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NBC News

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Julián Castro, a Mexican-American, is running for president. Latin music is more popular than country music, and one of the most recognizable political faces in the United States is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., whose family comes from Puerto Rico.

And yet, Latinos - even those whose roots in this land stretch back to before the nation's origins - still face overt and subtle racism and discrimination. Hate crimes against them are rising, and they are underrepresented in film, in high-tech jobs and in the federal government workforce. And when they advocate for equal treatment and representation - or even when they just speak Spanish in public - they hear over and over that they need to assimilate.

Two U.S.-born Latino women were detained by a Border Patrol agent last May for simply speaking Spanish in a convenience store; the American Civil Liberties Union recently sued U.S. Customs and Border Protection over that. The former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, said last year that Central Americans crossing the border are "not people who would easily assimilate." NBC journalist Tom Brokaw recently said Hispanics "should work harder at assimilation," and should make sure their children learn to speak English.

There is an ingrained perception among many white people that all Latinos are foreign no matter how long they've been in the United States or how "assimilated" they are, said Ian Haney López, an expert on racism and a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

"Many whites view us as 'foreign' when measured against white people, both in terms of physical and cultural differences, and then collapse that into the assumption that we're foreign in the national sense as well," said López, the author of "Racism on Trial: The Chicano Fight for Justice."

The majority of Hispanics are U.S.-born and Latino immigration has been declining markedly in the last decade. Yet some Hispanics whose family roots in America date back centuries are still asked, especially if they have dark skin, where their family is from.

"How many times have people complimented to you on your ability to speak English, as if that's an accomplishment because your skin is brown and you have a Latino surname?" López said.

A bounty of research debunks the idea that Latinos are not integrated into American society: Latino immigrants, like other immigrant groups, are completely English dominant by the third generation; their economic mobility rate is almost equal to that of whites; and Hispanics are more likely to marry outside their group than blacks or whites.

Disparities do remain, but those who tell Latinos to assimilate often fail to acknowledge the centuries of exclusion, racism and systemic discrimination that have slowed Latinos' economic and social mobility. Racism puts up practical roadblocks to integration and participation, preventing Latinos from being accepted as "assimilated," experts said.

Foreigners in their own land

The denial of basic rights to Latinos on U.S. soil - particularly those of Mexican descent - has a long history.

When the Mexican-American War ended in 1848, vast lands of Mexico became part of the United States. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed full rights of U.S. citizenship for Mexicans who were living in that land before it was partitioned, including property rights.

But those protections were quickly ignored. The former Mexican citizens who became Americans, including many who were ranch owners, soon lost landholdings and status to new white settlers who regarded them as inferior.

Layered through this is a history of racial violence - including lynchings - against Hispanics.

In 1848, John C. Calhoun, a South Carolina senator and slave owner, protested the incorporation of the northern Mexico territories, saying that the United States was a government of the white race. Calhoun said treating Mexicans equally would be an error similar to those that had destroyed "social arrangements" in other countries, Ray Suarez, a former PBS correspondent, wrote in his book, "Latino-Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation."

Such thinking has continued in America over the past two centuries. It's part of what Indiana University political science professor Bernard Fraga describes as a "push and pull" for Latinos who are told that to get more rights they have to assimilate.

"Assimilate is the excuse we use when opportunity is denied," said Fraga, author of "The Turnout Gap: Race, Ethnicity and Political Inequality in a Diversifying America."

The Mexican-American civil rights movement traces its origins to a moment when that excuse hit a breaking point: when World War II veterans returned from combat and were denied equal treatment. The Chicano soldiers' contributions are still not fully recognized.

Obstacles to the American dream

The narrative that Latinos are choosing not to take their place in American society does not take into account the pushback they face when they try to do so. Today, for example, Latino voters are described as a sleeping giant with the potential to make a major political impact if only they went out and voted.

But this argument fails to include the attempts that can make it harder for Latinos to vote, whether through strict voter ID laws or recent attempts to question voters who are on the rolls. Gerrymandering, the drawing of electoral district lines to keep particular groups together, has packed growing Hispanic populations into fewer districts, diluting their voting strength. (In Texas, this has been called "packing and cracking," concentrating Hispanics in a few Democratic districts and distributing the rest in safe Republican districts.)

Belief in the American Dream is strong among Latinos, a third of whom consider home ownership key to achieving it, according to Pew Research Center.

Yet a recent report found that in Iowa City, Iowa, Latinos were denied home loans four times more often than whites, the biggest disparity in the country. This adds to the wealth gap between whites and Latinos because most families' net worth comes from their homes and their equity.

Exclusion may not be intentional or obvious, but it still has a discriminatory effect, said Joe Enriquez Henry, national adviser to the president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation's oldest Latino civil rights organization.

"Loan officers at banks can and do make the false assumption that Latino consumers are unable to qualify for mortgages or maintain loan payments," said Enriquez Henry, who is also a real estate agent. "Many in our community may not utilize credit as much as the white community, but are clearly able to pay mortgages."

While now illegal, redlining (the denial of mortgages in particular racial or ethnic communities) and discriminatory lending has had long-lasting effects, creating racially segregated Latino neighborhoods in cities such as Hartford, Connecticut, and restricting Hispanic mobility across the nation, according to research reported in The Washington Post.

Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (Maldef), a legal and civil rights organization, points to other ways in which Latinos have encountered discrimination.

Motel 6 agreed to pay up to $8.9 million last year to settle the lawsuit the fund filed against the motel chain for reporting guests to Immigration and Customs Enforcement based on their Spanish surname. Abercrombie and Fitch paid $50 million in 2004 to settle a lawsuit brought by Maldef and other groups for refusing to hire minorities. The retailer wanted its salespeople to look like their "all-American" models who were white, Saenz said.

English only, unless you aren't Latino

When it comes to language, many Latinos see a double standard.

"It is a deficit when you speak Spanish, but it's an asset to whites and white Americans when they speak it," said scholar and educator Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, who documented racism in the criminal justice system in her book, "Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court." "This is the ultimate form of exclusion."

Latinos feel that if they speak Spanish, they're perceived as being unassimilated, new to the country or uneducated - stereotypes that do not apply to non-Latino whites who can speak other languages, including Spanish.

In education, there is a growing discussion over the disparity between the way school systems see programs for Spanish-speaking children - where the emphasis is on teaching English - and bilingual programs, which are increasingly popular for non-Latino, wealthier families who want their children to learn a new language.

The labels and codes 'won't go away'

Van Cleve, who is from Chicago and has family in the Mexican border town of Mission, Texas, grew up hearing relatives' stories reflecting the difficulty Latinos face. "Even when you do everything right to 'Americanize,' there's something about America to remind you, you are not one of them," she said.

Her uncle, who has dark skin and was born in the U.S., told her he was stopped all the time by law enforcement and asked for his documents because "how he looked was more important than how he assimilated," Van Cleve said. She said he would explain it to her by saying, "I just look illegal."

One way to counter stereotypes is through the presence of more Latinos in the media, especially on news talk shows, a goal long advocated by many Hispanics and organizations. The absence is glaring, said Maldef's Saenz, despite the fact that Hispanics in the judiciary, universities, corporations and in journalism can counter stereotypes and inaccuracies and "can inform the ignorance."

This is especially important because many Americans live in states without substantial Latino populations, and a lack of Hispanics in the media leaves a vacuum that can be filled with "false negative images and rhetoric," Saenz added.

Some Hispanics see progress in the way that the public focus on Ocasio-Cortez or on "Hamilton" creator Lin-Manuel Miranda is on their achievements - not their ethnicity.

Ultimately, though, the perception of Hispanics as outsiders is not going away anytime soon, Van Cleve said.

The newest Latinos to this country, and those coming here seeking refuge, for example, are regularly labeled as "illegal" or lumped with drug dealers or gang members, rather than being seen as vulnerable, she noted.

"We're seeing a rise, almost a backlash, against the post-racial lie that we thought we were in, when we could not quote-unquote ' see color,'" Van Cleve said. "Race, darkness, skin type, all the things that label people, our bodies, our hair, an accent, culture, all the codes we've been trained in America to see, cannot and will not go away."
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Racism, not a lack of assimilation, is the real problem facing Latinos in America

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Arguments that Latinos don't assimilate, which has been disproved by a bounty of research, don't take into account centuries of racism, exclusion and discrimination, according to experts.

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Newsela

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Newsela | How "Black Lives Matter" became a U.S. protest cry

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What began as a hashtag has become a nationwide movement called Black Lives Matter.

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TedTalk

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Racism has a cost for everyone | Heather C. McGhee

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Black and Asian Americans experiencing Discrimination among the Pandemic

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Black and Asian Americans experiencing Discrimination among the Pandemic

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Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends Project

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The coronavirus outbreak continues to have far-reaching health and economic consequences for the American public. But for many, especially Black and Asian Americans, the effects extend beyond medical and financial concerns. About four-in-ten Black and Asian adults say people have acted as if they were uncomfortable around them because of their race or ethnicity since the beginning of the outbreak, and similar shares say they worry that other people might be suspicious of them if they wear a mask when out in public, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Black and Asian Americans are also more likely than their white and Hispanic counterparts to say they have been subject to slurs or jokes because of their race or ethnicity, but Asian adults are the most likely to say this has happened to them since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak. About three-in-ten Asian adults (31%) say they have been subject to slurs or jokes because of their race or ethnicity since the outbreak began, compared with 21% of Black adults, 15% of Hispanic adults and 8% of white adults. This aligns with some reports of incidents of discrimination against Asian Americans since the virus outbreak first emerged in China and then started spreading in the United States.

At the same time, about half of Black Americans (51%) say they have heard expressions of support because of their race or ethnicity since the coronavirus outbreak; about three-in-ten Hispanic (29%) and Asian (28%) adults say the same. The survey was conducted during a time when demonstrations continued across the country to protest the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed while in Minneapolis police custody.

Beyond the personal experiences of various groups, about four-in-ten U.S. adults (39%) say it is more common for people to express racist or racially insensitive views about people who are Asian than it was before the coronavirus outbreak, while 30% say it has become more common for people to express these views toward people who are Black. Smaller shares say that, compared with before the outbreak, it is more common for people to express racist or racially insensitive views about people who are Hispanic (19%) or white (14%). Asian Americans, who account for 6% of the U.S. population, are the fastest growing major racial or ethnic group in the U.S. Hispanics make up 18% of the population overall, while Black Americans are 12%.

A majority of Asian adults (58%) say it is more common for people to express racist or racially insensitive views about people who are Asian than it was before the coronavirus outbreak; roughly four-in-ten white, Black and Hispanic adults say this is more common now. A sizable share of Black adults (45%) also say it is more common for people to express racist views about Black people than before the outbreak, more than the shares of white, Hispanic and Asian adults who say the same.

These are among the findings of a Pew Research Center survey of 9,654 U.S. adults conducted from June 4-10, 2020, using the Center's American Trends Panel.

Asian and Black Americans are more likely to report adverse experiences due to their race or ethnicity since the pandemic began

About four-in-ten Asian (39%) and Black (38%) adults - and 27% of Hispanic adults - say someone has acted uncomfortable around them because of their race or ethnicity since the coronavirus outbreak. Only 13% of white adults say this has happened to them.

When asked about other negative situations they may have experienced because of their race or ethnicity since the pandemic, Asian and Black adults are more likely than Hispanic and white adults to say that they have been the subject of slurs or jokes or feared someone might threaten or physically attack them because of their race or ethnicity.

Asian Americans are more likely than any other group to say they have been subject to slurs or jokes because of their race or ethnicity since the coronavirus outbreak: 31% say this has happened to them, compared with 21% of Black adults, 15% of Hispanic adults and 8% of white adults. About a quarter (26%) of Asian Americans and 20% of Black Americans say they feared someone might threaten or physically attack them, more than the shares of white and Hispanic Americans.

Black adults younger than 50 are more likely than older Black adults to say they have had each of these experiences. For example, 44% of Black adults in the younger age group say people have acted as if they were uncomfortable around them since the pandemic began, compared with 30% of Black adults ages 50 and older. About three-in-ten Black adults under 50 (28%) say they have feared someone might threaten or physically attack them (vs. 9% of older Black adults) and 25% say they have been subject to slurs or jokes because of their race or ethnicity since the coronavirus outbreak (vs. 15%).

Black men (49%) are more likely than Black women (31%) to say someone acted as if they were uncomfortable around them. Black men are also more likely to say they have feared being threatened or physically attacked because of their race or ethnicity (27% vs. 15% of Black women).

The survey also asked about expressions of support since the coronavirus outbreak. About half of Black adults (51%) say someone has expressed support for them because of their race or ethnicity during this period, more than any other racial group. In particular, younger Black adults say they received this support (55% vs. 44% among those ages 50 and older). This survey was conducted at a time when Americans were following news coverage of George Floyd's killing while in custody of Minneapolis police nearly as closely as they were following news related to COVID-19.

About four-in-ten Black Americans (42%) and 36% of Asian Americans say they worry a great deal or a fair amount that other people might be suspicious of them because of their race or ethnicity if they wear a mask or face covering when in stores or other businesses. About a quarter of Hispanic adults (23%) and just 5% of white adults say they worry about this.

Despite these concerns, majorities of Black (69%) and Asian (80%) adults - as well as white (62%) and Hispanic (74%) adults - say they've worn a mask or a face covering all or most of the time in the past month when out in stores or other businesses.

Black men and women are about equally likely to say they worry that other people might be suspicious of them because of their race or ethnicity if they wear a mask or a face covering in stores or other businesses. About four-in-ten in each group say they worry at least a fair amount, with 21% of Black men and 16% of Black women saying they worry a great deal (this 5 percentage point difference is not statistically significant).

Concern among Black adults varies considerably by age. About half of Black Americans younger than 50 (51%) say they worry about people being suspicious of them because of their race or ethnicity if they wear a mask or face covering; 30% of Black adults ages 50 and older say the same.

Three-in-ten or more U.S. adults say racist views about Asian and Black Americans are more common than before the pandemic

A majority of Asian Americans (58%) and 45% of Black Americans say that it is more common for people to express racist views toward their group since the coronavirus outbreak. Smaller shares of Hispanic (21%) and white (18%) Americans say the same about people expressing racist views toward people who are Hispanic or white, respectively.

Age and education are linked to differing perceptions of whether racist views toward Asians are now more common. About half of younger adults ages 18 to 29 (51%) say that racist views about Asian people are more common now since the coronavirus outbreak, compared with about four-in-ten or fewer among those in older age groups. Those with college degrees or more (47%) also are more likely than those with some college or less education (35%) to say the same.

Democrats and those who lean Democratic (52%) are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners (25%) to say that it is more common for people to express racist views about Asian Americans since the coronavirus outbreak. This partisan gap is narrower when it comes to views about whether it is now more common for people to express racist views about people who are Black (33% of Democrats vs. 27% of Republicans say this) or Hispanic (18% vs. 8%). Meanwhile, Republicans (23%) are more likely than Democrats (16%) to say that it is more common for people to express racially insensitive views about white people.

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Neil G. Ruiz, Juliana Menasce Horowitz and Christine Tamir

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Many Black and Asian Americans Say They Have Experienced Discrimination Amid the COVID-19 Outbreak

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About four-in-ten Black and Asian adults say people have acted as if they were uncomfortable around them because of their race or ethnicity since the beginning of the outbreak, and similar shares say they worry that other people might be suspicious of them if they wear a mask when out in public, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

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National Geographic

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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."

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America's long history of scapegoating its Asian citizens

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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.

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Teens find that Islamophobia does not just come from adults.

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Black Lives Matter Protests Around the World

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Washington Post

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Newsela

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Newsela | Kids exposed to racism have higher risk of depression and sickness

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Newsela

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Newsela | Racism declared public health issue in 145 cities and counties across 27 states

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The American Public Health Association, which tracks declarations of racism as a public health issue, counts 145 across 27 states - up from seven in 2019.

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Newsela

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Racism towards Asian Americans amid COVID

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Racism towards Asian Americans amid COVID

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Newsela

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Newsela

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Newsela | "Speak up!" - "Sesame Street" tackles racism in TV special