo by the National Republican Senatorial Committee included a talking point for politicians to argue that calling COVID-19 the "Chinese virus" isn't racist. In July, Trump claimed the Chinese government was "fully responsible for concealing the virus and unleashing it upon the world." The World Health Organization warns against associating diseases with specific locations, to prevent stigma and backlash.

The blame, Kulkarni says, is already rooted in the minds of many Americans. If racism wasn't simmering just under the surface, she adds, how would her tracker have collected so many incidents of violence and harassment within the first weeks of the pandemic?

The vast majority of incidents collected by the Stop API Hate tracker are not hate crimes. They are unlikely to be brought to court. The only way to combat them is through education and public policy.

"When you have some of these components that are in the soil, do you ever get them out completely?" Kulkarni asks. "No. You have to constantly till the land. You have to constantly cultivate something better."

THE NEW NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH

Three times a week, at 2 p.m., a small group of people in orange polo shirts bearing the hashtag "#Chinatownblockwatch" congregate at the intersection of Mott and Bayard, in the heart of Manhattan's Chinatown. The volunteers, who come from as far as Queens and Brooklyn, spend the next two hours crisscrossing the twisted streets of Chinese bakeries and dumpling joints, peering down side alleys, and generally making their presence known.

They offer a simple message: We're watching.

In January, as news of COVID-19 swirled, Karlin Chan started hearing rumors of Chinatown residents being harassed. Soon after, many stores were shuttered and streets grew quieter than ever. Chan, a full-time activist and advocate for crime victims, grew up in New York and knows his way around the streets. "I have a strict stand-your-ground policy," he says. He started patrolling. He posted about his patrols on social media and a few friends joined. Then, dozens of people started showing up.

Chan believes incidents of harassment are more common than reported, especially after he started looking into reports of hate crimes around the city a few years ago. Immigrants often don't know how to report a crime, or struggle with a language barrier, he says. Some prefer to stay off law enforcement's radar. Chan offers himself as a one-man shop: He'll encourage someone to make a police report, escort them to the station, and check on any unreported incidents he hears of. Without documentation, Chan says, there will be no resources or motivation to address racism.

"There's always been a systemic, official and unofficial exclusion for Chinese, and this pandemic brought the debate back up again," says Chan. "When they look for someone to blame, they blame the Chinese."

"We're acceptable," he adds. "We're never really accepted."

Chan's orange-shirted volunteers harken back to a time when neighbors had to watch out for each other. In the 1980s, vigilante crime fighters called the Guardian Angels patrolled New York's subways and seediest neighborhoods. Chan plans to continue the patrol, and envisions it as a permanent Chinatown fixture.

"When we begin to understand the economic impact [of COVID], that's when we'll see more harassment," Chan says. "Frustration turns to anger, and they're going to vent their anger at us."

A HISTORY DOOMED TO REPEAT ITSELF

America has been slow to acknowledge its anti-Asian history. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan apologized and paid restitution to survivors of Japanese internment camps. The Supreme Court ruling that enabled internment was overturned in 2018, and California apologized for its role earlier this year. In 2011, the U.S. Senate formally apologized for the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the House followed the next year.

But the full history is rarely part of public school education. "Part of the problem," says Adrian De Leon, an assistant professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, "is people saying this could never happen in America. The rest of us-whose communities have suffered this-can imagine it happening. That is the manufactured historical ignorance that allows this nativism, racism, and contemporary violence to fester."

In the current political posturing, De Leon hears a racist stereotype that stretches back a hundred years. Before the Chinese Exclusion Act, newspapers and politicianspointed to poor sanitation in Chinese neighborhoods and described new immigrants inundating American cities. These points were embraced to justify exclusion, though living conditions in immigrant neighborhoods were more often due to a lack of government services. "These white native activists would ascribe that uncleanliness to Chinese bodies, and say this was a threat to the nation," De Leon says.

Exclusionary policies and violence are often rooted in the threat of a rival global empire, says De Leon. Before World War II, the U.S. saw their interests in the Pacific at risk. Politically, he says, "the way the U.S. would frame a rising Asian superpower as a threat is then reflected onto people with that ethnic genealogy."

Current events, he says, are following a disturbingly familiar framework.

"The use of history is to learn from mistakes of the past. But in a twisted, perverse way, what we see is that the U.S. continues to repeat the same historical processes that developed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries."

REJECTED BY THEIR COUNTRY

In Federal Way, Washington, Danny Satow didn't leave her house for two weeks.

"I felt pretty ashamed that I was crying and running home, because my experience was so small compared to my grandparents' experiences," Satow says. "I felt I should have gotten over it and stayed strong instead of crumbling."

Her friends asked if she'd noted the license plate, but she hadn't. Her friends who also identify as Asian confided to her that they were "terrified," she recalls. "They're scared to leave the house and go to work." Stares and offhand comments they'd otherwise brush off felt more menacing. She didn't want to talk about it more, but they urged her to post about her experience on Facebook. With the tag "feeling worried," she described the incident and wrote: "Stand up for those being targeted online and in person. It can be difficult to take action when under attack. Help us all be safe." She also submitted an account of the incident to the AAPI.

Before the pandemic, Danny would visit her grandparents in their assisted living home in Vancouver, Washington,every couple of weeks. But the state was under lockdown. The incident had taken place on Easter-her grandfather's birthday. She wrestled with whether to tell them what happened. Would it upset them? Would it look insignificant compared to their wartime ordeal? She finally decided not to mention it.

Four generations of her family had lived in America. Three had grown up as Americans. Nearly 80 years had passed since her grandparents had fought to be accepted by a country that punished them for their ancestry. She thought about her grandfather leaving home in Portland, Oregon, to go to war for America as his entire family was shuttled into internment camps. "They considered themselves Americans," says Danny. "But they were fighting alongside people who viewed them as the enemy."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
America's long history of scapegoating its Asian citizens

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When leaders call COVID-19 the "China virus," it harkens back to decades of state-sanctioned discrimination against Asian Americans.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Below you'll find resources that have been gathered to help individuals educate others, take action, donate, and more.

Anti-Asian racism and violent attacks on Asian elderly have only increased in recent months. Since COVID-19 became news in the United States, hate speech and violence against the AAPI community has run rampant. In February 2021, attacks, particularly on elderly Asian Americans, have spiked. Unfortunately, many of these incidents are not being reported and are invisible to major media outlets. We hope to change this by offering the following resources with our community. Please join us in taking action whether it's by educating yourself and others around you or donating to non-profit organizations.

Statistics

40% of U.S. adults believe "it has become more common for people to express racist views toward Asians since the pandemic began" (Source: Pew Research) More than 1,800 racist incidents against Asian Americans were reported between March and May of 2020, according to a United Nations Report (Source: CBS News) By late April, a coalition of Asian-American groups that had created a reporting center called Stop AAPI Hate, said it had received almost 1,500 reports of incidents of racism, hate speech, discrimination, and physical attacks against Asians and Asian-Americans. (Source: Human Rights Watch)

newest updates

"...He was pretty much fed up, and kind of at [the] end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did," Capt Jay Baker of the Cherokee County sheriff's office. (Source: The Hill)

This "bad day" ended the lives of 8 individuals and permanently changed the lives of their families.
Say their names. Share their stories.

soon c. park, 74
suncha kim, 69
yong a. yue, 63
hyun j. grant, 51
xiaojie tan, 49
delaina yaun, 33
daoyou feng, 44
paul andre michels, 54

(Source: The washington post)

Resources to educate

allyship

Donate

Report an Incident

mental health

More action

Corporate Statements

haapi erg | flexport
( Made with Carrd )

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Anti-Asian racism and violent attacks on Asian elderly have only increased in recent months. Since COVID-19 became news in the United States, hate speech and violence against the AAPI community has run rampant. In February 2021, attacks, particularly on elderly Asian Americans, have spiked. Unfortunately, many of these

# data[].attributes.body
Violence Against Asian Americans: How Do We Support the Children?

# data[].attributes.body
Free Bystander intervention trainings coming up

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Check out our book, written by the Right To Be team, for you.

Order a copy of our first book, I've Got Your Back: The Indispensable Guide to Stopping Harassment When You See It by Emily May and Jorge Arteaga. I've Got Your Back will take you through the 5Ds of bystander intervention: Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, and Direct, with each chapter diving deeply into how to put these 5Ds in action - whether you witness harassment in public, online, or at work.

I've Got Your Back is an invaluable resource in creating a new vision for our communities - one where we stand up for our neighbors, and our neighbors stand up for us.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
harassment training requirements by state

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Right To Be is empowering everyone to create a world without harassment and filled with humanity.

# data[].attributes.body
Online trainings including facing AAPI Race-based harassment, bystander intervention, and more

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Public health is self-defense! IMPACT Bay Area is offering online classes to empower the community during the pandemic. From using your voice to expanding your self-care toolkit, we are here to help you and your loved ones grow your safety and confidence while remaining safe at home in support of public health. Sign up for one of our upcoming classes below (more dates added regularly).

When deciding to enroll and participate, we encourage you to keep in mind that online classes are open to the public and therefore less of a controlled environment than in-person classes. We believe confidentiality is an important part of safety, and your instructors will talk more about this in the session.
Suggested donation: $10-30, no one turned away for lack of funds
IMPACT believes self-defense is for everyone, regardless of ability to pay. As a small nonprofit that has had to cancel all in-person classes since March, any donation is meaningful at this time. If you are in a position to offer financial support, we suggest a tax-deductible donation of $10-30 per class.

This one-hour class provides an overview of IMPACT Bay Area's approach to personal safety! In this class, students develop intuition, situational awareness, congruent body language, and verbal skills to deescalate and deter assault and harassment, as well as learn two simple and effective physical techniques.

Suggested donation (click here to donate): $10-30, no one turned away for lack of funds.

Thursday, July 16, 2020 at 06:00 PM

Register here
This two-hour workshop focuses on preventing stranger and peer violence while empowering students to understand, respect, and defend their own boundaries. Students have the opportunity to practice verbal boundary setting with strangers as well as people they know. Students learn to honor their own intuition, set and defend their boundaries, and gain increased confidence and safety skills. This class is open to participants of all genders ages 12-16.

Suggested donation (click here to donate): $10-30, no one turned away for lack of funds.

Saturday, July 18, 2020 at 12:00 PM

Space is limited, pre-registration required: Register here
This 90-minute class will introduce strategies that can be helpful in the face of race-based harassment like adrenaline management, de-escalation, and verbal boundary setting, as well as bystander intervention. This class is for AAPI identified and presenting individuals. Registration required, limited to 25 participants in each class.

Suggested donation (click here to donate): $10-30, no one turned away for lack of funds.

Saturday, July 25, 2020 at 01:00 PM

This 90-minute class will provide an introduction to verbal strategies that can be used to address situations that may arise in everyday life. We will cover boundary setting, deescalation, and bystander intervention strategies and provide some opportunities to practice.

Suggested donation (click here to donate): $10-30, no one turned away for lack of funds.

Tuesday, July 28, 2020 at 06:00 PM

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Public health is self-defense! IMPACT Bay Area is offering online classes to empower the community during the pandemic. From using your voice to expanding your self-care toolkit, we are here to help you and your loved ones grow your safety and confidence while remaining safe at home in support of public health.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Amidst the increase in anti-Asian rhetoric, bullying in schools, racist incidents, scapegoating and hate crimes impacting Asian and Asian American people, this is an important opportunity to have conversations with young people about the history of violence and injustice. In addition, this time also provides an opening to engage students in learning more about the history and background of the AAPI community and how to act as an ally when you see, witness or experience bias and injustice.

The following resources for students, schools, classrooms and families can help to open those conversations.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Challenging Anti-Asian Bias and Acting as an Ally

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Amidst the increase in anti-Asian rhetoric, bullying in schools, racist incidents, scapegoating and hate crimes impacting Asian and Asian American people, this is an important opportunity to have conversations with young people about the history of violence and injustice.