# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
April is National Poetry Month, a celebration of poets and poetry that's been in place for 25 years.

Last month, as the U.S. grieved over attacks against Asian Americans, NPR's Morning Edition collected poems on how people grapple with the increased violence and discrimination.

Over 500 listeners shared powerful, poignant poems - in the form of a list beginning with the word "today." They showcased fear, anger, empathy and motivation to make the world a better place.

NPR's resident poet Kwame Alexander took lines from the submissions to create a community poem, "Today, I Am A Witness To Change." Contributors are credited at the bottom.
Today, I Am A Witness To Change
Today, I wake up tired
a tiredness that plagues me
soft grey hues, contrasting over a grieving landscape,
filled with many frigid hearts.

Today, I ache
I lay in the pre-dawn
Moonshadows on my window blinds
Contented kittens purring at my side.
On the radio, news of greater challenges
Challenges that require more than I can handle alone

An Asian-American died because of hate.
a child lost his mother.
Today we mourn
I cry and pray for the world.
I want the attacks to be called what they are: Terrorism.

Today I feel we need more than conversation
Let us take more than a moment of silence
Let us find our humanity
Let us remember
Let us take action

Today I hesitate
for the first time, I wonder if I should stay home and not walk the neighborhood.
it's not the weather or the virus - the day is beautiful
Today
I'm frozen
Terrified.
I cannot hide
This skin
This hair
These eyes.
I see the punch, punch, punch of a community at war.
Today I am a witness.
I rush past the jeering white boys that say I brought corona to America.
My soul is wary.

Today, a video call full of empty boxes
Stares at me, apprehensively.
Students locked behind a screen
Their hearts and minds
Severed
From one another.

Today, the headlines say March Madness
Today, I don't watch basketball.
The madness is in the streets.
In broad daylight.
On the concrete sidewalks of New York.
In the silence of bystanders.
It's in the textbooks. The classrooms. The family dinners. The lies we tell.

Today the rain falls
and falls
and falls
and falls.
a silent tear from a weeping woman.
Today, I will say their names
I will cancel class and try again tomorrow.

Today, a Chinese man travels back in time.
The hateful and racist words hurled at a lonely child emerges from buried memories
Today I offer a slice of my own wounded soul
to graft a love patch
A patchwork piece for a more perfect union

Today, I think about my best friend's Korean Mom,
if it was her kicked to the ground
in New York,
or punched in California,
or shot in Georgia.

Today I remember the idea
of America
as a melting pot
the past twelve years
looking over my shoulder
watching my back

The Steak and Shake waitress in 2006
Who outright refused to wait on me
Who threw the menu
In great disdain

The young woman in Alum Creek
Who was with her boyfriend
who Threw a stone at me
Because I was doing my Tai Chi
At the top of the 116 steps
That I loved to go up and down

I want to be somewhere
and nowhere at once
I cringe at our disunity
I stand back in awe of the never diminishing divisiveness
I cry for the misunderstood and those that misunderstand

Today I tell my youngest child that
when I was a child
I wished I was white
I was silent
I allowed people around me to mispronounce my name

Today the dragon bends
From western winds
Blown hot from valleys deep.
Scorched skies belie the spring.
Heads bowed. All weep.
Outside my window, the daughter bends to examine the fish in the pond,
slowly gliding out of their winter torpor. Her name means
celebration in Chinese. It also means blessing.

Today I remember the sacrifices of my grandmother
Her steely eyes that shed many tears
Her small, sinewy hands that clung to her children
Her diminutive feet that leapt over the ocean
Today, I will use her strength that courses through my veins.

Today I am witness to change
As I sit inside our bookstore,
arranging the carefully printed and bound
words of so many voices
I wonder who will welcome the truth

The Joy Luck Club
The Hungry Tide
Prairie Lotus
Pachinko
The Namesake

So many words
Each leaving an imprint
Like a grain of rice
Stockpiled and cataloged
knowledge gleaned, gathered
Empathy enhanced

Today I will ferry you across the troubled waters.
hold you close, in any way you crave.

Today, I think not only of the cold ignorance of man
but the small ember of warmth we transfer when we love.

Today, I rise.

Today, we stop telling lies.

I will stand.
I will speak.

I will stand.
I will speak.

Today, I will return to normal
Attending church
eating out
walking
being
because Today
we will persevere

This community poem was created using submissions by:

Frankie Wood-Black, Ponca City, Okla.

Andrew Ensor, Knoxville, Tenn.

Todd Gardner, Tallahassee, Fla.

Jessie Bergamini, League City, Texas

Therese Glowacki, Boulder, Colo.

Rosa Nam, Houston

Veronica Crane-Lindsey, Asheville, N.C.

Ernest Wong, Broomfield, Colo.

Ali Stephens, Bossier City, La.

Andrew Adams, Effingham, Ill.

Joshua Grove, Oregon City, Ore.

Matt Harr, Marietta, Ga.

Thazin Nu, Columbus, Ohio

Lisa Burgess, Kansas City, Mo.

Heidi Pennington, Harrisonburg, Va.

Anita Rao, Oakland, Calif.

Amanda Ladish, Fayetteville, Ariz.

Michelle Alumkal, Beacon, N.Y.

Christopher Standish, Windsor, Conn.

Rebecca Dodge, Midland, Texas

Sueño LeBlond, Brattleboro, Vt.

Chiara Andres, San Francisco

Lesly Sanocki, Beaverton, Ore.

Sydney Cottongim, Milwaukee, Wisc.

Sherwin Kendall, Deltona, Fla.

Marilyn Temkin, New York City

Lyn Pyle, Honolulu, Hawaii

Susan Mcclellan, Pittsburgh, Pa.

Kundai Chikowero, Goleta, Calif.

Karen Tan Hanson, Minneapolis

Donna Joyner, New Bern, N.C.

Natalie Truong, Davis, Calif.

Kari Cameron, Churchville, N.Y.

Jane Ujhazi, Bandon, Ore.

Christine P San Mateo, Calif.

Tim McCarthy, Fox Point, Wisc.

Wendy Tang, San Francisco

Unhei Chong, Washington, D.C.
Marc Rivers and Reena Advani produced and edited the audio story. Casey Noenickx produced for the Web.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Today, I Am A Witness To Change': A Crowdsourced Poem Against Anti-Asian Hate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
NPR's resident poet Kwame Alexander created a community poem from submissions that reflected on increased violence and discrimination against Asian Americans.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Life Story: Patsy Mink (1927-2002) Congresswoman and Equal Rights Supporter The story of a 12-term Japanese-American congresswoman from Hawaii and coauthor of Title IX. Patsy Takemoto Poster Patsy Takemoto

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Surviving Internment Illustrations by Miné Okubo, a Japanese American artist who lived at Topaz concentration camp for almost two years. Miné Okubo stands with hands resting on newspaper surrounded

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Anna May Wong was a Chinese American woman who achieved international fame as a film actor despite racism and stereotyping.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Life Story: Edith Maude Eaton, aka Sui Sin Far (1865-1914) Fostering Cultural Understanding through Writing The story of a half-Chinese, half-British immigrant who used her talent as a writer to raise awareness about the unfair treatment of Chinese Americans in the era of Exclusion.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Women & the American Story: Chien-Shiung Wu, Physicist and Manhattan Project Contributor

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Asia Society is the leading educational organization dedicated to promoting mutual understanding and strengthening partnerships among peoples, leaders and institutions of Asia and the United States in a global context.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Standing Together Against Hate
March 24, 2021
Even as we try to take in and understand the tragic news of the March 23, 2021 shooting in Boulder, Colorado, the Smithsonian Institution mourns the loss of eight people-seven of them women, six of whom were of Asian descent-who were killed when a gunman opened fire inside three spas located in Georgia. We extend our condolences and stand in compassion with the families and friends of Daoyou Feng, Delaina Ashley Yaun González, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Tan, Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, and Yong Ae Yue; and we share in the sorrow and outrage expressed by Asian American community members nationwide. It is clear that this is a tragedy at the confluence of misogyny and racism directed toward Asian and Asian American women.

History is replete with examples of heritage and gender being used as an excuse to dehumanize and isolate people. Asian and Asian American women have long been the victims of objectifying and degrading stereotypes, based on notions of dominance over people, places, and bodies. Such objectification denies them their dignity, their agency, and their humanity, making them particularly vulnerable to acts of violence.

At the Smithsonian, we condemn xenophobia, misogyny, and racial and gendered violence. Reaching for real systemic change, however, requires an unpacking of the entangled systems that perpetuate oppression. To these ends, the Smithsonian collaborates with communities and acknowledges the work of colleagues who are counteracting exploitative narratives and practices, uplifting marginalized voices, and sharing in the work of community care.

Organizations such as the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum , Red Canary Song, Georgia NAACP , and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta are among the many in Georgia grappling very directly with this tragedy. In support of critical work happening at the local level and in keeping with our mission to diffuse and increase knowledge, the Smithsonian offers educational resources and direct learning opportunities that we hope can contribute to deconstructing systemic oppression and affirm the dignity of all people. Through our scholarship, collecting, educational programming, training, and exhibitions, we will continue working to bridge communities and foster understanding and respect.

Lonnie G. Bunch III, Secretary, Smithsonian Institution,
and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center

In solidarity with:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Standing Together | Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
March 24, 2021 Even as we try to take in and understand the tragic news of the March 23, 2021 shooting in Boulder, Colorado, the Smithsonian Institution mourns the loss of eight people-seven of them women, six of whom were of Asian descent-who were killed when a gunman opened fire inside three spas located in Georgia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Asian Americans
At the turn of the new millennium, the national conversation turns to immigration, race, and economic disparity. As the U.S becomes more diverse, yet more divided, a new generation of Asian Americans tackle the question, how do we as a nation move forward together?

Aired: 05/12/20

Expires: 06/23/20

Rating: TV-14

Problems Playing Video? Report a Problem |

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Asian Americans | Part 3: Breaking Through

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Asian Americans At the turn of the new millennium, the national conversation turns to immigration, race, and economic disparity. As the U.S becomes more diverse, yet more divided, a new generation of Asian Americans tackle the question, how do we as a nation move forward together?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Asian Americans
During a time of war and social tumult, a young generation fights for equality in the fields, on campuses and in the culture, and claim a new identity: Asian Americans. The war's aftermath brings new immigrants and refugees who expand the population and the definition of Asian America.

Aired: 05/12/20

Expires: 06/19/21

Rating: TV-14

Problems Playing Video? Report a Problem |

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Asian Americans During a time of war and social tumult, a young generation fights for equality in the fields, on campuses and in the culture, and claim a new identity: Asian Americans. The war's aftermath brings new immigrants and refugees who expand the population and the definition of Asian America.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Asian Americans
During the Cold War years, Asian Americans are simultaneously heralded as a Model Minority and targeted as the perpetual foreigner. It is also a time of bold ambition, as Asian Americans aspire for the first time to national political office and a coming culture-quake simmers beneath the surface.

Aired: 05/12/20

Expires: 06/12/21

Rating: TV-PG

Problems Playing Video? Report a Problem |

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Asian Americans During the Cold War years, Asian Americans are simultaneously heralded as a Model Minority and targeted as the perpetual foreigner. It is also a time of bold ambition, as Asian Americans aspire for the first time to national political office and a coming culture-quake simmers beneath the surface.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Asian Americans
An American-born generation straddles their country of birth and their parents' homelands. CORRECTION: Certain errors in a previous version of this program have been corrected, including the statement that the Core Civic South Texas Family Residential Center separates children from their families, which is not the case, and the erroneous use of a photo of a different facility.

Aired: 05/12/20

Expires: 06/05/21

Rating: TV-PG

Problems Playing Video? Report a Problem |

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Asian Americans An American-born generation straddles their country of birth and their parents' homelands. CORRECTION: Certain errors in a previous version of this program have been corrected, including the statement that the Core Civic South Texas Family Residential Center separates children from their families, which is not the case, and the erroneous use of a photo of a different facility.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Asian Americans
In an era of exclusion and U.S. empire, new immigrants arrive from China, India, Japan, the Philippines and beyond. Barred by anti-Asian laws they become America's first "undocumented immigrants," yet they build railroads, dazzle on the silver screen, and take their fight for equality to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Aired: 05/11/20

Expired: 06/23/20

Rating: TV-14

Problems Playing Video? Report a Problem |

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Asian Americans In an era of exclusion and U.S. empire, new immigrants arrive from China, India, Japan, the Philippines and beyond. Barred by anti-Asian laws they become America's first "undocumented immigrants," yet they build railroads, dazzle on the silver screen, and take their fight for equality to the U.S. Supreme Court.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A podcast for the modern day Asian American woman hosted by Melody Cheng, Helen Wu, & Janet Wang. It's no secret that Asian women are lacking in almost all media outlets, and those who are present mostly represent the fashion, beauty, or blogging industries. We started ABG as girlfriends while balancing jobs in finance, technology, & media with corporate careers spanning over a decade. Here, we share our experiences and explore topics as 20/30 something Asian American women working, dating, and living in LA, CA. Grab a glass of wine and let's get this show started ;)

A podcast for the modern day Asian American woman hosted by Melody Cheng, Helen Wu, & Janet Wang. It's no secret that Asian women are lacking in almost all media outlets, and those who are present mostly represent the fashion, beauty, or blogging industries. We started ABG as girlfriends while balancing jobs in finance, technology, & media with corporate careers spanning over a decade. Here, we share our experiences and explore topics as 20/30 something Asian American women working, dating, and living in LA, CA. Grab a glass of wine and let's get this show started ;)

Stories of Asian American Experience

I love this show so much and appreciate this episode from 2020 about hate so much. Particularly the unpacking of intersectional response and how to mobilize in ways that support or protect all BIPOC. Thank you so so much.
I'm wondering if anyone is doing something akin to the GirlTrek Black History podcast that tells the stories of individual AAPI to name the challenge and celebrate so many of the leaders here in US Asian communities.

Keep it up!

I enjoy listening to the stories you share and see your growths through out your journey in life as a part of this podcast. I do agree with many others that we need more voices from our South and South East Asians too and also more than just entrepreneurs or business ladies such as artists, educators (like myself), and more.

As an avid podcast listener on my commute to work or in the car I've noticed that the volume or sound of each episode on this podcast isn't even throughout. It's either the intro is really quite, conversations are slightly louder but then it's difficult to hear and then laughs are extra loud. There's nothing wrong with laughing but as your listeners I'd like to be able to turn it on and not have to crank up the volume just to listen to the podcast. My volume is turned up 10-15 notches louder for the podcast than my music. Not sure if you can control this but it would be helpful for listeners.

Btw, there was a part that I did appreciate when I had started listening to this podcast which was when Mel mentioned Hmong people. #IAmHmong

Episode 93 has me IN TEARS

As a fellow Hoisan person, hearing Helen speak to her mom and hearing Helen's mom speak just brings me so much happiness. As a person who does not know a ton but parents are fluent, it makes me so happy to see someone still be able to speak the dialect!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
‎A podcast for the modern day Asian American woman hosted by Melody Cheng, Helen Wu, & Janet Wang. It's no secret that Asian women are lacking in almost all media outlets, and those who are present mostly represent the fashion, beauty, or blogging industries. We started ABG as girlfriends while balan...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A Toolkit for Addressing Anti-Asian Bias, Discrimination, and Hate

During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City saw a sharp increase in harassment and violence against Asian people and communities, especially Asian elders. Discrimination and harassment on the basis of race, national origin, age, and disability (including having or being perceived to be exposed to COVID-19) is illegal under the New York City Human Rights Law. Since the start of COVID-19, we have seen a sharp increase in instances of hostility and harassment directed at Chinese and other Asian communities related to COVID-19 stigma and misinformation. The NYC Commission on Human Rights, the Mayor's Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes, the Mayor's Community Affairs Unit (CAU), and the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs are coordinating closely to educate the public about their rights and protections in light of COVID-19-related stigma and hate crimes.

There has been a significant, troubling increase in anti-Asian hate crimes and bias incidents since the start of the pandemic. Beginning in February of 2020, the Commission received a sevenfold increase in reports of anti-Asian harassment, discrimination, and violence. It is crucial to note that hate crimes and bias incidents have been found to be vastly under-reported so these numbers only reflect reported incidents.

If you have faced harassment or discrimination in housing, at work, or in any public place, contact the NYC Commission on Human Rights by filling out our online form or by calling 212-416-0197. If you are a victim of or witness a hate crime, call 911. There is language support if you need interpretation services.
See tweet from Mayor's Community Affairs Unit.
In this toolkit you can find the following

Campaigns

Additional Resources

Remarks from Mayor Eric Adams

Campaigns

I Still Believe in Our City

"I Still Believe in Our City" is a public awareness campaign by multidisciplinary artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya. The public awareness campaign was developed with the NYC Commission on Human Rights to combat anti-Asian discrimination, harassment, and bias as a result of COVID-19, and launched with the support of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. The art featured here is from an upcoming Art Display Case exhibition presented in partnership with the NYC Department of Transportation's Temporary Art Program.

The "I Still Believe in Our City" campaign has graphics available to address anti-Asian racism and harassment.

Suggested posting text

As #COVID19 hit NYC, Asian and Pacific Islanders faced an added threat: racism and hate.
You have a right to live free of discrimination. If you have seen anti-Asian harassment, speak up and report it to us by calling 212-416-0197.

Since the beginning of the #COVID-19 pandemic, NYC has seen a startling increase in harassment and discrimination against Asian communities.
Know this: Our city is unified in its fight against stigma and hate. Learn more at http://nyc.gov/stopcovidhate

Asian New Yorkers: You have the right to be free from harassment and discrimination under the New York City Human Rights Law. If you have been discriminated against or harassed, report it here: http://nyc.gov/reportdiscrimination

Foreign language graphics and posting text available in Traditional Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Tagalog, and Vietnamese.

Download printable posters
13" x 19" (with bleed) 13" x 19" (no bleed) 8-1/2" x 11" (with bleed) 8-1/2" x 11" (no bleed) Download posters in Korean, Traditional Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Japanese
We Are More

"We Are More" is an art series that celebrates the resilience and range of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. The series seeks to break down tired worn out cliches and stereotypes of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and forge in its stead a brilliant, multidimensional identity that encompasses the resilience and range of the communities.

Featuring dynamic visuals, bold typography, and human stories, "We Are More" is on view in Times Square in partnership with Times Square Arts, with subsequent installations appearing in Boston and other cities around the United States.

Learn more and download all the images at morethan.art.

We Are One New York
Download the graphics
Suggested posting text

Coronavirus-related discrimination and harassment is not acceptable. You deserve to be treated with dignity and respect no matter what. If you have been discriminated against or harassed, report it here: http://nyc.gov/reportdiscrimination

There is a lot of anxiety and fear around COVID-19, but one thing is clear: people and places shouldn't be stigmatized for the spread of viruses. If you have been discriminated against or harassed because of COVID-19 fears, report it here: http://nyc.gov/reportdiscrimination

Fight Fear with Facts

Download the graphics
View translated posting text available

Suggested posting text

Discrimination for having a serious illness like #COVID19, or facing harassment because of the belief that you have been exposed to it, is illegal under the NYC Human Rights Law. Report discrimination and harassment to @NYCCHR at 212-416-0197 or online at http://nyc.gov/reportdiscrimination.

No matter who you are, your city will fight for you. Report bias, discrimination, or harassment to @NYCCHR at 212-416-0197 or report it online at http://nyc.gov/reportdiscrimination.

If you or someone you know has faced discrimination or harassment because of your race, religion, immigration status, or disability, contact the @NYCCHR at 212-416-0197 or report is online at http://nyc.gov/reportdiscrimination.

Graphic Available in 21 Languages

Are you or someone you know the victim of harassment? Call 311. If you are the victim of a crime or witness a crime, call 911. NYPD officers are not allowed to ask about your immigration status. Learn more at nyc.gov/stopcovidhate.

Arabic: Square
‫يجهل تقع أنت أو أي شخص تعرفه ضحية للمضايقة؟ اتصل بالرقم 311 .إذا كنت ضحية جريمة أو شاهدت وقوع جريمة، فاتصل بالرقم 911 .ال يسمح لضباط إدارة شرطة مدينة نيويورك بالسؤال عن حالة الهجرة الخاصة بك. تع رف على المزيد من خالل الموقع اإللكتروني nyc.gov/stopcovidhate

Farsi: Square
آیا شما قربانی آزار و اذیت هستید، یا از آشنایان کسی را می شناسید که باشد؟ با 311 تماس بگیرید. اگر قربانی جرم یا شاهد وقوع جرم هستید، با 911 تماس بگیرید. مأموران اداره پلیس نیویورک اجازه ندارند در مورد وضعیت مهاجرتی شما سؤال کنند .
nyc.gov/stopcovidhate

האם אתם או מישהו שאתם מכירים קרבנות של הטרדה? התקשרו אל 311 .אם אתם קרבנות פשע או צופים בפשע , התקשרו אל 911 .קציני משטרת ניו יורק אינם מורשים לשאול אתכם אודות סטטוס ההגירה שלכם. מידע נוסף בכתובת Hebrew: Square

nyc.gov/stopcovidhate

Japanese: Square
あなた、またはあなたの知っている人がハラスメントの被害に遭ってはいません か。311 にご連絡ください。犯罪の被害者、または目撃者の場合は、911 にご連 絡ください。ニューヨーク市警察の職員があなたの滞在資格を尋ねることはあり ません。詳細は nyc.gov/stopcovidhate

Korean: Square
본인이나 아는 사람이 괴롭힘을 받고 있습니까? 311 에 전화하세요. 범죄의 피해자이거나 목격자인 경우, 911 로 전화하세요. NYPD 경찰은 이민 신분에 대해 질문할 수 없습니다. nyc.gov/stopcovidhate 에서 자세히 알아보세요.

Portuguese: Square
Você ou alguém que você conhece é vítima de assédio? Ligue para 311. Se você for vítima de um crime ou testemunhar um crime, ligue para 911. A Polícia de Nova York não pode fazer perguntas sobre seu status de imigração. Saiba mais em nyc.gov/stopcovidhate

Russian: Square
Вы или ваши знакомые стали жертвой притеснения? Позвоните по номеру 311. Если вы стали жертвой или свидетелем преступления, позвоните по телефону 911. Сотрудники Департамента полиции Нью-Йорка (NYPD) не имеют права задавать вопросы о вашем иммиграционном статусе.

‫‫کیا آپ یا آپ کے جاننے والوں میں سے کوئی ہراساں کیے جانے کا شکار ہے؟ 311 پر کال کریں۔ اگر آپسے کوئی فرق کسی جرم کا شکار ہوئے ہیں یا کسی جرم کے گواہ ہیں، تو 911 پر کال کریں ۔ NYPD افسران کو آپ کیتر ک وطن کی حیثیت کے متعلق سوال پوچھنے کی اجازت نہیں ہے ۔ Urdu: Square

nyc.gov/stopcovidhate

Resources for Victims of Hate Crimes

Download the resource graphics series, available in multiple sizes.

Additional Resources

Bystander Intervention Trainings

Bystander intervention is built on the idea that we all play a role in creating safe public spaces for each other when we see our neighbors and community members facing bias, discrimination, or harassment. The NYC Commission on Human Rights and community partners regularly co-host bystander intervention trainings to provide New Yorkers with the tools and strategies to safely respond when they witness bias incidents and discrimination.

Hate and Bias Incidents Related to COVID-19 Fact Sheet

Fact Sheet on Hate and Bias Incidents Related to COVID 19 | Español (Spanish) | عربى (Arabic) | اردو (Urdu) | Kreyòl Ayisyen (Haitian Creole) | 한국어 (Korean) | বাংলা (Bengali) | русский (Russian) | Français (French) | Polskie (Polish) | יידיש (Yiddish) | Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese) | 日本語 (Japanese) | 简体中文 (Chinese -Simplified) | 繁體中文 (Chinese - Traditional)

What is a Hate Crime Fact Sheet

What is a Hate Crime Fact Sheet | Español (Spanish) | عربى (Arabic) | اردو (Urdu) | Kreyòl Ayisyen (Haitian Creole) | 한국어 (Korean) | বাংলা (Bengali) | русский (Russian) | Français (French) | Polskie (Polish) | 简体中文 (Chinese -Simplified) | 繁體中文 (Chinese - Traditional)

Guide for Victims of Hate Crimes

Download the guide to share about resources & services available to victims of hate crimes

Educational Resources

The New York City Department of Education and OPHC have developed for educators across the City a resource guide to materials to prevent anti-Asian and anti-COVID related discrimination that can be incorporated into lesson plans.
COVID-19-Related Anti-Bias Education Resource Guide
Community Resources

Asian American Federation (AAF)

"Stay Safe from Hate: How to Protect Yourself in Threatening Situations" booklet is available in five Asian languages (Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Tagalog, and Vietnamese) and includes verbal de-escalation strategies, bystander techniques, non-violent communication strategies, and physical defense techniques.
Download for free and check it out
Stop AAPI Hate

Do you have a hate incident to report? Help document the recent rise in hate crimes against Asian American elders by going to https://stopaapihate.org/.

Stop AAPI Hate is the nation's leading coalition documenting and addressing anti-Asian hate and discrimination amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Other

If you would like to connect with other community-based organizations in your area, please visit the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice's Victim Services Finder, which is currently available in English, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Urdu.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City saw a sharp increase in harassment and violence against Asian people and communities, especially Asian elders. Discrimination and harassment on the basis of race, national origin, age, and disability (including having or being perceived to be exposed to COVID-19) is illegal under the New York City Human Rights Law.

# data[].attributes.body
I am not Asian-American but my best friend growing up is, she is Korean and her family has been in America for generations now. There have always been more casual things people have done like pull their eyes back to "see how she sees' ', ask her to speak chinese (she's not chinese), or asking if she eats dogs and cats. I've even had teachers talk about war or injustice involving the chinese gov and they will turn to her and ask her to speak on it from personal experience, or ask us to do ancestry reports and they continually won't believe her when she tells them she's not chinese and isn't an immigrant. We have been kicked out of stores as people call her slurs, have had kids threaten her with violence and had really racist teachers but it's so normalised that people don't see her experiences as a valid problem with society. Again, I'm not part of that community but I've seen first hand how it can affect people and how wearing it is on someone's emotions.

# data[].attributes.body
Speaking as an Asian American student at WHS, when someone mistakenly calls me another Asian student's name, it is not funny. We are all not the same. Please don't make jokes about Asian stereotypes, it hurts. Don't assume I am smart because I am Asian, I get good grades because I work hard. Also, I am just as American as every other student at WHS, and no, sorry , I don't speak Mandarin although I wish I did. Thank you for this opportunity and for caring about what Asian American students are going through at this time.

# data[].attributes.body
I remember towards the end of February, prior to quarantine, one of the students in my science class would continuously walk in and ask our teacher "Why in the world would a person eat a bat?" in a very judgemental tone. It was clear to me, even if it wasn't clear to my white teacher or white classmates, that this boy was speaking from a place of ethnocentrism and xenophobia. First, eating bats is not a part of Chinese culture. That is a racist stereotype that perpetuates the idea that Chinese people are "dirty disgusting bat-eaters" and that stereotype gets Asian-American people murdered. Second, his question clearly showed that he saw Asian people as "other" and "foreign", it was incredibly dehumanizing to sit through him asking this insensitive question several days in a row. Lastly, it was an incredibly tone-deaf question to be asking while Chinese people were dying of the virus. Instead of being sympathetic, Americans seemed to want to play the blame game. These seemingly "harmless" comments and jokes contribute directly to xenophobia, a hatred/dislike of foreign countries and people, and in this case they specifically contribute to sinophobia, the hatred/dislike of China and Chinese people. The sinophobia and xenophobia then fuels the hate crimes that have happened in the past year (also it's important to know that hate crimes against Asian-Americans didn't begin because of COVID-19, they were simply exacerbated), so these microaggressions are fatal.

# data[].attributes.body
My 17 year old nephew was adopted at birth from Taiwan. A really wonderful and caring kid. He works out every day at the same gym. He approached an older gentleman who clearly needed help with spotting. He offered and the man said “Get away from me, you and your Chinese Disease”. Heartbreaking..

# data[].attributes.body
I may not be Asian-American, but I've seen and heard a lot of racist things people have said against Asians. Here's some examples:

In 7th grade, some girl said "Don't they eat dogs in Japan? That's disgusting." after I mentioned Japan.

In 2nd grade, a boy who wasn't even Asian pulled his eyes back in the way that a lot of people do to be insulting towards Asians.

I looked up to this kind of famous person on a social media app for a few months, but I became so disgusted with her saying "What if it looked lie I was japanese" on a livestream ,and pulled back her eyes on a livestream with hundreds of people watching.

And I've seen several derogatory depictions of Asians in pop culture. From an episode of iCarly which depicted Japan in a very stereotypical way, to the fetishization of Asian women in tv shows and movies.

It's horrific how Asians experience horrible things like that all the time

# data[].attributes.body
In honest words, It's sad to see how normalized it is but people will not change and only care about certain races.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Introduction

" I have seen this incredible seesaw effect. We can go back to the turn of the century, when Chinese were the only people to be legally excluded from this country because people were so fearful of the jobs they were taking. That was seemingly a place that we would never go to anymore, that level of vitriol. We've seen it, though, in waves since then: World War II, we had an Asian enemy; Korean War, we had an Asian enemy; Vietnam War, we had an Asian enemy. And then we had Asian enemies that were economic in nature." ~ Janet Yang ( 2020).

In the last week of 2019, the world began to take notice of reports out of Wuhan, China hospitals about an increase in pneumonia cases of unexplained origin (Wang, Horby, Hayden, & Gao, 2020). Soon thereafter, scientists found that these illnesses were due to a new type of coronavirus (i.e., severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 [SARS-CoV-2]), which causes a disease referred to as COVID-19 (i.e., 2019 coronavirus disease) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2020a). It is believed that the virus spread from animals to humans in Wuhan's open-air "wet markets" that sell fish and raw meat to consumers (CDC, 2020a), and by mid-January 2020, began to spread rapidly throughout Asia and globally (Schumaker, 2020). By the end of January, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern" (CDC, 2020b).

As all Americans grew accustomed to a "new normal" secluded lifestyle (e.g., social distancing requirements and stay-at-home orders) and mounting anxieties about the spread of COVID-19, Asian Americans (i.e., people of diverse ethnicities with origins in East Asia and Southeast Asia1) - have been additionally burdened by heightened racial tension and associated racist microaggressions and verbal attacks. Asian Americans have also reported a surge in a second epidemic targeting them specifically - racially motivated hate crimes involving physical violence and harassment - despite the disease impacting people of all races/ethnicities (Chiu, 2020). Under the Hate Crime Statistic Act (28 U.S.C. § 534), hate crime is defined as "crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender and gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity."

Hate crime may be used to "other" minority racial/ethnic groups who are perceived as dangerous (i.e., belief that people of Asian descent are solely responsible for causing and spreading COVID-19) and outside their place of belonging (Grove & Zwi, 2006). Othering is embedded in racism (i.e., perceptions of white racial superiority) and xenophobia (i.e., fear of foreigners). Othering involves a process whereby the group at the top of the racial hierarchy (exemplified by whiteness in America) and/or individuals who believe that Asian Americans do not rightly belong in the U.S., seek to maintain the status quo by defining which members of society do and do not fully belong (Perry, 2001).

Asian Americans have experienced physical violence/hate crime and harassment (e.g., violent attacks during establishment of Chinatowns in the late 1800s [Chen, 2000]), persistent marginalizing stereotyping (e.g., the perpetuation of the "yellow peril" myth at the turn of the 20 th century [Mudambi, 2019]), and verbal attacks and microaggressions motivated by individual-level racism and xenophobia from the time they arrived in America in the late 1700s up until the present day (Chen, 2000). At the institutional-level, the state (i.e., the federal and state governments) has often implicitly/explicitly reinforced, encouraged, and perpetuated this violence through racist and xenophobic discriminatory rhetoric and exclusionary policies (e.g., Chinese Exclusion Act of 1881 [Yung, Chang, & Lai, 2006]).

COVID-19 has enabled the spread of racism and created national insecurity, fear of foreigners, and general xenophobia, which may be associated with the increase in anti-Asian hate crime during the pandemic (Vachuska, 2020). Using the lens of othering theory, we examine how these crimes - situated in historically entrenched and intersecting individual-level and institutional-level racism and xenophobia - have operated to other Asian Americans, thus reproducing inequality. A mix of media and empirical sources are used to critically explore this dynamic. This paper positions anti-Asian hate crime during the COVID-19 pandemic historically and in relation to racist and xenophobic othering. We expand scholarship through examining the pandemic-driven hate crime experiences of Asian Americans to more definitively define the concept of othering.

Defining Hate Crime

According to the Department of Justice (DOJ, n.d.), a hate crime involves a criminal act, including violent crime such as harassment, assault, murder, arson, vandalism, or threats to commit such crimes against a person or his/her property due to their real or perceived race, color, religion, nationality, country of origin, disability, gender or sexual orientation. Conversely, some incidents of bias and hate that occur against marginalized groups meet the legal definition of harassment, but are considered "hate incidents" or acts of prejudice that do not rise to the level of a criminal act (DOJ, n.d.). These are defined as "acts of prejudice that are not crimes [...] and do not involve violence, threats, or property damage" (DOJ, n.d., n.p.). This paper primarily focuses on anti-Asian hate crimes involving criminal physical violence or harassment; however, we also examine studies and media accounts of anti-Asian "hate incidents" that involve verbal violence or microaggressions and violent crime (i.e., hate incidents and hate crimes were not disaggregated).

Othering Theory

Othering is a concept found in the literature in reference to a dominant group marginalizing a non-dominant group in some way. Originating out of prejudice and fear, the act of othering involves a process that labels those thought to be different from oneself (Weis, 1995), wherein the racial group with the most power in American society (e.g., whites) or the group that believes they have "civic belonging" (i.e., believe they intrinsically belong in the U.S.) (Kim & Sundstrom, 2014) stigmatize and distance individuals who are racially different (i.e., Asian Americans) (Grove & Zwi, 2006; Kim & Sundstrom, 2014). Othering also serves to reinforce these dominant groups' notions of their own "normality," and position those who are different as deviant through a historical and ongoing process of marginalization, disempowerment, and social exclusion (Grove & Zwi, 2006).

Asian Americans and Historical Experiences of Othering

In 2018, the estimated number of Asians in the United States was 22.2 million (U.S. Census Bureau, 2019), and they are projected to become the largest immigrant group in the U.S. by 2055 (Horowitz, Brown, & Cox, 2019). Among all racial groups in the U.S., Asians are the fastest growing, increasing by 72% between 2000 and 2015 (Lopez, Ruiz, & Patten, 2017). Recent studies show that as a bloc, voters from the Asian American community are wielding an influential voice in critical electoral battleground districts, and trends show that they have leaned increasingly Democratic in the past few elections (Zheng, 2019). The numbers of Asian American political candidates and elected officials have risen sharply as well (Zheng, 2019).

The following description of the early Asian immigrant experience seeks to place the othering of Asian Americans into a historical context, leading up to today's pandemic-driven experiences ranging from microaggressions and verbal harassment to assault and other violent hate crimes.

Early Asian Immigrant Experience

Established groups with civic belonging in the U.S. have long perceived new waves of immigrants with some degree of resentment (Fussell, 2014). Historically, all immigrant groups different from the existing white, English-speaking, Protestant American majority have endured high degrees of suspicion as they fought to gradually establish their place within American culture (Alba & Foner, 2006). Unfortunately, in various forms, this nativist attitude (intricately tied to xenophobia) has reflected institutional racism, including restrictive federal immigration policies and legalized racial quotas and exclusions, some of which specifically targeted Asian immigrants (Kil, 2012). Additionally, violent racialized attacks on Asian communities by white majority groups throughout American history, especially during the 19 th and 20 th centuries, demonstrate the social entrenchment of this xenophobic mindset in the U.S. over time.

The California Gold Rush of the mid-1800s lured the first large group of Asian immigrants to the continental U.S.: Chinese entrepreneurs seeking to strike gold (Yung et al., 2006). Unfortunately, most did not achieve the overblown promises of profit (Yung et al., 2006). Unable to return to China and forced to compete for their livelihoods with white "forty-niners" (i.e., white migrants named for the year they began to arrive in California - 1849) from the eastern U.S., these laborers were cast as scapegoats for white migrants' employment frustrations due to their different looks, language, and customs (Yung et al., 2006). Forced to work for less than their white counterparts, Asian immigrants labored and lived under harsh conditions, toiling in dangerous mining operations and railroad construction (Yung et al., 2006). During this time, Chinese laborers faced institutional racism from the U.S. government in the form of undue tax burdens and legislative barriers to citizenship (Yung et al., 2006). Additionally, Chinese immigrants brought opium to the United States when they arrived to participate in the Gold Rush, and eventually established opium dens (i.e., places to buy, sell, and smoke opium) in Chinatowns throughout the West (Ahrens, 2013). Many Americans eventually became addicted to the drug, which resulted in a national drug panic (Ahrens, 2013). Collectively, these historical events and injustices culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first legal decree banning an entire ethnic group from immigration and eligibility for U.S. citizenship (Kil, 2012). The Act was primarily fueled by racist and xenophobic fears among white working-class laborers about depressed wages, and fanned by a proliferation of "Chinese invasion" rhetoric in the media. Such language is just one example of the "hordes of immigrant invaders" trope long-used throughout U.S. history to support varying political agendas (Zimmer, 2019).

The early 1890s saw a new influx of immigrants from Asian countries, primarily out of Japan, to work in agriculture as well as logging, fishing, mining, and service professions (Aoki, 2010). White resentment and calls for Japanese exclusion laws soon followed resulting in "The Gentleman's Agreement" of 1908 between the U.S. and Japan, whereby Japan agreed to stop further labor immigration to the U.S. (Aoki, 2010). However, thousands of wives, parents, and children of current Japanese residents were allowed to immigrate; and in the face of U.S. racial segregation, Japanese families came together to establish enclaves along the West coast (Aoki, 2010; Lee, 2002). Like the Chinese before them, Japanese and Korean newcomers faced legislative barriers to land ownership, citizenship, and education inspired by racism, which concluded with a 1924 amendment to the Chinese Exclusion Act that denied citizens from any Asian nation to immigrate to the U.S. These anti-Asian laws remained in place until 1943 (Lee, 2002).

After Japanese victories in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars at the turn of the 20 th century, a new "yellow peril" stereotype arose in the U.S typecasting Asians of all ethnicities, domestic and foreign, as threatening agents bent on world domination (Mudambi, 2019). This pernicious stereotype othered Asian Americans as bloodthirsty, sneaky foreigners who were not to be trusted in the same way as Americans of other ancestries. The yellow peril myth perfectly and troublingly set the stage for the next chapter in the American government's discriminatory treatment of Asian communities as the U.S. entered World War II (Lyman, 2000).

Japanese Concentration Camps

In what remains one of the most shameful violations of constitutional rights in U.S. history, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order allowing for the forced removal of the entire Japanese population of the U.S. West coast (the majority of whom were American citizens) two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 (Conrat & Conrat, 1972). Allowed only to bring what they could carry, over 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were herded into concentration camps surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by armed military personnel, where they remained through the duration of the war (Howard, 2009). Anyone with 1/16 th or more Japanese blood was eligible for removal, perceived as a potential threat (Burton, Farrell, Lord, & Lord, 2011).

Ironically, due to xenophobic paranoia and fear of Japanese American sabotage, the U.S. military at Hickham Base in Honolulu, HI had parked their airplanes in a contained area to be more easily guarded, making the planes "sitting-ducks" for air attacks by Japanese bombers (Miller, 1992). Despite the wide-ranging feelings of distrust by the larger society towards Asian Americans at that time, tens of thousands of Asian American soldiers of varying ethnicities enlisted and served with valor during the war (Parks, 2004).

With the passage of the Immigration Act in 1965 which struck down race as a barrier for immigration, Asian immigrants flowed into the U.S. once again (Yung et al., 2006). New waves of East Asian immigrants arrived in the U.S. through the mid to late twentieth century (Chin, 1996). As these new groups of Americans integrated into U.S society, a new stereotype proliferated: the myth of the "model minority" (Chou & Feagin, 2015). The model minority stereotype promotes the notion that Asian Americans are a monolithic group who have enjoyed great success in American society due to a cultural emphasis on a strong work ethic, natural-born intelligence, and through stressing the importance of education and achievement within their families (Chou & Feagin, 2015). Such a seemingly affirmative representation of an entire race masks a negative dynamic of consistently relegating Asian Americans to a permanent foreigner status (i.e., othering) when compared to other Americans (Chou & Feagin, 2015). Additionally, this myth works to confirm the belief that America does not have any racial discrimination problems, suggesting that all racial groups operate on an equal playing field with the hardest working groups inevitably rising to the top of their own accord, share equal privilege, and do not experience obstacles brought on by others' racist attitudes and behavior (Chou & Feagin, 2015). Finally, in some respects, this myth fosters suspicion and resentment towards Asian communities and immigrants as a whole (McGowan & Lindgren, 2006).

Stigmatization and Pandemics

The devastating impact of infectious disease has loomed large throughout human history causing more fatalities than any other medical cause (Pappas, Kiriaze, Giannakis, & Falagas, 2009). Unfortunately, eruptions of xenophobia have historically followed close on the heels of pandemics. Especially when viral outbreaks are deadly, fear often drives those at risk to place blame on some "other," or some group external to their own national, religious, or ethnic identity (Muzzatti, 2005). Sickness cultivates fear, which in turn cultivates bias (Muzzatti, 2005). Consequently, minority groups have often found themselves erroneously blamed for spreading germs, as insiders perceived them to be "dirty" or "sickly" (Taylor, 2019). As a nation built by waves of new immigrants, newcomers to the U.S. have traditionally borne the brunt of corresponding waves of othering in the form of ignorance and blame for a myriad of societal maladies, most notably those concerning infectious disease; a few examples include Irish Catholic immigrants held responsible for "Irish disease" (cholera), Jewish immigrants blamed for "consumption" (tuberculosis), Irish and German newcomers blamed for yellow fever (McKiven, 2007), and Italian immigrants blamed for polio (Cohn, 2012).

The COVID-19 pandemic is not the first time a public health crisis has resulted in the othering and disparate treatment of Asian Americans. When the bubonic plague began in San Francisco, CA in 1900, public health officials implemented a race-based response by quarantining Chinese residents in Chinatown, the epicenter of the outbreak, while allowing white merchants to leave (Barde, 2004). More recently, East Asians across the globe experienced stigmatization during the SARS outbreak of 2002-2004 (Eichelberger, 2007).

Despite comprising a tapestry of diverse ethnicities, Asian Americans have been historically viewed as a monolith, othered by the myth of the model minority in times of peace and economic security, while othered as a scapegoat in times of economic adversity, wars, or pandemics.

Anti-Asian Hate Crime during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Prior sections have explored how anti-Asian racism and xenophobia in the U.S. have been reproduced and historically entrenched at the individual- and institutional-levels during times of crisis and significant change so as to other Asian Americans and reinforce their inequality. The sections below examine how hate crime exacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is an extreme and exacerbated replication of this othering process; and how institutional-level racist and xenophobic rhetoric targeting Asian Americans has established the structure through which individual-level hate crimes occur.

What's in a Name?

The WHO ( 2015) followed their "Best Practices for the Naming of New Human Diseases" in selecting "COVID-19" as the name for the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. These best practices endeavor to avoid offending any cultural, social, national, regional, professional, and/or ethnic groups (WHO, 2015). According to Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the WHO Assistant Director-General for Health Security, disease names can create significant consequences in terms of backlash against affected religious or ethnic groups (WHO, 2015). WHO ( 2015) best practices also advocate the avoidance of geographic locations or references to culture, population, or language that incites fear.

Disregarding the WHO's ( 2015) official nomenclature, President Donald Trump publicly used the terms "Chinese virus" or "China virus" for COVID-19 in various tweets between March 16-18, 2020 (Fallows, 2020), as well as in a White House press conference on March 19 th, and then repetitively defended his use of the terms throughout March and early April (Chiu, 2020). A widely circulated image captured at the March 19 th press conference shows the president's notes with the "corona" in "coronavirus" crossed out and replaced with "Chinese" (Smith, 2020). When confronted about his use of the "Chinese" descriptive rather than the WHO-official "COVID-19" term, the president responded, "It's from China. That's why. It comes from China. I want to be accurate" (Fallows, 2020). While President Trump repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus" or "China virus," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo preferred the term "Wuhan virus" (Rogers, 2020). Additionally, an unnamed White House staffer allegedly used the term "kung flu" (Boyer, 2020).

Some argue that such terminology is both racist and xenophobic (Chiu, 2020) as it promotes anti-Asian bias and exclusion (Little, 2020), which may increase the risk of hate crime (Cabanatuan, 2020). The president's early rhetoric undoubtedly did not serve to protect the Asian community. Before Trump made these remarks in mid-March, racist acts and harassment targeting Asian Americans had already surged; they continued to increase through March and April following his statements (Haynes, 2020). On the coattails of President Trump's remarks, other political officials have also used derogatory language to blame the Chinese for causing COVID-19. For example, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) said in a press conference on March 18 th that China was to "blame" for the spread of COVID-19 because they are a " culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs and things like that" (Wu, 2020). On March 23 rd, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a warning that white supremacists may use the crisis to justify harm or violence against Asian Americans (Mallin & Margolin, 220). Also in late March, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) anticipated that there would be a surge in anti-Asian hate crime during the pandemic and therefore alerted law enforcement agencies to be on heightened alert for bias-motivated incidents (Mallin & Margolin, 2020).

According to a recent not yet published news content analysis (detailed in the San Francisco Chronicle) conducted by Professor Russell Jeung of the Asian American Studies department at San Francisco State University, the number of "hate incidents" reported in the media increased in response to the xenophobic language used by public officials (Cabanatuan, 2020; Jeung, 2020). Moreover, Dr. Jeung remarked that the timing in the sharp rise in hate incidents specifically coincided with the president's use of the term, "Chinese virus" (Jeung, 2020; Kang, 2020). He argued that his findings demonstrate that political language can provoke racial hatred and associated violence (Sheyner, 2020). At the same time, it appears that the study defines "hate incidents" as involving aggregated hate crimes and hate incidents, making it difficult to distinguish between the two.

Similarly, in the week following the president's March 19 th press conference, the "Stop AAPI Hate" (AAPI refers to Asian American and Pacific Islander) website that includes an anti-AAPI harassment, discrimination, and violent attacks self-reporting tool, recorded 673 "racist incidents" (Cabanatuan, 2020); however, it is not known how many of these incidents apply directly to the Asian community. Similar to Dr. Jeung's ( 2020) study, "racist incidents" likely involve the aggregate of hate crimes and hate incidents.

As awareness grew about the growing number of hate incidents and hate crimes against Asian Americans, accusations of racism and xenophobia around the president's insistence on using the term, "Chinese virus," exploded in the media. The White House responded to the uproar by accusing the media of manufacturing "fake outrage" over nothing, citing previous epidemics named after geographic locations: Spanish flu, West Nile, zika virus, and ebola (Mangan, 2020). However, the WHO ( 2015) appropriately named the novel coronavirus "COVID-19" to avoid a connection with a geographic area and therefore circumvent the stigmatization of people living in that area or of similar ancestry worldwide. The correlating increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic (Jeung, 2020; Vachuska, 2020) underlines the importance of avoiding geography in the naming of communicable diseases (Little, 2020).2

On March 23, 2020, President Trump walked back his use of the term "Chinese virus," noting in a network news interview that the American people were already well aware of the virus' true origins; however, he declined to apologize for using the geographic descriptor (Leigh, 2020). Additionally, the president declared that Asian Americans should not be blamed " in any way, shape, or form" for COVID-19 (Samuels, 2020). He also denounced the recent spate of pandemic-related racial attacks on Asian Americans (Samuels, 2020). Unfortunately, for many hate crime victim advocates and Asian Americans, this change of heart came too late; too much damage had already occurred (Shyong, 2020). One could argue that in the critical early days when the language coming from America's leadership set the tone, concerns about its effects on Asian Americans had been negligent at best, and destructive at worst.

Hate Crime Data

The Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 requires the federal government to collect data about crimes motivated by race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity (FBI, n.d.). The nation's largest sources of crime data, the FBI's Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics' (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), provide national estimates of hate crime (Masucci & Langton, 2017). Both sources define hate crime according to the federal definition noted in the Introduction. Hate crime data are also collected by advocacy organizations that provide assistance to marginalized communities (e.g., Southern Policy Law Center, Asian Pacific Policy Planning Council, Anti-Defamation League) (Gladfelter, Lantz, & Ruback, 2017; Jenness & Grattet, 2001). Each of these data sources have significant limitations (Gladfelter et al., 2017).

UCR and NCVS data have been utilized in the present study because they are the largest and most representative of the population. We examined hate crime data from the two collections for the 16-year period from 2003 to 2018, the years of data available for both sources.3 Both collections provide data on annual counts of racially-motivated hate crime. The UCR enables these counts to be disaggregated by the specific type of racial bias motivating the offense (e.g., anti-Asian bias; anti-African American bias; anti-Hispanic violence, etc.), while the NCVS statistics can be disaggregated by the race of the victim. The sections below describe the two collections and what they tell us about anti-Asian hate crime prior to COVID-19. Throughout these data sections, we refer to anti-Asian hate crime; however, both the UCR and NCVS numbers include hate crimes against Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians as well.

UCR

The FBI annually collects summary crime data from thousands of city, county, college and university, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies nationwide through the UCR Program. Through a supplementary collection to the UCR, the Hate Crime Statistics Program, the FBI additionally collects data on hate crime incidents, offenses, and victims, including details about the offender's bias motivation and whether he or she was motivated by anti-Asian bias. Although the UCR hate crime statistics can be used to identify victims of anti-Asian bias, it should be noted that the bias motivation is based on the offender's perceptions of the victim. In other words, the victim may not necessarily be of Asian descent, but if the offender believed they were and targeted them for that reason, the incident would be counted as an anti-Asian hate crime. The FBI data also distinguish between single-bias hate crime incidents, and multiple-bias incidents in which the offender(s) was motivated by two or more biases. The discussion below examines single-bias hate crimes, which account for the majority of UCR hate crimes (about 98% in 2018), as we are interested in hate crimes motivated by anti-Asian bias alone. It is also important to note that both the UCR and NCVS include hate crime data involving Asian Americans and documented and undocumented Asian immigrants (Addington, 2008).

UCR data reveal that during the 5-year period from 2003 to 2007, there was an average of 9314 victims of single-bias hate crimes. Of those victims, 67.0%, ( n = 6241) were motivated by racial/ethnic/ancestral bias. Among these 6241 racially motivated hate crimes, 4.1% ( n = 254) were motivated by anti-Asian bias. In comparison, during the most recent 5-year period from 2014 to 2018, there was an average of 7690 single-bias hate crime victims, of which 59.6% ( n = 4581) were targeted due to racial/ethnic/ancestral bias, and anti-Asian bias accounted for 3.8% ( n  = 176) of these crimes. Across these two 5-year periods, there was a 26.6% decrease in single-bias racially motivated hate crimes, and a 30.8% decrease in anti-Asian motivated hate crime.

NCVS

The NCVS has been used to collect hate crime data since 2003 (Masucci & Langton, 2017). Unlike the UCR that includes offenses known to and reported by police departments, the NCVS collects information from a nationally representative sample of households about experiences with crime both reported and not reported to police (i.e., the "dark figure of crime"). Upon identifying that a respondent has experienced crime, the NCVS asks victims if they have any reason to believe that the victimization was a "hate crime or crime of prejudice or bigotry" (NCVS, 2016 [question 161]). Victimizations are only categorized hate crimes if the victim can provide certain types of evidence to support an affirmative response (Addington, 2008). Additionally, the NCVS asks hate crime victims about the types of bias they suspected motivated the crime (Masucci & Langton 2017).

NCVS data reveal that from 2003 to 2007, there was an average of 265,062 annual hate crime victimizations, of which 67.1% ( n = 177,946) were motivated by racial/ethnic bias. About 2.5% of hate crime victimizations were against persons identifying as Asian, Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian ( n = 6625), and the vast majority (>99%)4 were motivated by anti-racial/ethnic bias. During the more recent 2014-2018 period, there was an average of 224,435 total hate crimes with 57.7% ( n = 128,474) motivated by racial/ethnic bias. About 2.7% of the hate crime victimizations were against Asians, Pacific Islanders, or Native Hawaiians ( n  = 6158), again with the vast majority (94%) motivated by the offender's racial or ethnic bias. Across the two periods, it appears that hate crime overall declined by 15.3%, and hate crimes against people of Asian descent declined by 7.0%; however, the differences between the estimates are not statistically significant when the confidence intervals are taken into account. Importantly, the NCVS data also reveal that less than half of hate crime victimizations overall (43.2%) are reported to police, and this is true among Asian victims as well (47.6%).

Reconciling Variations in Estimates

The UCR reported a large percentage decrease (30.8%) in anti-Asian motivated hate crime while the NCVS indicated a small percentage decrease (7.0%) across the two 5-year time periods. Discrepancies in percentages suggest vast underreporting of hate crime to police and magnify the hidden nature of hate crime against Asian Americans in the U.S. today. Indeed, NCVS hate crime data reveal that 47.6% of Asian victims do not report to the police. While both results reflect a decrease in hate crimes motivated by anti-Asian bias across time, the large differences between the two statistics make it unclear how extensive the decrease is. After the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided, scholars should compare old and new UCR and NCVS hate crime data to determine whether the prevalence of anti-Asian hate crime has markedly increased/changed.5 Inconsistencies in both sources' anti-Asian hate crime data collectively show the limitations of using official data to accurately estimate the prevalence of hate crime.

Additionally, the vast difference between the UCR's and NCVS's reported numbers of racially motivated hate crimes is striking and problematic. For example, from 2003 to 2007, UCR data indicate that there were 6241 hate crimes motivated by racial/ethnic prejudice, while NCVS data demonstrate that 177,946 hate crimes involved racial/ethnic bias motivation, which is an approximate 186% difference between the two. Discrepancies between the two data collections make it difficult to determine the actual pervasiveness of racially motivated hate crime in the U.S. across time. NCVS data is arguably more reliable than UCR data because it includes both reported and unreported hate crimes. With this in mind, NCVS data suggest that anti-Asian hate crime has remained an alarming problem across time, while UCR data imply the opposite (or a less alarming persistent trend).

Assessing 2020 Hate Crime Data

Data from the 2020 NCVS and UCR Hate Crime Statistics Program are expected to be released in late 2021. At that point, researchers will be able to assess both the extent to which law enforcement data show a spike in anti-Asian hate crimes known to police and whether there were changes in the numbers of Asian victims of hate crimes reported or not reported to police. Although the two data sources may not be consistent in terms of the magnitude of any spike, together they should provide empirical evidence about whether the qualitative, anecdotal suggestions of a pandemic-related increase in anti-Asian hate crimes was true nationwide. Together the two sources will show whether there were overall increases in the number of hate crimes against Asian Americans and whether the victims were comfortable seeking help from the police.

Personal Experiences of Hate Crime During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Social media has played a significant role in publicizing racialized attacks against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tweets have exposed instances of anti-Asian hate crime involving physical violence and harassment, mainly after bystander videos were posted and picked up by the broader media. Twitter hashtags such as #WashTheHate and #HateIsAVirus trended on social media platforms as users responded to the incidents they viewed on their screens (Elder, 2020). For example, New York City police urged the victim of a COVID-19 hate crime to come forward and make a report after a video surfaced on February 5 th of a man physically and verbally assaulting her while she was wearing a facemask in a Chinatown subway station, calling her a " diseased (expletive)" (Sosa & Brown, 2020).

In another incident on March 10 th, a Korean American woman in midtown Manhattan was grabbed by the hair, shoved, and punched in the face by an assailant (Miles, 2020). The perpetrator yelled at the victim, " You've got coronavirus, you Asian (expletive)" and " Where's your (expletive) mask?" (Miles, 2020). The victim suffered a dislocated jaw (Miles, 2020).

One of the most horrific examples of COVID-19-related hate crimes occurred on March 14 th at a Sam's Club in Midland, TX, when a perpetrator attacked a family from Myanmar, stabbing three victims including a 2-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy (Aziz, 2020). The assailant told police he feared the victims were Chinese and infecting others with the coronavirus (Aziz, 2020). Another extreme example occurred on April 5 th, when an Asian American woman in Brooklyn was doused with acid by a man who snuck up behind her as she was taking her trash outside her front door, causing second degree burns to her body, face, and hands (Moore & Cassady, 2020).

In late March, a 26-year-old Asian American man in a Brooklyn subway explained how a man spat in his face, and when he asked the man why he did so, the perpetrator yelled at him, " You (expletive) Chinese spreading the coronavirus!" (Moore & Bensimon, 2020) The perpetrator then unzipped his jacket and pointed to a weapon saying, " You wanna do this?" (Moore & Bensimon, 2020).

Psychological Effects of Hate Crimes

Many scientific studies have established a correlation between racialized victimization and poor mental health outcomes (e.g., Gee, Spencer, Chen, Yip, & Takeuchi, 2007). Since the emergence of COVID-19, there has been a 22% total increase in people accessing the Mental Health America anxiety screening tool; among users, the increase in Asian American respondents has been 39% (Campbell & Ellerbeck, 2020). Research also suggests that hate crime victims experience more severe consequences compared to victims of non-hate crimes (Mellgren, Andersson, & Ivert, 2017). Specifically, McDevitt, Balboni, Garcia, and Gu ( 2001) reported that bias crimes impact victims differently than non-bias crimes in that victims of bias crimes are more fearful and experience intrusive thoughts following their victimization.

Institutional-Level Response

Federal Response

While many in the Asian community appreciated Trump's March 23 rd reversal regarding his use of the term "Chinese virus" and the positive comments he made about Asian Americans, advocates continue to await a meaningful response from the federal government, such as the creation of a DOJ Task Force to address hate crimes against the Asian community (Warner, 2020). As Matt Nguyen-Ngo, Civil Rights Fellow at the nonprofit OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates expressed, " Trump did say Asian Americans are not to blame, but he hasn't done anything beyond that [...] It's been a very lackluster response" (Chapman, 2020; Kang, 2020). At a March 26 th White House press briefing on the pandemic, when asked what he is doing to stop anti-Asian hate crimes in the country, Trump replied, " I don't know" (Chapman, 2020).

In addition to the lack of response from the Oval Office, neither the DOJ nor the CDC have done much to respond to the pandemic. In the past, the CDC has responded quickly to prevent racialized violence, as it did during the 2003 SARS outbreak (far less prevalent or deadly than COVID-19), and the DOJ acted quickly after the 2001 terror attacks (Campbell & Ellerbeck, 2020). Lamenting the lack of action, a group of 12 U.S. senators penned a letter to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights requesting official guidance on federal response: " There has not been a concerted effort from federal agencies to prevent and address anti-Asian sentiment related to the COVID-19 pandemic" (Campbell & Ellerbeck, 2020). In response, Assistant Attorney General, Eric Dreiband stated that hate crimes would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law (Campbell & Ellerbeck, 2020).

State Response

Discussion/Conclusion: Anti-Asian Hate Crime and the Reproduction of Inequality

Despite a long history in North America and increasing numbers and political influence today, Asian American communities have continued to experience a recurring dynamic of othering. Racism and xenophobia woven into the social fabric may generate harmful individual-level attitudes and actions against Asian Americans that other and exclude them from national belonging. Racially dominant and/or well-established groups in America that hold social power have historically resented the arrival and presence of less well-established and influential groups such as Asian Americans, perceiving them as "foreigners" outside of their "proper" place of belonging and a threat to notions of community and sovereignty (Grove & Zwi, 2006; Kim & Sundstrom, 2014). Such nativist and xenophobic resentments intricately overlap with racism, wherein those in power fear and resist those who look different, speak dissimilar languages, and have unique cultural practices in comparison. As a result, the othering of Asian Americans has been historically repetitive in the form of bigoted exclusionary practices and violence, thus serving to entrench their foreigner and marginalized status and maintain the racial and nationalist hierarchy.

One could argue that the social and institutional entrenchment of racism and xenophobia has resulted in the repetitive re-emergence of anti-Asian stereotypes across time. For example, the prevalent discrimination and bigotry wrought by the yellow peril and the model minority myths further marked and established Asian Americans as inherently different from the majority population (McGowan & Lindgren, 2006). Additionally, institutionalized processes and government policies (elevated tax burdens, education and housing segregation, land ownership restrictions, and barriers to Asian immigration and citizenship [Zimmer, 2019]), further sustained the othering of Asian Americans.

This othering process is amplified and replicated during pandemics when widespread fear of catching disease engenders prejudice against groups that are different from the majority population, positioning them as effective scapegoats (Muzzatti, 2005; Taylor, 2019). Ostracizing Asian Americans in this way metaphorically builds a wall between those socially perceived as most important (i.e., whites) and those perceived as less important (i.e., Asian Americans), creating a boundary where "never the two shall meet." This othering dynamic has reemerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, as illustrated by President Trump's and other political officials' use of racially derogatory language (Fallows, 2020; Rogers, 2020; Wu, 2020).

As cognitive linguists Lakoff and Johnson ( 2003) have long established, metaphors are ubiquitous in forming our world view. The adjective "Chinese" in "Chinese virus" is particularly problematic as it associates the infection with an ethnicity. Connecting group identities with explicitly medical language serves to categorize those group identities as other. Historically, this connection has influenced anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy in the United States. The WHO's ( 2015) best-practices in naming infectious diseases exemplifies the importance of severing this connection in order to avoid stigma against geographic locations and ethnic groups.

Though most public officials eventually reversed course in their "China virus" rhetoric, regardless of whether this reversal was motivated by a sudden altruistic understanding or by political calculation, the damage had already been done. At any rate, any commitment to avoiding the public othering of Asian Americans was short-lived. As late as April 17, 2020, President Trump put out a tweet criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for making a February trip to San Francisco's Chinatown in support of Asian American owned businesses, after declaring in another tweet that he had already " closed the BORDER TO CHINA" (capitalized letters used by the president) (Behrmann, 2020). This seeming failure to distinguish between the residents of San Francisco's Chinatown and foreign nationals from the nation of China reinforces the idea of their enduring foreignness. Additionally, through the late spring of 2020, political focus increasingly turned to placing blame for the COVID-19 pandemic on the nation of China; a by-product of this focus is increased suspicion and fear in the American consciousness towards Asian Americans, creating the perfect climate to cultivate further hate crime (Jeung et al., 2020).

One could argue that the historical perpetuation of this othering process, embedded in fear of perceived outsiders and racial hatred, has allowed for more extreme, violent, and devastating violence and state abuse, such as the Japanese Concentration Camps following the Pearl Harbor attacks (Conrat & Conrat, 1972), and the seeming influx of hate crime we see today with the COVID-19 pandemic. Hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic are an extreme manifestation of othering illustrating the replicative and cumulative effects of the historical embeddedness of racism and xenophobia. That is, perpetrators exact violence to dehumanize and ostracize Asian Americans, stigmatizing and "marking" them as deviant to destroy their sense of belonging (Kim & Sundstrom, 2014), encourage and perpetuate ongoing exclusion, sustain feelings of superiority, and restore feelings of normalcy and comfort. It is likely that this rash of COVID-19 related hate crimes and incidents will have enduring deleterious psychological, emotional, and physical effects on Asian American victims and Asian communities, exacerbated by decades of generational trauma (Comas-Díaz, 2016). Arguably equally as devastating is the damage to society of normalizing the othering of any minority group based on race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, disability, gender identity, and/or sexual orientation. Although immigration status was not specifically explored in this paper, it is important to note that Asian immigrants without citizenship status may experience exacerbated devastating health effects of COVID-19 hate crime as they have reduced access to resources that may help to address that harm due to fears of deportation upon reporting (Dorn et al., 2011).

COVID-19 is a public health matter, not a racial one (Jeung et al., 2020). Not only is it critical to stop the spread of COVID-19, but also the racial hatred it has produced (Jeung et al., 2020). It is also essential that we take the lessons learned from racialized fear derived from historical events and apply that knowledge to feelings of fear and anxiety during the pandemic (Jeung et al., 2020). Unfortunately, the pandemic-related stigmatization of Asian Americans and Asians across the globe may continue long after the cessation of COVID-19. Americans must confront incidents of discrimination head-on: in schools, workplaces, businesses, and public spaces, in addition to demanding a robust response from law enforcement and the federal and state governments when hate crimes occur (Jeung et al., 2020).

In summary, across time, socially entrenched racism and xenophobia toward Asian Americans have repetitively recurred through individual-level prejudiced attitudes and actions. Moreover, these attitudes and actions have been reinforced by institutional-level support during times of crisis or great change, including the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, racial/ethnic inequality has been reproduced through the establishment of an " us. vs. them " modus operandi that relegates Asian Americans to the bottom of the social hierarchy, wrongly and maliciously marking them unworthy of the same rights and treatment as those at the top. Such othering has led to a climate in which Asian Americans are more vulnerable to racialized forms of aggression, including hate crimes.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado Denver, 1380 Lawrence Street, Suite 500, Denver, CO, 80204, USA

Angela R. Gover

2. Department of Sociology, Iowa State University, 510 Farm House Lane, Ames, IA, 50011, USA

Shannon B. Harper

3. RTI International, 701 13th St NW, Suite 750, Washington, DC, 20005, USA

Lynn Langton

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Angela R. Gover.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

About this article

Cite this article

Gover, A.R., Harper, S.B. & Langton, L. Anti-Asian Hate Crime During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploring the Reproduction of Inequality. Am J Crim Just 45, 647-667 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-020-09545-1
Download citation

Get shareable link

Keywords

Hate crime

COVID-19

Coronavirus

Pandemic

Asian American

Asian

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Anti-Asian Hate Crime During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploring the Reproduction of Inequality - American Journal of Criminal Justice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is believed to have emerged in Wuhan, China in late December 2019 and began rapidly spreading around the globe throughout the spring months of 2020. As COVID-19 proliferated across the United States, Asian Americans reported a surge in racially motivated hate crimes involving physical violence and harassment.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Reports about attacks on Asians and Asian-Americans have been abound in recent months, ranging from members of the groups being spat or coughed on to Asian-Americans being battered or even killed.

A survey of police reports by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University confirmed that racially motivated crimes against those of Asian descent in the U.S. have risen in the pandemic year of 2020. While hate crimes against Asians still make up a smaller fraction of all hate crimes reported in America's 15 largest cities, their number rose from 49 in 2019 to 122 in 2020.

It is not yet clear if yesterday's assault on day spas in the Atlanta area was racially motivated. The shooting for which a suspect is in custody has left six of Asian descent and two people identified as white dead.

The California State analysis also shows that New York City emerged as a hot spot for anti-Asian hate crime last year, when registered cases rose to 28 from just 3 in 2019. New York was the global center of the first wave coronavirus outbreak and experienced the most anti-Asian hate crimes of any major U.S. city in 2020 by far.

Separate reports released by the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center confirm that attacks on Asians were highest in the early days of the pandemic, but also show that they have been rising again lately. While the center recorded a monthly average of more than 900 anti-Asian incidents between mid-March and mid-May 2020, that number stood at around 300 between mid-May and July and at around 140 between August and December. In January and February 2021, the center once more recorded 250 reports per month.

Stop AAPI Hate said yesterday that verbal harassment was the most common incident recorded by them at 68 percent of all cases, followed by deliberate shunning (20 percent of cases) and physical attacks (11 percent of cases).

Description

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Infographic: Anti-Asian Hate Crime in U.S. Rises During Pandemic Year

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Reports about attacks on Asians and Asian-Americans have been abound in recent months, ranging from members of the groups being spat or coughed on to Asian-Americans being battered or even killed. A survey of police reports by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University confirmed that racially motivated crimes against those of Asian descent in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
While authorities are still investigating the motive behind Tuesday's shooting spree at three Atlanta-area spas that left eight people dead, including six Asian women, some advocates say the violence is inextricably linked to a history of racism and misogyny against Asian women.

Suspect Robert Aaron Long, 21, told investigators that he blames the businesses he targeted for providing an outlet for his addiction to sex, the Cherokee County Sheriff's office said, yet officials believe there were multiple motivators for the attack.

However, advocates who spoke with ABC News say attacks against Asian Americans, in particular, Asian American women, is rooted in an ugly side of American history.

"This is racially motivated sexual violence against women," Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, told ABC News.

"The reason they died wasn't just because they were women, even though that's what the killer says it is. They were murdered because they were Asian American women," Choimorrow said. "You cannot separate that."

The Asian women who lost their lives in the shooting were Daoyou Feng, 44; Xiaojie Tan, 49; Delaina Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; Soon Chung Park, 74; and Yong A. Yue, 63. Two other people, Paul Andre Michels, 54; and Ashley Yaun, 33; were also fatally shot.

Long has been charged with eight counts of murder in the attack, but has not been charged with a hate crime. Officials are still trying to piece together a motive.

Still, Choimorrow pointed to harmful stereotypes that objectify and depict Asian women as what she described as "hypersexualized," "meek" and "submissive."

"That really comes from America's long history of how they have categorized Asian American women as commodity," she said. "All the way back to 1875 with the Page Act, where they banned Chinese women from coming to the U.S. -- really because they didn't want the Chinese population to grow."
Legalized discrimination
The Page Act of 1875, "ostensibly barred the importation of women" from Asian countries, "for purposes of prostitution," according to language in a 2011 congressional bill expressing regret for passing discriminatory laws against Chinese immigrants in America.

The 2011 bill also referenced the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese laborers from entering the United States and was the first federal law that excluded a single group of people on the basis of race, according to congressional documentation.

Discriminatory exclusion laws against Chinese immigrants were repealed in 1943, according to the Department of State Office of the Historian's website.
American imperialism and pop culture
Racism against Asian Americans continued despite the end of discriminatory legislation.

Some argue the United States' military presence in the Asia Pacific also played a role in stigmatizing Asians when American soldiers went abroad during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Philippine-American War.

And degrading depictions of Asian women are "pervasive" in pop culture, Dr. Melissa Borja, an assistant professor of Asian/Pacific Islander American studies at the University of Michigan, told ABC News.

"This depiction of Asian women as seductive, immoral, hypersexual ... is in our popular culture in movies like 'Full Metal Jacket' and the musical 'South Pacific'," Borja said.

She said the Atlanta shooting is part of a "long-standing trend of violence" against Asian American women this year and amid a spate of anti-Asian hate crimes fueled, in part, by the racist rhetoric surrounding the coronavirus pandemic.

Former President Donald Trump, had repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the "China virus," among other offensive terms, during his presidency -- speech that helped stoke anti-Asian sentiment, some critics have said. Despite his comments, last March Trump condemned xenophobic attacks against Asians and tweeted: "It is very important that we totally protect our Asian American community in the United States...The spreading of the Virus is NOT their fault in any way, shape, or form."

The Stop AAPI Hate coalition received nearly 3,800 hate incidents from March 19 to Feb. 28 of this year.

Among those reports, 68% of the victims were women -- meaning women were targeted 2.3 times more than men.

Borja conducted research with the University of Michigan's Virulent Hate Project which analyzed more than 1,100 incidents of anti-Asian news media reports and found 61% of victims were Asian women.

"Asian American women were already dealing with the brunt of racist attacks in the past year, and they were already suffering," Borja said. "Asian American women are feeling the rage in this moment, in the fear that they now have about their own safety, their own ability to go to work, walk down the street, go get groceries, go about their daily lives."

Women of color in labor jobs, such as the victims who worked at the spa, are even more vulnerable because even amid the pandemic and rising hate incidents, they have to leave the safety of their homes to work.

Red Canary Song, a New York-based coalition of Asian advocates for massage parlor workers and sex workers, said Asians who work in these spaces are made "invisible" by gender and work.

"The women who were killed faced specific racialized gendered violence for being Asian women and massage workers ... they were subjected to sexualized violence stemming from the hatred of sex workers, Asian women, working class people, and immigrants," the group said in a statement.

Borja said the attack and today's data are just "the tip of the iceberg in the range of incidents of hate."

She said there's a lack of resources to document hate incidents against Asians, mistrust surrounding reporting incidents to law enforcement, a lack of cultural understanding around hate crimes, and language barriers. Stop AAPI Hate says it led the effort to improve data collection by allowing anyone across the nation to report anti-Asian hate incidents, without sharing it with law enforcement.

Advocates are calling for conversations to unravel harmful stereotypes, for more ways to safely report hate crimes against Asians, for schools to educate youth on the nation's Asian American history, and for legislation to address systemic issues at play.

For now the Asian American community is grieving the lives lost in the shooting with the hope for a better tomorrow.

"I want to tell all Asian women out there who are really struggling with thinking, 'I know this is not about me, it's about the eight victims,' know that it's okay to feel (for) both," Choimorrow said "It's okay to feel so scared because that feels so close to home."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Atlanta shooting and the legacy of misogyny and racism against Asian women

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
While authorities are still investigating the motive behind Tuesday's shooting spree at three Atlanta-area spas that left eight people dead, including six Asian women, some advocates say the violence is inextricably linked to a history of racism and misogyny against Asian women.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Asian Americans report less discrimination in employment, housing and criminal justice compared with other racial minorities in the United States (Discrimination in America, Harvard Opinion Research Program, 2018). But they often fall victim to a unique set of stereotypes-including the false belief that all Asian Americans are successful and well adapted-that render them invisible in discussions of race and prejudice in America.

Evidence also suggests that Asian Americans, who represent about 6% of the U.S. population, are frequently denied leadership opportunities (The Illusion of Asian Success, Ascend, 2017) and are overlooked in research, clinical outreach and advocacy efforts. For example, despite the fact that the population has increased by 72% since 2000, making it the country's fastest growing racial or ethnic group ( Pew Research Center, 2017), clinical research efforts focused on Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations have made up only 0.17% of the National Institutes of Health budget since 1992 (Doàn, L.N., et al., JAMA Network Open, Vol. 2, No. 7, 2019).

The U.S. Census Bureau defines Asian Americans as American citizens and nationals originating from East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. This highly diverse group includes more than 20 different cultures with numerous languages and religions. It also encompasses everyone from refugees and recent immigrants to fifth-generation Americans.

"Our existence as an aggregate group is very much a political creation that exists only in the United States," says Helen Hsu, PsyD, a clinical psychologist and president of the Asian American Psychological Association. "But when we look at specific subpopulations, we see that for almost every health and economic indicator, there are Asian Americans who are struggling."

Cambodians and Hmong, for example, experience significantly higher poverty rates and worse educational outcomes than the general population ( Pew Research Center, 2017), while nearly 80% of the Bhutanese population in America struggles with English proficiency (" Ethnicity Data Is Critical to Address the Diverse Needs of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders," AAPI Data, 2018). Psychologists have begun to probe and document such disparities to shine a light on the experiences of Asian Americans and determine how best to aid the group's subpopulations. But, these researchers say, more work and attention are needed. Even within the field, researchers face hurdles in terms of securing funding and publishing their findings. For instance, many scientific grantmaking agencies do not consider Asian Americans an at-risk group, says psychologist Vivian Tseng, PhD, the senior vice president of grantmaking programs at the William T. Grant Foundation.

"Being invisible is damaging in itself because the way in which you're suffering goes unseen, largely ignored and overlooked," says Tseng. And while many groups experience discrimination, the invisibility Asian Americans face is "pernicious on its own and can ultimately cause even more suffering."

Model minorities and other myths

The so-called "model minority" stereotype, one of the most pervasive and harmful assumptions about Asian Americans, holds that Asian Americans are a uniformly high-achieving racial minority that has assimilated well into American society through hard work, obedience to social mores and academic achievement. The term was first used in the 1960s by academics and journalists-and later by politicians-to create a divide among racial minorities and to downplay the role of racism in the inequities of American society, says Richard Lee, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota who studies race and ethnicity.

"In the midst of advocacy against racism, this was a very convenient tool," Lee says. "Elevating Asian Americans as a model minority essentially absolved white systems from taking real accountability for the inequities they've created."

Research shows how pervasive the myth is: In one study of 165 Asian American high school students, for example, 99.4% of participants had experienced the stereotype at least once (Thompson, T.L., & Kiang, L., Asian American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2010). Though calling a group exemplary may seem like a positive characterization, "the nature of all stereotypes is that they dehumanize people and prevent us from seeing them in their whole humanity," Tseng says.

In fact, whites who endorse the model minority myth are also more likely to concurrently hold other, unfavorable beliefs about Asian Americans as well (Parks, S.J., & Yoo, H.C., Asian American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 7, No. 4, 2016). Those beliefs include what researchers call the "perpetual foreigner" stereotype, which casts Asian Americans as fundamentally foreign individuals who will never fully assimilate into American society. For example, even second- and third-generation Asian Americans are frequently asked where they are from or told that they speak English surprisingly well.

In one study, Lee and his colleagues found that such treatment is psychologically harmful beyond the effects of general discrimination, leading to depression symptoms and lower self-esteem (Armenta, B.E., et al., Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, Vol. 19, No. 2, 2013). "It essentially denies your sense of being American, denies your feeling like you belong here," says Lee. "And of course, not feeling like you belong is a horrible thing."

Like other racial minorities, Asian Americans are also targets of gendered racism. Asian American men are often seen as effeminate or asexual, while Asian American women are viewed as sexually desirable, exotic and passive. In one study of race and occupational roles, for example, participants ranked Asian men as significantly more hirable for a librarian job (a traditionally feminine role) and less hirable for a security guard job (a traditionally masculine role) compared with African American and Caucasian men (Hall, E.V., et al., Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 6, 2015). Another study, led by Shruti Mukkamala, PhD, a senior staff psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, student counseling center, surveyed Asian American women about their experiences of discrimination. Respondents said that in addition to more overt forms of racial bias, their colleagues, acquaintances and even romantic partners held inaccurate assumptions about Asian American women, including that they were or should be submissive, sexually exotic or petite (Asian American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2018).

"These intersectional experiences haven't received much attention from researchers, so our goal was to start by documenting their nature and prevalence," Mukkamala says. "Now, we need to consider their impacts on the personal and professional lives of Asian American women and find ways to increase public awareness about the stereotypes themselves."

Consequences of discrimination

The fallout from such stereotypes can be powerful. For example, Asian American students in schools across the United States report being frequently bullied by other students based on their race, including name-calling, cyberbullying and physical intimidation, according to a report from the federal Asian American and Pacific Islander Bullying Prevention Task Force (AAPI Bullying Prevention Task Force Report, 2016).

And while a strong racial identity has historically been seen as a protective factor against discrimination and bullying, a meta-analysis led by Tiffany Yip, PhD, a professor of psychology at Fordham University in New York, shows that this isn't always the case. She found that factors such as race, gender, age and nativity status can affect whether racial identity is helpful or harmful in resisting discrimination. For Asian Americans, for example, a strong ethnic or racial identity did not reduce the likelihood of engaging in risky behaviors such as delinquency and substance use (Developmental Psychology, Vol. 55, No. 6, 2019).

"Many researchers have looked at discrimination as this umbrella term, but there are qualitatively different discrimination experiences that different groups face," she says. "That's not captured well enough in our current literature."

Psychologists say that historically, research in the field has focused too much on the experiences of high-achieving people of East Asian origin at the expense of more vulnerable groups. Now, researchers are broadening their focus to include other topics, such as psychological problems faced by Burmese refugees (Kim, I., Asian American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2018), mental illness stigma among Korean American immigrants (Han, M., et al., Asian American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2017) and the colonial legacy of Filipino Americans (David, E.J.R., et al., Asian American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 8, No. 1, 2017).

One way for researchers to acknowledge the diversity within the Asian American population is to recruit larger samples of Asian Americans and disaggregate data for various ethnic groups, says Hsu.

But grantmaking agencies and philanthropic organizations don't always see value in funding research on Asian Americans. In addition to the low rate of NIH funding, only about 3% of all private and community grant funding on racial issues backs studies on Asian Americans, according to a 2016 report by the nonprofit Candid, which collects data on grantmaking foundations. Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander populations are particularly understudied.

Culturally competent care

The challenges that stem from stereotypes and invisibility even follow Asian Americans into the clinic. Asian Americans are less likely to use mental health services-including outpatient treatment, inpatient treatment and prescription medications-than any other racial group, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Racial/Ethnic Differences in Mental Health Service Use Among Adults, 2015).

Clinicians might infer that their low rate of service utilization means that Asian Americans don't face significant psychological problems, but research suggests otherwise. Several studies have found that Asian Americans present more severe symptoms when they do enter treatment (Hwang, W.C., et al., Psychiatric Services, Vol. 66, No. 10, 2015). And in a doctoral dissertation study of 17 years of archival data from a university student counseling center, Asian American and international Asian students reported more distress and experienced less improvement during psychotherapy compared with white students (La Stokes, H., Brigham Young University Scholars Archive, 2018).

"Asian Americans do have psychological problems," says Gordon C. Nagayama Hall, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon who studies culture and mental health, "but when they experience distress, they tend not to seek treatment-in part because of these stereotypes."

Other reasons for avoiding or delaying mental health treatment include severe stigmatization of mental illness in some Asian cultures and a dearth of culturally relevant treatment services, says Wei-Chin Hwang, PhD, a professor of clinical psychology at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California.

Hwang conducted the first NIH-funded randomized controlled trial that tested a form of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) adapted for an Asian American population (American Psychologist, Vol. 61, No. 7, 2006). He found that the adapted intervention, which addressed cultural identity, communication styles and differing beliefs about mental illness and treatment, nearly doubled the effect size and reduced dropout rates among Chinese American patients compared with traditional CBT.

Hall and his colleagues explored the effectiveness of such adapted interventions in a 2016 meta-analysis that included nearly 14,000 participants, 30% of whom were Asian American or Asian. The analysis found that culturally relevant interventions were significantly more likely to lead to remission from psychopathology than unadapted versions of the same interventions (Behavior Therapy, Vol. 47, No. 6, 2016).

"We need to understand each patient's values, experiences and personal beliefs to ensure that the services we provide support their goals and are congruent with the values they hold," Mukkamala says.

More research needed

Looking forward, Tseng encourages researchers to explore the implicit biases that guide who and what they study.

For example, she asks, why does research on Asian Americans so often focus on academic achievement among East Asians and not on a more well-rounded understanding of various populations, including East Asians, South Asians, Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders?

"Both philanthropic and government funders need to pay attention to who's being ignored and excluded from research and research funding," Tseng says. "Each has a real public responsibility to meet the needs of our diverse society."

To gain a more nuanced understanding of Asian American populations, Mukkamala says it's also essential to study intersectional discrimination and stereotyping. Sexual and gender identity, social class and disability status are important factors to consider.

To aid such research, one of Lee's priorities is to develop measurement tools that are relevant to Asian Americans. Existing questionnaires about racial prejudice, developed with African Americans in mind, are often built around questions such as "How often were you followed by store employees when shopping?" and may not capture the full experience of research participants from other racial and ethnic groups.

"Asian Americans have their own unique racial history in this country," Lee says. "While every minority group has some common experiences of discrimination, each also has unique factors that psychologists need to recognize, study and begin to address."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Countering stereotypes about Asian Americans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Asian Americans are often overlooked in discussions of racial bias in the United States.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On March 16, eight people, including six Asian women, were shot and killed at massage parlors in the Atlanta, Georgia, area, the New York Times reported. It's the latest in a string of racist attacks against the Asian-American and AAPI community during the coronavirus pandemic.

The victims who died in the attack were Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; Yong Ae Yue, 63; Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Xiaojie Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; and Paul Andre Michels, 54, per the Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, was injured. Members of the community and allies are responding, grieving, and pressing for answers on social media.

"The reported shootings of multiple Asian American women today in Atlanta is an unspeakable tragedy-for the families of the victims first and foremost, but also for the Asian American community, which has been reeling from high levels of racist attacks over the course of the past year," Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition documenting anti-Asian discrimination, shared in a statement.

Details about the shooting are still coming to light; a 21-year-old Georgia man, who is now in custody, has been charged with assault and murder.

The act of terror is an undeniable blow to Asian-Americans who are still reeling from an uptick of anti-Asian discrimination over the past year, undoubtedly spurred on by a former president who referred to COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus" and "kung flu." The massage parlor setting of the attacks also sheds light on the plight of Asian women migrant workers and sex workers, who are notoriously underprotected.

"This latest attack will only exacerbate the fear and pain that the Asian American community continues to endure," the Stop AAPI Hate statement reads. According to recent data gathered by the organization, there were 3,795 incidents of anti-Asian discrimination reported from across the country since March 2020.

"Not enough has been done to protect Asian Americans from heightened levels of hate, discrimination and violence," the coalition adds. "Concrete action must be taken now. Anything else is unacceptable."

Here, we've rounded up some organizations to support or donate to, if you're able, to show support for the AAPI community, especially women who may be affected by these attacks.

Support Georgia's Asian American Community: a fund created by Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta to directly benefit the shooting victims and their families. Donate

Red Canary Song: a grassroots collective supporting labor rights for Asian migrant workers and sex workers. Donate

Butterfly: a Toronto-based network supporting Asian migrant workers and sex workers. Donate

SWAN Vancouver: supports immigrant and migrant women engaged in indoor sex work by providing support services and systemic advocacy. Donate

Monsoon Asians & Pacific Islanders in Solidarity: serves victims and survivors of sexual violence, domestic violence, and trafficking in the Asian and Pacific Islander community in Iowa. DONATE

National Organization of Asians and Pacific Islanders Ending Sexual Violence: a program under Monsoon (above) that helps "local and international community-based programs and governmental organizations" in serving victims of sexual violence from API communities in the U.S., U.S. Territories in the Pacific, and Asia. Donate

Womankind: supports women who are victims or survivors of gender-based violence on their journey to healing. Donate

AAPI Women Lead: supports AAPI women and girls with workshops and and research, and promotes movements such as #ImReady, which addresses issues like gender-based and racial discrimination and sexual harassment in the community. DONATE

National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum: empowers AAPI and women and girls through reproductive health, economic justice, immigrant rights, and more. Donate (You can also support the Atlanta chapter to uplift local efforts in the wake of the shooting.)

Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta: a nonprofit legal advocacy group protecting the rights of Asian-Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders in Georgia and the Southeast. Donate

Asian Law Caucus: promotes and protects civil and legal rights of Asian and Pacific Island communities. Donate

Chinese Progressive Association: empowers the low-income and working-class Chinese immigrant community in San Francisco. Donate

Asian American Feminist Collective: an intersectional feminist group that focuses on exploring identity, building community, political education, and advocacy. Donate

Asian Pacific Environmental Network: supports environmental justice for working-class Asian immigrant and refugee communities. Donate

Asian Prisoner Support Committee: raises awareness about arrests and deportations of AAPI people in California. Donate

APIENC: an organization supporting the AAPI queer and trans community in the Bay Area. Donate

CAAAV: a pan-Asian community organization supporting low-income Asian immigrants in New York City. Donate

Stop AAPI Hate: a national coalition documenting and sharing resources about anti-Asian discrimination. Donate

AAPI Community Fund: grants will benefit a number of AAPI grassroots organizations ( including these) that are committed to fighting racial injustice and inequality. Donate

Desis Rising Up and Moving: supports South Asian and Indo-Caribbean low-wage immigrant workers and families in New York City. Donate

Asian American Advocacy Fund: a grassroots organization "dedicated to building a politically-conscious, engaged, and progressive Asian American base in Georgia." Take Action

Jahajee Sisters: an organization led by Indo-Caribbean women focused on supporting women and girls. Donate

Asian Immigrant Women Advocates: a nonprofit focusing on immigrant youth and workers in low-wage industries in the Bay Area. Donate

Asian Mental Health Collective: a community for Asian mental health support. Donate

South Asian Workers' Center: a nonprofit serving mainly South Asian immigrants and workers in the Greater Boston area. Donate

Sakhi for South Asian Women: represents South Asian women in the diaspora in the movement to support survivors of violence. Donate

Chinatown Community for Equitable Development: a community-based organization in Los Angeles dedicated to grassroots organizing, educating, and mutual help. Donate

Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund: a national organization, founded in 1974, working to protect and promote civil rights for Asian-Americans. Donate

#HATEISAVIRUS: an initiative and community raising awareness on anti-Asian racism and supporting Asian-owned businesses. Donate

Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund: a national organization focused on Sikh American media, policy, and education. Donate

Korean American Community Foundation: financially and organizationally supports nonprofits serving the Korean-American community and beyond. Donate

SEARAC: a civil rights organization empowering Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese American communities. Donate

South Asian Americans Leading Together: a national movement and advocacy group focused on "transforming institutions while leveraging incremental change as a means to shift conditions and power." Donate

Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance: an organization of AAPI workers, many of whom are union members, advancing labor, immigrant, and civil rights. Donate
This story has been updated.
This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Organizations to Support in the Fight Against Asian Hate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On March 16, eight people, including six Asian women, were shot and killed at massage parlors in the Atlanta, Georgia, area, the New York Times reported. It's the latest in a string of racist attacks against the Asian-American and AAPI community during the coronavirus pandemic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When I was halfway through the 11th grade, my pre-calculus teacher pulled me out into the hallway. He wanted to talk about my latest test. "You can do better than this," he said. "I'm so surprised by grades like this from someone like you."

Someone like you? I'd never done particularly well in his class, so the implication of his words churned in my stomach. In that moment, I felt acutely the weight of the dark braid trailing down my back and the glasses slipping down my nose.

I knew my performance was being evaluated not against my own earlier work but against the image of the perfect, straight-A, Asian student who lived in my teacher's mind: the myth of the "model minority."

What Is the Model Minority Myth?

The myth of the model minority is based in stereotypes. It perpetuates a narrative in which Asian American children are whiz kids or musical geniuses. Within the myth of the model minority, Tiger Moms force children to work harder and be better than everyone else, while nerdy, effeminate dads hold prestigious-but not leadership -positions in STEM industries like medicine and accounting.

This myth characterizes Asian Americans as a polite, law-abiding group who have achieved a higher level of success than the general population through some combination of innate talent and pull-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps immigrant striving.

What's So Bad About the Model Minority Myth?

While most people agree that negative stereotypes of Asian Americans are harmful, some still question the harm of the model minority myth. What could be so bad about being part of a group that's seen as being successful?

Like all stereotypes, the model minority myth erases the differences among individuals.

My own 11th-grade experience offers one example. My mother is Malaysian Chinese; my dad is white. I am usually perceived as Asian. So, because of the model minority myth, my failure to reach an expected level of achievement in math was attributed to some kind of deficiency or lack of effort on my part.

Instead of differentiating for me like I saw him do with others in the class, my teacher let me continue to slip. I was not offered extra help or any other support, and I did not know how to live up to the image of the model minority student. I stopped trying.

While I was eventually able to overcome this negative self-image, many others are not. Asian American college students have higher rates of attempting suicide than those in other groups. The model minority myth hides the pressures and paradoxes inherent within an Asian American identity. If you don't fit into the myth, it is hard to find your place at all.

The model minority myth ignores the diversity of Asian American cultures.

Data about Asian American achievement typically lumps this diverse population together into a singular group. Taken as a whole, it shows that Asian Americans tend to hold higher degrees and earn larger incomes than the general population. These successes are often attributed to differences in family attitudes toward education. From these metrics and attributions, the stereotype emerges that Asians are winning in their pursuit of the American Dream. But when we break these numbers down, the myth begins to crack.

Take pay disparities, for example. For every dollar the average white man makes in the United States, an Asian Indian woman makes $1.21 and a Taiwanese woman makes $1.16. A Samoan woman makes $0.62. A Burmese woman makes 50 cents. The experiences of these groups are not the same.

The model minority myth operates alongside the myth of Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners.

The model minority myth is just one of a collection of stereotypes about Asian American people. Popular television and films exoticize Asian culture and peoples. If you're a man, you're a kung fu master. If you're a woman, you're a submissive sex object. If you're gender non-binary or transgender, you don't exist at all. Mickey Rooney's racist portrayal in Breakfast at Tiffany's lives in our collective imagination alongside every East or South Asian actor who has played a bit part as a humorless doctor or IT guy.

Buried under these stereotypes, the message is clear: Asian Americans are all the same-and all different from other Americans. On one hand, Asian Americans are often perceived as having assimilated better than other minority groups. On the other hand, Asian Americans are seen as having some foreign quality that renders them perpetual outsiders.

It's a paradox familiar to every Asian American who regularly faces the question, "But where are you from, originally?"

The model minority myth erases racism against Asian Americans.

Positioning Asian Americans as beneficiaries of the bounty of the American Dream, the myth of the model minority ignores the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and Japanese internment in the 1940s. It suggests that the U.S. has always been a welcoming place for people of Asian descent, in spite of the mass lynchings of Asian Americans in the 19th century and the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982.

The myth persists in spite of the fact that 1 in 7 Asian immigrants in America today is undocumented and facing potential deportation, a fact that is repeatedly overlooked in our national conversation about immigration. The model minority myth says Asian Americans are doing well today and must therefore have benefitted from an elevated status among people of color, in spite of centuries of systematic discrimination.

The model minority myth is harmful to the struggle for racial justice.

The myth says that Asian Americans have played within the rules of the American system to their own group benefit. The success of some groups of Asian American immigrants is often held as an example toward which other groups should strive. It suggests that Asian Americans are doing well and that if other groups would only work harder, have stronger family bonds and get over their histories of oppression, they too would succeed.

When paired with racist myths about other ethnic or racial groups, the model minority myth is used as evidence to deny or downplay the impact of racism and discrimination on people of color in the United States. Given the history of that impact on Black Americans particularly, the myth is ultimately a means to perpetuate anti-Blackness.

The model minority myth pits people of color against one another and creates a hierarchy in which Asian people are often represented at the top. By putting people of color in competition with one another, the myth distracts us from striving together toward liberation for all.

Dismantling the Myth

Understand that the collective is important while individual differences still exist.

The term Asian American was coined in the late 1960s as a means of harnessing the collective power of people of Asian origin, much in the same way the term was first used. Asian American political identity was strongly inspired by the Black Liberation Movement. Today, more inclusive terms like Asian-Pacific American (APA) or Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) signal the continued need for collective striving against similar experiences of racism and imperialism within our various ethnic subgroups. This collective political identity remains important.

At the same time, focusing solely on collective identity can perpetuate the model minority myth: The experiences of the most visible Asian American ethnic groups can hide the experiences of other groups.

Some studies of educational achievement have shown that certain Asian ethnic groups, particularly those from parts of East and South Asia, indeed score very well in some subject areas. When students from these groups consistently do better than even white students, it is easy for educators to take inherently biased actions based on a belief that all Asian students are innately intelligent and hardworking. Those same studies, however, reveal that other Asian ethnic groups have vastly different results. For example, Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander students in particular often underperform when compared with all other racial and ethnic groups.

As an educator, it is important to understand the different histories and experiences of Asian American and Pacific Islander students and communities. Some of these communities arrived in America as refugees escaping war or genocide, and some were imported as sharecroppers to replace enslaved people of African descent after the Civil War. Still other communities, particularly those native to various Pacific Islands, were here long before white settler colonialism. As educators, we must unlearn the biased, simplistic beliefs that we might hold about what it means to be Asian American or Pacific Islander in order to better attend to the real needs of our students and communities.

Feature Asian American figures and texts in your classroom.

One of the commonly felt experiences of Asian Americans is that of being invisible or erased. The model minority myth means that neither our historical struggles nor activism tend to be covered in schools and classrooms. The significant underrepresentation of Asian American educators furthers this problem.

Asian American and Pacific Islander history has been a part of American history for centuries. May is AAPI Heritage Month. Use this as a starting point, but do not limit your conscious inclusion of AAPI people and experiences to a single month. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders comprise the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States. We must make a conscious effort to represent these stories and people in our classrooms, regardless of our own identities and those of our students.

Raise awareness in yourself and others.

There may be names and examples in this piece with which you were unfamiliar. Learn about activists like Grace Lee Boggs, Larry Itliong and Yuri Kochiyama. Say the name of Vincent Chin. Teach your students about Ela Bhatt. Research Supreme Court cases like U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind and .

Dive into data to help understand the collective and individual experiences of various AAPI groups. Check your own biases and assumptions. Do not let a student like me slip through the cracks because you expect her to be smarter or more studious than her classmates.

As you raise your own awareness, you'll help those around you to understand and dismantle the model minority myth as well.
Blackburn is a professional development trainer for Teaching Tolerance.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The myth of the "model minority" is pervasive. It does real damage. And Asian American students aren't the only ones it harms.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Leonia High School sophomore Yena Choe was at Times Square last week with six friends to film a video for the Korean-American Association of New Jersey's "Samiljeol" event, a remembrance of Korean resistance to Japanese rule.

As they walked with Korean flags, an unmasked, middle-aged woman glared at the teens and told them, "Get away from me. Stay far away from me," while waving her hands, Choe said.

"We did nothing to provoke this woman," said the 16-year-old, who said she and her friends were all wearing double face masks. "Yet based on our appearance, and quite possibly even based on the flags flying in our hands, we were treated as if we were a contagious disease.

"For the rest of the day, I was afraid," she said. "I was afraid that something like that could happen again, that next time it could be worse than a glare and a rude remark"

A string of high-profile attacks on Asian Americans are surfacing from coast to coast a year into the pandemic. In January, an 84-year-old San Francisco immigrant from Thailand died after he was shoved to the ground on his morning walk. Earlier this month, a Vietnamese woman was assaulted and robbed of $1,000 in San Jose and a Filipino man was slashed with a box cutter on the subway in New York City.

The head of Oakland's Chinatown Chamber of Commerce has collected more than 20 incident reports and videos of small businesses getting robbed and owners and customers assaulted, he told San Francisco's KGO-TV.

Attacks like these have continued despite President Joe Biden's executive order banning the federal government from using racially charged language to discuss the pandemic, a turnaround from months of his predecessor mocking the "China virus" and "kung flu."

Around theworld, as the coronavirus has brought theeconomy to a screeching halt, Asians have become targeted for the pandemic that started in Wuhan, China. They have been yelled at, spat on and beaten up, according to media reports across the globe.
Struggles: Vaccines: Fighting racial gap, NJ towns promote COVID vaccine to Black, Asian, Latino communities Asian-owned NJ businesses struggle as jobless rate spikes in pandemic
Perpetual foreigner

In Wyckoff last June, a Chinese restaurant was vandalized with the words "coronavirus" and "go home" spray-painted on the windows and sidewalk.

North Jersey is home to one of the state's largest populations of Asian Americans with 17% of Bergen County identifying as Asian. In towns such as Leonia and Fort Lee, Asian Americans make up about 40% of the community.

There were 47 race-based incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in New Jersey from March 19 through Dec. 31, the eighth most of any state, according to the advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate. Of the cases, 64% were verbal attacks while 13% were physical assaults. In New York City, 259 incidents were recorded against Asian Americans in the same period with 81% being verbal and 12% physical.

Burdened by the model minority myth, Asians are easy targets in times of downturn, said Russell Jeung, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and professor at San Francisco State University. Despite their deep roots in the U.S., Asian Americans will forever be considered foreigners by some people, he said, a stereotype that has persisted since the first immigration of Asians in the 19th century to help build the Transcontinental Railroad.

"Since we don't belong, we can be spat on," Jeung said.

U.S. Rep. Andy Kim, who represents New Jersey's 3rd District, says the hate crimes seen over the past weeks are reprehensible.

"Seeing our elders targeted and attacked has been hard to watch and difficult to explain to my two boys," said Kim, whose sons are 3 and 5. "New Jersey has been a place where generations of Asian immigrants have found open arms and incredible opportunities.

"We cannot put an end to this hate until we see tangible results at all levels of government and society," Kim said. He called for executive actions from the administration and legislation from Congress.

Asian community activists in New Jersey are aware of the rise in hate crimes. While they are vigilant and cautious, they feel the Garden State is a welcoming place for immigrants.

"We are in a much better situation than in New York City," said Michelle Song, executive vice president of the Korean-American Association, who lives in Somerset. New Jersey values diversity, said Song, who emigrated from South Korea in 1995. It's also a suburban environment where automobiles are the main mode of transportation, she said, leaving fewer chances for random encounters that can flare into harassment.

"We hardly walk here, we don't see people face to face," added Kirby Tan, a Chinese community group organizer who lives in Tenafly.

Tan has lived in New Jersey for 35 years. Afterarriving from Malaysia to study in San Diego at a time when there were few Asians, he recalls developing a buddy system for safety when he went outside. His neighborhood in Tenafly is populated with many Asian American families and there is a sense of community, Tan said.

A history of outcasts

As businesses have shut down, Asians have become a convenient scapegoat for troubles. It has happened before: Consider the 1982 case of Chinese American Vincent Chin, who was beaten to death by two autoworkers who were frustrated at losing jobs due to competition from Japanese car manufacturers. Following a plea bargain, the men received no jail time. "These weren't the kind of men you send to jail," wrote Michigan Judge Charles Kaufman.

This month, Congress' Asian Pacific American Caucus held a day of remembrance on the 79th anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordering more than 100,000 Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II, another dark period in this country's history.

Meanwhile, the young American-born sons of Japanese immigrants - known as Nisei - were eager to show their patriotism and shed racist stereotypes. They volunteered to serve in the military during the war. But again, the government distrusted them, so they weren't allowed to serve in the Pacific. The estimated 33,000 Japanese American soldiers were sent to serve in Europe to fight for the U.S., even as many of their families were held in internment camps.

The Nisei soldiers became known for their bravery. The 100th/442nd Infantry Regiment was comprised almost entirely of second-generation Japanese Americans, and they became the most decorated unit of its size in U.S. military history.

Choe is well aware that while born in this country, she is still sometimes perceived as an outsider.

"As angry as I was, I was hesitant to respond,"she said of the Times Square incident. "The videos and images of violent anti-Asian hate crimes that I had seen on the news and on social media rushed through my head, making me feel almost embarrassed, almost scared to hold the flag of my own ancestors."

Choe blames social media and comments from elected officials, including former President Donald Trump, who seemed to direct responsibility for the global pandemic toward Asians.
Email: mchao@northjersey.com
"Looking back, I wish I would have said something," Choe said. "I wish I didn't have to feel scared about standing up for myself. But this is the sad reality of the injustices that continuously face Asian Americans in our society."

Mary Chao 趙 慶 華 covers the Asian community, real estate and small business for NorthJersey.com. To get unlimited access to the latest news out of North Jersey, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Next time it could be worse': NJ teen recalls verbal assault as attacks on Asian Americans spike

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Leonia High School sophomore Yena Choe was at Times Square last week with six friends to film a video for the Korean-American Association of New Jersey's "Samiljeol" event, a remembrance of Korean resistance to Japanese rule. As they walked with Korean flags, an unmasked, middle-aged woman glared at the teens and told them, "Get away from me.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Asian-Americans are reeling from the killings in Georgia and a rising number of attacks nationwide. Could confronting racism bring solidarity across their class divides?

Six of the eight people who were killed at this and two other massage parlors in the Atlanta area were women of Asian descent. Credit... Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

The Asian-American experience is a tale of contrast.

We are immigrants, or descendants of immigrants, from more than 20 countries in East, South and Southeast Asia. We speak different languages and eat different food. Some lead America's most successful companies, like Google and Zoom. Others run small businesses, like Chinese restaurants and spas, which have been the hardest hit by the pandemic. We also have the nation's largest wealth gap: While some Asians earn household incomes that far exceed the national average, others consistently have the highest poverty rates.

The endless list of disparities and nuances has made solidarity elusive for Asian-Americans, even as activist groups demand that our issues be recognized. While Asian-Americans are the nation's fastest-growing racial group - now 6 percent of the population - not everyone's priorities are the same, far from it in some cases, so increasing numbers haven't led to increasing power, politically or culturally.

The events of the past year - from the former president's racial slurs to the series of attacks on Asians, leading up to the Tuesday shootings of eight people, including six women of Asian descent, at massage parlors in Atlanta - could be uniting people for a new reason: fear.

In a country with hate crimes at their highest level in more than a decade, the professional status that many Asian-Americans enjoy, conferred by competing and succeeding in the most elite educational and professional institutions in America, doesn't help.

Anna Mok, a Chinese-American executive at the consulting firm Deloitte, who lives in San Francisco and acknowledged that she was in a position of privilege, said hate crimes against Asian-Americans over the last year had prompted friends to urge her to not even go outside for a walk.

"I don't think I've ever felt that degree of physical vulnerability," Ms. Mok said.

She added that many other Asian-Americans working for big companies had described similar magnitudes of stress to her: "There's no buffer, there's no isolation. No matter how much money one makes, no matter how successful one is, it's the reality of being an Asian in the U.S."

Asian-Americans are also becoming the most economically divided demographic in the country. In 2016, their incomes ranged from about $12,000 at the 10th percentile to roughly $133,500 at the 90th percentile, with a median of about $51,000, according to the Pew Research Center. That compares with about $15,100 and $118,000 for whites.

The income disparity is, in part, driven by immigrants, who accounted for 81 percent of the growth in the Asian adult population over the past five decades. Many who arrived under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which gave priority to people with family ties, and after the Vietnam War ended in 1975 were relatively low-skilled workers. Later, the Immigration Act of 1990 brought in a new wave of higher-skilled immigrants under the H-1B visa program, which helped American companies hire foreigners with exceptional skills.

Many Asian immigrants have higher levels of education than native-born Americans, which is largely why they settle in at the top of the income ladder. At the same time, Asians at the bottom of the ladder have lower education levels.

In nearly a dozen conversations this past week with scholars, activists and historians, the sadness and grief around this inflection point was clear - as was the recognition of how starkly divided two professional paths for Asian immigrants in this country have been.

The Asian-American story has been a complicated narrative. There are the restaurant workers and massage therapists nested in metropolitan enclaves, but there are also the high achievers attending elite schools who end up in well-compensated careers. Often one generation of immigrants in service jobs raises the next generation of corporate strivers. In this moment, though, as the population grows, the groups are becoming increasingly isolated from one another.

In the aftermath of a summer of protests for racial justice and increasing awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement, corporate employees of color, including Asians, are demanding equity and inclusion, which would put an end to a white-dominated culture. The workers in spas and nail salons don't have the luxury to even think about that; they are more vulnerable to the whims of their white clientele. In a nation already divided by politics, religion and income, here is a community divided within itself.

But the "kung flu" pandemic - the xenophobic language, fueled by President Donald J. Trump, that added hate crimes to a deadly disease and the rest of the list of things for Asian-Americans to fear this past year - may be gradually bringing people together.

Last year, reported hate crimes against people of Asian descent in New York City jumped 833 percent from 2019. Nearly 3,800 hate incidents, which range from name-calling to assault, against Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders were reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a group that has collected data for the last year. (The number could be higher because not all incidents were reported.) Sixty-eight percent of those incidents were reported by women.

As the country reeled from the all-too-familiar scenes of mass shootings in Atlanta, especially killings that may have targeted people because of their race and gender, some scholars recalled an earlier death. In 1982, Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American, was beaten to death by two white men at a time of rising tensions over Japanese dominance in the auto market. The killers, who insisted the attack was not racially motivated, were sentenced to three years of probation.

The fact that the men did not serve jail time sent tremors through Asian communities. Activists formed civil rights groups to protest.

"We know that the Vincent Chin murder really did help communities across different ethnic groups come together," said Nancy Yuen, a sociologist at Biola University in California.

Yet for decades, policymakers and government leaders have historically treated Asian-Americans as if they were invisible. That was in part because of the diverse makeup and smaller size of the group, which made it challenging to gain influence and attention. Ellen Wu, a history professor at Indiana University, said Asian-Americans had to compile data just to prove that they were minorities who suffered from issues like discrimination. Being recognized has been an uphill battle ever since.

The shared pain and disrespect could finally be giving Asians grounds for solidarity - and a platform to be visible. On Twitter, the hashtag #stopasianhate went viral, and all over the country, crowds gathered in the streets this past week, lighting candles for the Atlanta victims and holding signs proclaiming "Asian Lives Matter."

Asian-American professionals in journalism, medicine and technology reflected on a year of swelling anxiety and pain from microaggressions. On my social media feeds and in conversations, fellow Asian-Americans recounted being chastised by a white person at a grocery store to keep a distance, enduring a road-rage encounter that felt ambiguously racist and being ignored by a worker at a store who was happy to help white shoppers. For Asian-American women, the nature of the Atlanta attack sparked a conversation about racism and sexism - times they had heard men yell lines like "Me so horny" while walking down the street.

Doctors who were usually booked full with appointments found that their calendars were empty, which tracks with the broader trends of how discrimination has manifested in the past year like patients refusing medical care from doctors and nurses of Asian descent. Some doctors even reported verbal abuse by their patients.

Stop AAPI Hate, the organization documenting reports of Asian hate incidents, noted sharp upticks in verbal harassment, shunning and physical assaults over the last year.

For those working remotely during the pandemic, who could mostly stay home and felt less vulnerable, their fear began to manifest when they saw photos posted online of Asian elders - people who looked like their parents - beaten to a pulp. Ms. Mok, the Deloitte executive, moved to San Francisco in January from Palo Alto, Calif., to be closer to her father, who is 88 and lives alone there.

"My own sense of helplessness when I told him, 'Please don't go out, not even to get your newspaper,' was very difficult for me to handle," Ms. Mok said.

Ms. Wu said she had noticed unity in the last year even among Asian activists who usually butted heads. She mentioned groups that have been fighting fiercely over the future of affirmative action in higher education. Both sides published statements condemning Mr. Trump's racial slurs about Asians spreading the coronavirus.

"There's something about the Covid issue and the anti-Asian hate issue that presents this common denominator, a point of convergence," Ms. Wu said. "There is a certain baseline where, across the board, there does seem to be recognition and fear that bad things are happening to people of Asian ancestry, undeniably."

Jo-Ann Yoo, the executive director of the Asian American Federation, a nonprofit network of community groups, has spent the last year producing videos about small Asian-American businesses hit hard by the pandemic and speaking at rallies and news conferences about hate crimes against Asians.

It has been devastating and infuriating, Ms. Yoo said. But she is hopeful, in a way, that the year of increasing attacks and now the violence in Atlanta will begin to bridge the class divide by creating a dialogue among people of Asian descent. The victims at the spas, like the 16 percent of Asian workers in the service industry, had to leave home to make a living during the pandemic.

When most people are vaccinated and white-collar workers are fully back out in the world - commuting, stopping for coffee and heading to offices - the way the world has changed in the past year could further force solidarity: Any Asian could be targeted.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
There Is No Rung on the Ladder That Protects You From Hate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Asian-Americans are reeling from the killings in Georgia and a rising number of attacks nationwide. Could confronting racism bring solidarity across their class divides? The Asian-American experience is a tale of contrast. We are immigrants, or descendants of immigrants, from more than 20 countries in East, South and Southeast Asia.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The author Cathy Park Hong sees the recent upsurge in violence as a turning point for Asian Americans.

"The indignity of being Asian in this country has been underreported," the poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong writes in Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning. Hong, 44, is the daughter of Korean immigrants and was raised in Los Angeles. Although she has written about race in her poetry, Minor Feelings is her first nonfiction book, a blend of memoir and cultural criticism. Her essays explore the painful and often invisible racial traumas that Asian Americans experience-traumas that have become impossible to ignore over the past year, as reports of anti-Asian racism and violence have increased.

Yesterday, a gunman killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women, at massage parlors in the Atlanta area. Hong told me by email that she was grateful to see an outpouring of sympathy from people outside the Asian American community, but also expressed the concern that police and commentators would downplay the significance of the event. "I'm already seeing media trying to whitewash this incident," she wrote, "saying it's not racially motivated, taking words of the police over the stories of these women."

Earlier this year, several attacks on elderly Asians in the San Francisco Bay Area were captured on videos that went viral. One victim, 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee, died from his injuries. Although authorities in many cases have not determined-or are reluctant to say-whether these attacks are racially motivated, the overall pattern of violence is stark. Since March 2020, about 3,800 racist incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have been reported to the group Stop AAPI Hate. Last Thursday, President Joe Biden condemned "vicious hate crimes against Asian Americans, who have been attacked, harassed, blamed, and scapegoated"-marking a contrast with his predecessor, who referred to the COVID-19 pandemic as "the Chinese virus" and "kung flu."
Read: What it's like when racism comes for you
Hong's work captures the peculiar spot that Asian Americans occupy in America's racial hierarchy. The political scientist Claire Jean Kim has described this dynamic as "racial triangulation": Neither Black nor white, Asians are simultaneously stereotyped as model minorities and perpetual foreigners, and thus used as a wedge between Black and white people. But with overt attacks apparently on the rise across the country, Americans of Asian descent are demanding attention to the racism they face.

I spoke with Hong in detail last week, before the Atlanta-area shootings. We discussed why reports of violence and hate have galvanized so many Asian Americans, across ethnicities, in the past year. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Morgan Ome: Racism toward Asian Americans is not new. But recently, it feels as though more Asian Americans have been speaking up and protesting. Why?

Cathy Park Hong: A few years ago, David Dao, a Vietnamese doctor, was assaulted and dragged from a United Airlines flight. I remember the media did not talk about his identity. The story was just about him being a middle-class man who was dragged out of the airplane. Whereas when I saw that, I thought, I bet he wouldn't have been treated that way if he were white. But no one was saying that. A lot has changed between then and now. It's hard to say exactly what the reasons are. Part of it is because of Donald Trump. There has been a real retrenchment of identities, and people have been much more up-front in talking about race and structural racial inequities in this country. And that has resulted in a lot of Asian Americans speaking up.

When Black Lives Matter [gained force] in 2014-after Ferguson-I saw an increase in Asian American organizing and allyship. And last summer, people really internalized the Black Lives Matter protests and the conversation about social justice. Now, because of the anti-Asian racism that's been happening, Asian Americans have been more moved to vocalize and organize-from writing commentaries in The New York Times to organizing groups to escort the elderly in Oakland's Chinatown.

Ome: Has there been a moment like this before? The closest parallel that I could think of was the killing of Vincent Chin in 1982, which led to an outcry among Chinese and Japanese Americans. Other historical examples, such as Japanese internment during World War II, didn't persuade Asians to protest on a mass scale. The damaging of Korean-owned businesses during the L.A. riots didn't result in a lot of non-Koreans speaking up for the Korean community.

Hong: It's true. You didn't see other Asians coming in to support the Korean community after the L.A. riots. The difference now is that the people who are being attacked run the gamut. Even if they are thought to be Chinese, a lot of times they are Filipino or Vietnamese or Korean. One of the symptoms of racism is that you get all lumped together.

Another historical parallel was after 9/11, when Muslims were being attacked and persecuted. Or when Trump became president, there were talks about detaining Muslims. Americans were attacking Muslims or people who vaguely looked Muslim, including Hindu Indians, Sikh Indians-whoever looked brown. I believe that did galvanize the South Asian community and the Muslim community. We're seeing that happen now. There is more aggressive activism among East Asians, Southeast Asians, and South Asians. It doesn't really matter which group is being targeted.

Ome: Do you see any similarities between what's happening now and what happened after the L.A. riots?
Read: Looking back on the L.A. riots through five documentaries
Hong: Similarly to the L.A. riots, there was an economic division between working-class African Americans and working-class Asian Americans. Many Black people resented Korean immigrants for coming into their neighborhood and opening stores they couldn't open themselves, because they were redlined. At the same time, these Korean immigrants were barely scraping by. They didn't have any insurance. But they were the next step up [from Black residents on the economic ladder]. There's still a lot of that resentment from the L.A. riots, and memories of Latasha Harlins, who was killed by a Korean immigrant.

What's very charged and tricky to talk about today are the optics of a Black or brown person assaulting or attacking the Asian elderly, like the Thai grandfather, Vicha Ratanapakdee. There's a huge difference between the way second-generation or younger Asian Americans think about race and the way Asian immigrants think about race. Many younger Asian Americans are very sensitive to anti-Blackness in the Asian community, and about policing. With older Asian immigrants, these crimes may reaffirm their anti-Blackness and drive them toward the right.

What I fear is that these crimes are sowing deeper divisions between Black and Asian Americans, and that white people will not hold themselves accountable. Whenever I say on social media, "These attacks are symptomatic of white supremacy," white people say, "How is it white supremacy when it's not white people committing the crimes?" Claire Jean Kim has this really great racial-triangulation theory that talks about the relationship between Black, Asian, and white people. You saw that in the L.A. riots, and I see the same kind of dynamics being played out today.

Ome: So how do we move forward?

Hong: I don't want to overcomplicate this. There are two ways of talking about this. The act of violence itself is wrong. You cannot excuse it. I think many Asian Americans have never talked about it, and so white people still don't believe that Asian Americans face racism. Because we're invisible, the racism against us has also been invisible. This is why it's important that people are speaking up to show: "Actually, this has been happening, and there's been a spike. But at the same time, this has been going on for a long time. We just haven't really talked about it. And now we're talking about it, and you have to pay attention."

But it gets really tricky when the video [of an assault] becomes viral and we start talking about solutions beyond amplifying it. Part of the reason there's a spike in anti-Asian violence is that people are angry and desperate. I'm not saying that we should excuse that. I'm just trying to think of the reasons why it's happening to Asians. Earlier today, I was having a conversation where an interviewer told me that a police officer-who is Asian-said that he doesn't believe [that recent attacks] are anti-Asian hate crimes.

Ome: The officer didn't believe they're racially motivated? What was his explanation?

Hong: Yes-that these assaults against Asians are just part of rising crime. I disagree with him. There have been plenty of incidents where the victims weren't burglarized-they were attacked for no reason at all-and called racist slurs. I know people who live in Manhattan, specifically Asian American women who live alone, who are scared to go out by themselves, because they are followed and harassed and called all kinds of racial slurs. So this is not just some kind of hallucination.

Ome: Do you think that the events of the past year have forced this country to take racism against Asian Americans more seriously?

Hong: We have far to go. This is typical of this country, to not really focus on racism unless it's sensationalized in some way, unless there's a viral video, or someone gets murdered. I wouldn't be surprised if Americans just forget and think, Onto the next news cycle. It's great that white people and other non-Asians are picking up on this, but we can't trust them to continue to train their attention on what's happening to Asian Americans. We need to continue vocalizing who we are and our role in this country.

Ome: In Minor Feelings, you wrote about the difficulty of using the pronoun we because Asian Americans are such a diverse population. Do you still think Asian American is a meaningful descriptor?

Hong: It's what we have right now.

Ome: Maybe I can clarify. The term Asian American was coined in 1968 by radical student organizers who were envisioning a pan-Asian, anti-racist, anti-imperialist movement. Is their notion of being Asian American just an ideal? Or is it a real identity-based coalition that you see forming?

Hong: People forget that history. I forget that too. Asian Americans came together because there was no term for us. Before, we were called Oriental, or by our nationalities. What created the name Asian American was the Vietnam War and the Black Power movement. Keep in mind, those Asian American organizers were second generation, maybe even third generation. They were Filipino, Chinese, Japanese. Quite a few of them had family put in internment camps. They were working-class. So they had a lot to be angry about.

It was really powerful, and it got written out of history. Part of it was because of the immigration patterns in America. After the late 1960s, there was this huge influx of Asians coming in from all different nations. We got way more diverse: Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Indian, Cambodian and Vietnamese refugees, Koreans. A lot of those immigrants now have children who consider themselves American, but realize that they still have secondary status as Americans because of the color of their skin and because their voices don't have the kind of reach that white people do.

Part of the new awareness and consciousness is because there are a lot more of us. And there are more of us who have been here long enough to demand that we need to be part of this country. More so than when I was in my 20s or even 30s, the younger generation is so much fiercer, so much more involved, and so much prouder of being Asian American. The rhetoric has changed from We want more Asians in Hollywood. It's not just about representational politics. It's also about confronting class inequity among Asian Americans and trying to build solidarity with other people of color.

What I like to say about Asian Americans is that if we think of Asian Americans as less of an identity, and more as a coalition, then maybe Asians will feel more comfortable identifying with it, because it allows room for all of our kind of national, economic, and regional distinctions.
Read: What stories of racial trauma leave out
Ome: In your book, you wrote, "Since the late sixties, when Asian American activists protested with the Black Panthers, there hasn't been a mass movement we can call our own." Why do you think that is?

Hong: Some people disputed that and said there has been a lot of activism since then. I would say that it was more fractured. But I think it's really important to build a cross-cultural community among Asian Americans, and also bridges between Asian, Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities. And right now, we're not really there yet.

If we want to fix the structural inequities, reform the criminal-justice system and the police, and have health care for all, it's very important to also talk about our racial identity, because people feel intimately close to that. You can't just say, like Andrew Yang does, that people are getting too much into identity. If white people are misusing identity or race to pit us against each other, we have to address that. In terms of getting what we want, and being proud of being [in the United States], and speaking out against violence, we need to build community. That means building an Asian American identity that's beyond loving boba tea and K-pop.

Ome: What do you think about some of the solutions that have been put forth for combatting anti-Asian violence? Last April, Andrew Yang encouraged Asian Americans to show their patriotism. This year, President Biden issued a memorandum to condemn racism and intolerance toward Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. On the community level, there are calls for neighborhood patrols and other nonpolice safety measures.

Hong: I'm not an organizer. I'm not an activist. So I don't know if I can tell you exactly what needs to be done. Maybe we should go back to what happened after the L.A. riots, and look at how people tried to rebuild, and see how it failed.

There was a campaign to funnel resources into South Central. There were Korean Americans who called for people to pay attention to the fact that most of their businesses burned down and they had no insurance. There were attempts at interracial community building. And they were abandoned. That's usually what happens: Whenever there's a crisis, the media and politicians pay attention. And then they abandon it. Right now, we need to continue amplifying these hate crimes. But I don't think policing is the answer. Asking for more policing is not going to solve anti-Asian hate crimes and bias incidents. The reason being that the police right now have all the money and are completely militarized, and [violence against Asian Americans] is still happening.

Ome: In Oakland's Chinatown, not everyone favors neighborhood patrols instead of policing. Some people want more policing. So even within a community, it's hard to persuade everyone.

Hong: If you're the one who has a store or is an employee in Chinatown, and you're being harassed, and someone's telling you, "We need to defund the police as a way to protect you," that kind of language doesn't work. We have to find a way to talk to each other and with other people of color in our communities. But we also have to figure out a way to talk to our parents and listen to them, because they're the ones whose lives are most in danger.

I want to listen. That's really the policy that all of us should have right now: Listen to the stories and the hardships that Asian immigrants are going through, and also listen to the Black and Latinx people who are living in the same neighborhood.

Ome: Is there anything else you want to add?

Hong: As cynical as I sometimes sound, the fact that anti-Asian violent incidents are being documented, and that people are talking about them, is progress. Because that wasn't happening before, not when I was growing up. A lot of Asian Americans are more vocal, organized, radicalized, and progressive. And we're not going to go back.

​When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why This Wave of Anti-Asian Racism Feels Different

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The author Cathy Park Hong sees the recent upsurge in violence as a turning point for Asian Americans.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘This is Not New’: Anti-Asian Xenophobia has a Long History in the U.S.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It's a difficult time to be Asian American: Along with the everyone else in the country, the COVID-19 pandemic has infiltrated almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives. And racially motivated violence against Asian Americans seems to be spreading just as quickly as the coronavirus itself.

People are being coughed at and spat on. Verbal insults and threats against women and older people make headlines every week. In Midland, Texas, a father and his toddler were slashed across their faces at a Sam's Club for being Asian.

According to NBC News, the online reporting forum Stop AAPI Hate said that since its inception March 18, it's received more than 650 direct reports of discrimination primarily targeting Asian Americans. (Because COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China, Asian Americans have been widely scapegoated and harrassed, regardless of whether they're Chinese or not. )

All the while, President Donald Trump has intermittently called the coronavirus the " Chinese Virus," something many critics say is fueling racism throughout the country.

Whether you've been subjected to discrimination or not, simply hearing about the widespread xenophobia can affect your mental health. We asked therapists who work within Asian American communities to share their best self-care advice for these stressful times.

1. Reach out to friends who can validate your experiences. (Online friends count, too!)

Because we're physically distancing, social bonds are more important now than ever, especially if you're emotionally exhausted from this current wave of xenophobia and racism. (Maybe you've experienced a glare or rude comment yourself at the market or on a walk.)

"I think the need for connection is particularly important when we've encountered a micro or macroaggression," said Gabrielle Zhuang-Estrin, a clinical social worker who works in the Asian American community in Los Angeles. "We should be sharing the burden of our experience. Let family and friends know what's happening."

If you see or hear about another person who's been targeted, reach out and validate their experiences. For instance, if you see a social media post about someone being verbally abused, make a point to comment. (It could be something like, "Hey, we don't know each other, but we're mutual friends through Lauren; I just want to tell you I'm so sorry about what happened to you when you were walking your dog. I've had some experiences like that myself recently, so please let me know if you want to talk.")

"Oftentimes with things like this, you need someone to witness, listen and affirm what we've seen," Zhuang-Estrin said. "I'd also suggest joining a POC or Asian American/APIA online community or advocacy organization to hear more voices that are dealing with this right now and to find larger supportive networks that are mobilizing outreach or action. "

The more popular online communities ― NextShark.com or the Facebook group Subtle Asian Traits - can serve as a good jumping-off point when looking for specific advocacy groups.

10'000 Hours via Getty Images

2. Pull yourself away from the TV and headlines once in a while.

You want to be as informed as possible during an international health crisis like this ― especially when there are local threats to your community. You might feel like you can't take a break and it's not until you're overwhelmed and hit with a wave of exhaustion that you stop. Don't let it get that far, said Zhuang-Estrin.

"I tell my clients that while watching or reading the news, keep track of your personal experience, your feelings and emotions as well as your bodily reactions," she said. "Check to see if there's sadness, grief or anger coming up. If so, maybe you need to take a pause and metabolize that for a moment before moving forward."

Zhuang-Estrin said to notice sensations in your body ― a tightening in the chest or belly, for instance, or a quickened heart rate ― and let that inform your decisions on what you can take in, content-wise, and when it's too much.

"We each have our own tolerance levels of what we can absorb and what is too overwhelming and it takes some mindfulness to be aware of when we become overwhelmed with distressing stories," Zhuang-Estrin said.

When you do take a break, try some mindfulness-based relaxation, go on a walk or do something you love, said Therese Mascardo, a psychologist of Filipino descent who works in the Asian American community.

If you're constantly overwhelmed and are struggling to self-soothe, consider seeing a therapist - over FaceTime or Zoom, that is.

"Professional mental health support from culturally sensitive licensed therapists can be an effective way to process the emotions related to the trauma, and to learn coping skills for resulting depression, anxiety or hypervigilance," Mascardo said.

fanjianhua via Getty Images

3. If you have to go to the grocery store, steel yourself.

For many Asian Americans, there's heightened concern about going to the market right now. It's easy to be wary when you hear stories from others. Take, for instance, this experience journalist Jeff Yang recently tweeted about:

"So I had my first 'breathing while Asian' moment," he said. "Went out for groceries and an older masked white woman passing by the line shouted 'FUCK YOU!' at me for no apparent reason. As I stared at her, she pulled off her mask, coughed directly at me, turned on her heel and walked off."

It's likely that going to the grocery store will be totally OK, but Yang's story is hardly an outlier; there is cause for concern, which is why Amazon Fresh or other grocery delivery services are increasingly more appealing for many.

If that's not an option for you and you have to go to the market to restock, steel yourself for your visit by talking through your feelings beforehand with your loved ones.

"Ask them what they've done to feel OK in situations where they felt like they might be potentially at risk of attack," Mascardo said. "If it helps when you're at the market, be on a call or FaceTime with someone who can serve as an emotional support and 'witness' if something were to happen."

4. If you're discriminated against, put your safety first.

If someone confronts or profiles you because you're Asian ― whether it's a dirty look, a racial slur or something worse ― safety should be your first concern. Typically, the best self-defense is to ignore and walk away from a provocation.

"It's important to remember that by doing so, you are not saying that racism or the racist act is OK," Mascardo said. "Walking away from a racist encounter is simply choosing to not engage in a lose-lose situation. Then, after you've secured safety, it can be valuable to seek immediate emotional support from a friend or loved one."

If you want to make a complaint ― or just need immediate emotional support ― seek out staff at the market and let them know what happened.

How do you calm down in the moment? Zhuang-Estrin said to breathe in and out and to feel your feet.

"Connecting and expanding into our bodies helps us remain as calm as we can and as open as we can so we can access different action options," she said. "When you were faced with a threat, your breathing probably became more shallow and your vision narrowed because you were readying yourself [for] rapid action. Taking a breath and staying connected to our bodies also allows us to remain present rather than relying on our immediate impulses."

However you act, don't judge yourself for it later. Accepting how you handled the encounter is important, Zhuang-Estrin said, because you don't want to deal with that "pang of guilt or concern that you haven't handled the situation 'right' on top of everything else."

5. Lean into literature written for and by Asians.

Now is a great time to grab your Kindle and check out books by Asians and Asian Americans. In this difficult hour, hearing how others in the community have persevered can be heartening, Zhuang-Estrin said.

"I always tell my clients to lean into our ancestors, social justice elders or beloved spiritual figures in hard times," she said. "It allows us to bring in different models that can help lead how we can think and act during this time. Read Grace Lee Boggs, Maxine Hong Kingston and Thich Nhat Hanh."

6. Remind yourself that this is part of a larger story.

Try to keep a wide lens when you consider the current wave of xenophobia and racism that Asian Americans are dealing with. These microaggressions and macroaggressions feel painfully personal, but they're reflective of a larger legacy of oppression against Asians in the U.S., Zhuang-Estrin said.

"Historically, Asian Americans are either exalted (model minority) or vilified (red scare)," she said. "In our current context we are seeing fear and blame being inflamed by a leader who seeks to scapegoat the pandemic so the problem is institutional in nature."

Recognizing that this is bigger than you isn't meant to minimize your current experiences. They're still very valid.

"Looking at our history doesn't give the other person a pass when we're directly confronted with racism," Zhuang-Estrin said. "But holding this wider lens shows us the greater complexity we are in and helps us assess what we can and cannot control."

A HuffPost Guide To Coronavirus

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
6 Self-Care Tips For Asian Americans Dealing With Racism Right Now

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It's a difficult time to be Asian American: Along with the everyone else in the country, the COVID-19 pandemic has infiltrated almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives. And racially motivated violence against Asian Americans seems to be spreading just as quickly as the coronavirus itself. People are being coughed at and spat on.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In April 2020, we interviewed Liz Kleinrock, an anti-bias educator and consultant based in Los Angeles, California. We interviewed Liz to learn more about how addressing or ignoring anti-Asian racism in our classrooms and communities can impact student learning:
Q: In your TED Talk, "How to teach kids to talk about taboo topics," you talk about your curriculum unit on race and racism with your 4th grade students, and share how some students were afraid to ask questions about race. What are the main tenets of addressing hard topics like race in the classroom? How would you recommend we apply or amend those tenets to address anti-Asian racism during COVID-19?
A: The most important thing I tell folx is that you have to know yourself. If you're an educator and want to talk to your students about race, spend some time reflecting on your own identity and understanding of race and racism. If you're not comfortable talking about these things with your friends or colleagues, you're probably not ready to talk to kids. If you are comfortable talking about these topics with your friends and colleagues, then ask yourself if you notice anything about the identities of these peers. Are you only comfortable talking about race with people who share your racialized identity? (I use the term "racialized" to emphasize that race is a socially constructed idea, and that race is something that has been done TO people.) Are you comfortable having discussions with people across lines of difference?

From my personal perspective, I think the amount of anti-Asian racism we're experiencing is a result of erasure of the Asian American community from conversations about race, as well as general ignorance about Asian American history and individuals. Conversations and lessons about race are too often presented along the Black-white binary, and add on the bias held against East Asian Americans as a result of the "model minority" myth and assumption of proximity to whiteness. To combat anti-Asian racism, I'd ask that people educate themselves about the diversity of Asian American identities, and where these stereotypes and biases are born by researching topics such as "Yellow Peril," and the list of anti-Asian policies in the United States. It's also important to keep in mind that ruminating in oppression and racism will only get us so far, and we also need to think about what liberation means for Asian Americans. We can study the Yellow Power Movement and instances where Asian American activists have advocated for justice in our own communities, and acted as accomplices for other communities in need.
Q: What would you talk to your students about if you noticed some students were being bullied because they are, or are perceived as being Asian? How would you approach the situation?
A: With students, I believe in calling them into conversations to address this type of behavior, rather than calling them out and publicly shaming them. In my classroom, we used restorative justice practices so that there's an understanding of the damage that has been created, all community members have the opportunity to be heard, and the focus is on repairing the harm done. I would begin by telling these students something along the lines of, "You might not be aware of this, but there is a lot of painful history behind the words or behaviors you chose," and would explain how their choices harmed our classroom community, rather than helped. I would also ask the students in question to identify where they heard or received these messages about Asian people, so we can begin to unpack and dismantle their racial biases.
Q: For teachers who might feel uncomfortable addressing anti-Asian racism with their students, what advice would you give them, especially for teachers who don't identify as Asian American? What would be at risk if the topic was avoided?
A: I've always appreciated the quote, "What you permit, you promote." A lot of people seem to forget that staying silent on certain issues sends a message on its own. If teachers or adults center their own comfort by ignoring or minimizing anti-Asian racism, they're sending the message that these words and behaviors are acceptable, and kids will follow their lead. If teachers are uncomfortable addressing anti-Asian racism, the first question I have is where that discomfort comes from. Is it because they simply don't know about the issue? Are they worried about saying the wrong thing, or not having the right language? We are at a point where there is so much free information readily available. Listen to the podcasts, "Asian Enough Podcast," or "Code Switch." Check out the free Asian American Racial Justice Toolkit. Read books by diverse Asian authors and activists. Ignorance is not an excuse to disengage.

I would caution teachers to be aware of how they're representing Asian individuals and Asian American history. Far too often, lessons and inclusion of people of the global majority are presented from a deficit-based lens, or through examples of injustice and oppression. All students need to form positive self-identities and respect those of others. I'd recommend beginning with books or lessons that hold up Asian American individuals or history for their culture, contributions, and resilience before diving into anti-Asian racism.
Q: We learn in your TED Talk that your students became deeply engaged in conversations about race and equity. What can adults learn from your students?
A: My students are some of the most incredible humans, and there is so much adults can constantly learn from youth. They love to ask questions to further their understanding. They are open to learning and adjusting their language and behavior to be respectful towards others. They care deeply about justice and equity. In anti-bias and anti-racism work, there's an emphasis on creating brave spaces and accepting and expecting non-closure, and I love that my students are unafraid to engage with the unknown.

We are also in the beginning stages of creating a parent resource for talking to children about Asian American identity and anti-Asian racism. This discussion guide will provide age-appropriate conversation starters and specific strategies for parents to navigate issues from intergenerational trauma to identity-based bullying in schools.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Addressing Anti-Asian Racism with Students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In April 2020, we interviewed Liz Kleinrock, an anti-bias educator and consultant based in Los Angeles, California. We interviewed Liz to learn more about how addressing or ignoring anti-Asian racism in our classrooms and communities can impact student learning: Q: In your TED Talk, "How to teach kids to talk about taboo topics," you talk about your curriculum unit on race and racism with your 4th grade students, and share how some students were afraid to ask questions about race.

# 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
Challenging Anti-Asian Bias and Acting as an Ally

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Amid the increase in anti-Asian rhetoric, bullying in schools, racist incidents, scapegoating and hate crimes, use this collection of resources on anti-Asian bias and how to act as an ally.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
JACL Applauds Confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson

# 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.authors[].name
Campaign Legal Center Sues Elon Musk and DOGE for Exercising Unchecked Power and Harming Everyday Americans

# 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.attachment_link.readable_text
The National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum was founded 25 years ago by Asian American and Pacific Islander women who recognized the need for an organization that would amplify our stories and experiences. More about our history&nbsp→

Today, we're building collective power with AAPI women and girls to gain full agency over our lives, our families, and our communities. Sign up for email updates and join our movement!

This form couldn't be loaded. Try refreshing the page. If you have enabled settings that block advertisements or JavaScript, try turning those settings off for our website.

Every person should be able to get affordable health care no matter how long they have been in the U.S. or the status they have been granted. But because of unnecessary policy barriers, immigrants have to navigate a complicated patchwork of care that often forces them to pay out-of-pocket.

The HEAL for Immigrant Families Act will help immigrants get the health care they need by removing the xenophobic restrictions that prevent them from being insured and disproportionately harm Black, Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islander, and other immigrants of color. Learn more and take action →

Medication Abortion Study

We're researching the abortion needs of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders because this information doesn't exist for our communities. This two-year study, using focus groups, interviews, and a nationally representative survey, will focus on understanding how AANHPIs think and talk about medication abortion, their experiences with medication abortion to terminate their pregnancies, and barriers to accessing medication abortion. More about the study →

We're currently recruiting for virtual and phone interviews! Participants will receive a $50 gift card for their time. We're looking for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders who:

are between the ages of 18 and 49;

were assigned female or intersex at birth;

and have used medication abortion since the year 2018.

Read more about eligibility information and how to apply here.

Read our Fierce Advocate newsletter to learn about how NAPAWF has been combating anti-Asian harassment and violence, working to make healthcare more accessible for immigrants, building a reproductive justice agenda in coalition with other AAPI-led organizations, and more.

In this issue:

We have 7 active chapters located across the country - get connected today!

The National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum is a membership organization that develops leaders for our fight for policy and cultural change. Our members have access to a national network of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women and non-binary and intersex people across the country based in our values and focused on building power.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
NAPAWF - National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum was founded 25 years ago by Asian American and Pacific Islander women who recognized the need for an organization that would amplify our stories and experiences. More about our history&nbsp→ Today, we're building collective power with AAPI women and girls to gain full agency over our lives, our families, and our communities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
When Women are the Enemy: The Intersection of Misogyny and White Supremacy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Misogyny is a dangerous and underestimated component of extremism, and it shares alarming common ground with white supremacist ideology.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there's been a significant uptick in violence against Asians and Asian Americans. The organization Stop AAPI Hate collected more than 2,800 reports of verbal abuse, harassment, and physical assaults against Asians in the United States from March to December 2020. These reports depict a disturbing reality, especially for Asian women, who experienced violence nearly 2.5 times more than their male counterparts. However, the numbers do not tell the full story: They don't include many of the unreported and increasingly normalized incidents of violence that started as soon as the Trump administration began to unapologetically characterize the global pandemic as the "Chinese virus." Since then, Asians and Asian Americans have shared countless accounts with one another, privately describing the challenges of everyday life in the U.S.

As an example, early last March, my aunt came home from the grocery store visibly upset. She explained that she had been chased out of a local Bay Area supermarket by another shopper because he insisted that she was carrying the virus. My uncle then suggested that perhaps dying his hair blonde could save him from the anti-Asian harassment.

These stories are painful, but they are also part of a larger, and often dismissed, history of violence. In addition to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the assaults against Filipino farmworkers in the 1930s by white mobs, and the Japanese internment camps of the 1940s, there's a longstanding history of racialized colonial wars that shaped our communities' histories before we even arrived to the United States.

As a Vietnamese woman born in Oakland, California, I was never taught about the effects of the Viet Nam War or how, in the aftermath, refugees and immigrants spent indefinite amounts of time in various camps across the globe. I didn't know about the estimated two million civilians and more than one million Vietnamese soldiers who were killed. I did not understand the enduring impacts of the chemical Agent Orange, which U.S. troops used during the war, until I visited my mother's homeland in the early 2000s. And it wasn't until later that I learned about the massacres or the racist characterizations of Vietnamese people used to legitimize millions of deaths. It was then that I also learned about the anti-war protests across the globe, including those led by Black civil rights leaders, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Angela Davis, and Muhammad Ali. These leaders also fought hard for our rights as new immigrants and children of immigrants in the United States.

Fortunately, I've been able to seek out knowledge and learn directly from Asian American leaders, including Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese internment camp survivor who was friends with civil rights leader Malcolm X. She spent much of her life highlighting the issues impacting Asians and Asian Americans and in racial solidarity to end police violence and systemic racism against Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color.

The myth that we have not been impacted by white supremacy also ignores our diverse communities' experiences with Islamophobia and anti-South Asian violence, especially post-9/11. It dismisses the lived realities of and and Asian Americans, as well as our . And it often fails to account for the experiences of our Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander counterparts, whose stories are often conflated with that of Asians in the category of API, Asian Pacific Islanders. Yet, with all of these ongoing needs, less than one percent of philanthropicfunding goes to our communities.

But instead of this support, Asian communities are being scapegoated for the virus.

I've asked community ambassadors and organizers in Oakland, who know our neighborhoods intimately, what they think about the recent incidents of assault and harassment. They shared that the violence is much more systemic than what's on the news: It's about poverty, the impacts of gentrification, including displacement and houselessness, racial profiling, mental health needs, limited health care, and other social services. But instead of this support, Asian communities are being scapegoated for the virus.

We've been hurting for a long time, and we've been working to create solutions for just as long. Now, finally, our stories are getting some attention. Hopefully, resources will come next.

Regardless, this moment is a reminder to build together, to continue to share our stories, to provide resources, to help one another address immediate needs and create long-lasting change. Our lives depend on it-and each other.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ignoring the History of Anti-Asian Racism Is Another Form of Violence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there's been a significant uptick in violence against Asians and Asian Americans. The organization Stop AAPI Hate collected more than 2,800 reports of verbal abuse, harassment, and physical assaults against Asians in the United States from March to December 2020.

# 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
During his campaign rallies and back when he still had access to Twitter, then-President Donald Trump often referred to the coronavirus as the "Chinese virus" or "China virus" - reports have even linked his October COVID-19 diagnosis to an uptick in anti-Asian racism on Twitter.

But Trump's attempt to blame China for the spread of the coronavirus isn't new. Several historians and psychologists I talked to said that when diseases like COVID-19 become associated with a specific country or group of people, a scapegoat often emerges. That's especially true if those in power find they can target a marginalized group in a way that reaffirms beliefs already held about these communities.

How White House economists are thinking about COVID-19 relief | FiveThirtyEight

The wave of racism, harassment and violence against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic is just the latest example. There were 122 incidents of anti-Asian hate crimes in 16 of the country's most populous cities in 2020, an increase of almost 150 percent over the previous year, according to data compiled by California State University's Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism that was shared with Voice of America. Restaurateurs in some of New York City's predominantly Asian American neighborhoods also said their businesses had taken a nosedive: According to Yelp data provided to Today in March 2020, half of the worst days for Chinese restaurant searches in the U.S. over the past year had occurred that February.

The instinct to vilify minority groups, especially during times of crisis, has a long-standing history in the U.S., rooted in the country's relationship to white supremacy or fear that white people might become less powerful, said Sherry Wang, a professor of counseling psychology at Santa Clara University. Wang explained that the U.S. has often promoted racist myths to portray different groups of people as either inferior, dirty or dangerous to white people. For Asian Americans in particular, she said, there's the "Yellow Peril" stereotype, a fear that emerged in the late-19th century, after an increase in immigration to the U.S. from China - and after the West realized that Asians were strong enough as a political, economic and military threat to surpass the U.S. "When the West realized Asia was very big and could take over, they wanted to paint Asians, especially East Asians, as dangerous outsiders but not so threatening that they were superior," she said. "They were seen as threatening to the white, Western way of life."

That's one reason why we're seeing discrimination and other racist acts against Asians: America once again fears China's dominance. Ultimately, blaming China for the pandemic didn't help Trump win reelection in 2020, but unfavorable views of China are at a record high among Americans. And there are signs that Americans, especially Republicans, blame China for the spread of the coronavirus. A November Economist/YouGov poll found, for instance, that 64 percent of all registered voters and 86 percent of Republicans said it was definitely or probably true that China was responsible for the pandemic.

Some of the most overt aspects of anti-Asian racism in the U.S. have been tied to diseases, too. Take the bubonic plague outbreak in Hawaii in 1899-1900. After several people of Asian ancestry died of the disease in Honolulu, authorities locked down a predominantly Asian neighborhood housing several thousand people and tried to "sanitize" the area by permitting controlled fires. But the wind picked up, setting all of Honolulu's Chinatown ablaze, leaving thousands of people displaced and dozens of acres of land scorched. And it didn't stop the virus from spreading: A U.S. Public Health Service official later concluded that the disease was spread by rats and other vermin.

There's also the 2003 global outbreak of SARS, first identified in China in 2002. In North America the respiratory disease was mainly confined to Canada, but even still, there were reports of rampant harassment toward people of Asian descent in both countries, similar to what we're seeing today. "A lot of people avoided Chinese people," said an interviewee in a 2004 report illustrating the impact of SARS on Asian communities in Canada. "I know there were a lot of experiences regarding the subway. If you sneeze or cough, you could empty the train!" Other reports at the time said that fear was spreading faster than the virus, which led Chinatowns in some large U.S. metropolitan areas to report a 90 percent drop in revenue from the previous year. These fears, however, came even though there were no SARS-related deaths in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Of course, Asian Americans aren't the only group to be marginalized for the spread of a disease in the U.S. In 1982, the deputy press secretary for then-President Ronald Reagan laughed when asked at a White House press briefing whether the president was tracking the spread of HIV/AIDS, which the journalist referred to as "the gay plague." Reagan himself was largely silent on the issue, taking more than four years after the AIDS crisis began to mention it publicly. This stigmatization came with real consequences. In 1986, according to a Gallup poll, 44 percent of Americans said they or someone they know avoided places where they thought gay people might be in order to avoid getting HIV/AIDS, even though we know that is not how it is contracted. And even as late as 2006, 43 percent of Americans said in a Kaiser Family Foundation survey that they thought "gay men/homosexuals/bisexuals" were the most likely to get HIV/AIDS, even though we know HIV/AIDS can affect anyone regardless of race, gender or ethnicity. (Respondents also said they believed Black people and other minority groups were more likely to be infected than white people.)

Black Americans have also been stigmatized, particularly during the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Navarro College, near Dallas, denied admission to two Nigerian students, not because they were diagnosed with Ebola but simply because they were from a country where cases of the disease had been identified. Prior to that, in Pennsylvania, a Guinean high school student and soccer player was subjected to chants of "Ebola" from an opposing team. The incident left the student in tears. A Pew survey around the time of the spread suggested that Americans were becoming increasingly alarmed about Ebola. The poll found that 41 percent of Americans were worried that they or a family member would be exposed to the virus (up from 32 percent just two weeks prior). "If you don't know about a place, group of people or have a stereotypical working knowledge of them, you see the stigma play out," Rana Hogarth, a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign told me. But the stigmatization and accompanying fears proved to be mainly unfounded: According to the CDC, only four patients in the U.S. were diagnosed with Ebola.

Naming pathogens by their geographic origin - for example, the Zika virus was first identified in the Zika forest in Uganda, and Ebola was named after a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo, near where the virus was first identified - can also help create a scapegoat for a disease. It's one reason why the World Health Organization said infectious diseases should not be named after the places where they originated. "[S]tigma, to be honest, is more dangerous than the virus itself," said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO's director-general, when talking about the coronavirus in March 2020. But that didn't stop Trump and others from referring to COVID-19 as the " Wuhan virus," after the city in China where it was first identified. Tying diseases to where they originate in addition to racializing a disease can also create a false sense of security that a disease can be contained. As Wang told me, many leaders thought the coronavirus could be stopped by simply cutting off travel to the country in question, as Trump did early in the pandemic when he restricted travel to some of the countries reporting large outbreaks, but that just wasn't possible.

While the instances above are extreme and alarming, the experts I've talked to think that if people uphold a specific worldview by delegitimizing another group, the framing of diseases will always be political - no matter how apolitical we think diseases are. That's because racism itself is a disease, and as Roger Keil, a political scientist at York University, told me, "[I]t seems to spread sometimes like a virus." Keil compared it to watching a video online: "For every video that links the disease to Chinese people, there will be 10 or 1,000 people watching, so it's normalized," he said. "It's terrible, but that's how racism spreads."

When asked how we can stop racializing diseases going forward, Hogarth told me it starts with holding those in power accountable: "Simply stating that racially motivated attacks are wrong is a good start!" She said it's also important for leaders to be honest with the public about what's known about a virus versus what's unknown, and to urge people not to speculate and make broad generalizations about groups early in a pandemic. "I think when people have just a little bit of information, not the whole picture," she said, "it becomes easy to fill in the gaps with claims that may be fueled by ignorance, stereotypes and xenophobia."

How the Black church has shaped American politics | FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast

Did Joe Biden get lucky in 2020? | FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The U.S. Has A Long-Standing History Of Vilifying Minority Groups During Times Of Crisis

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
During his campaign rallies and back when he still had access to Twitter, then-President Donald Trump often referred to the coronavirus as the "Chinese virus" or "China virus" - reports have even linked his October COVID-19 diagnosis to an uptick in anti-Asian racism on Twitter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Over the years, I've dealt with a lot of reactions to the fact that I am Korean and Jewish. They've ranged from the absurd ( Are you sure?) to the angry ( That's not possible!) to the utterly exhausting ( Wow, so, are you adopted?) but the through line for most people - especially those within the Jewish community - when confronted with the story of my identity, is disbelief. It's like one look at my Korean face tells them all they need to know about my Judaism, which they cannot conceive to be as real or as good or as valuable as theirs.

There has been, for a long time, a single story of what it means to be Jewish - a single story of our shared experience, our shared faith, our shared oppression. And despite what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says about the danger of a single story, in the Jewish community, there is simply no room for anyone who challenges that established narrative. My presence in Jewish spaces is seen as a threat, as if I am taking the place of a "real" Jewish person. My very existence is seen as a maelstrom of chance and error, like the Judaism my father was born into precludes his ability to procreate with anyone who was not also born into this religion. My story is treated like a fairy tale - and not the "they lived happily ever after" kind, but the "please use dark magic to explain away something that shouldn't exist" kind.

But I do exist, and my story is very real, and I'm going to share part of it here, in the hopes that it will change even one person's view of the supposed single story of the Jewish experience. To be honest, I wasn't sure where to start (because really, where do you start in the face of so much hate?) but eventually, I realized that my story, as many second-generation Asian daughters can tell you, begins with my mom.

In my earliest memory I'm 4 years old. My mom tried to pick me up from JCC preschool, only to have the teacher refuse to let her take me home, as no one had called ahead to tell her "the maid" would be coming to get me. At 11, I earned a full scholarship to my city's Jewish day school and my mom, bursting with pride, spent the weekend making kimchi (a feat of strength, endurance, and pure love) for my first day - only to be called into the principal's office and shamed when other students accused me of eating "baby embryos" in the cafeteria. At 13, my mom - who had worked three jobs for months to afford my custom-made dress and a luncheon for me and all my friends - was denied a seat on the bimah during my bat mitzvah while my father, a white man who had abandoned me for most of my life in all the ways a parent can abandon a child and who also happened to have been born Orthodox Jewish, waltzed into temple and took a place of honor alongside me, no questions asked.

What's funny (and by funny I mean enraging and heartbreaking and dehumanizing) about all this is that my mom is the proudest Jewish person I have ever known. She converted to Judaism almost as soon as she came to this country (and four years before I was born) and never looked back. She loves the prayers, the holidays, the Jewish camp songs. Her Judaism is a part of her, body and soul, and her faith has never once wavered.

For as long as I've known her, my mom has understood implicitly what the non-Jewish world sometimes struggles to get: that while we might not be able to agree on an exact definition of what it means to be Jewish, we can all agree that Judaism is more than a religion. In this way, my mom always approached her Judaism as intrinsically linked to her identity as an American. She was very aware of the challenges I would face as the mixed race daughter of a Korean immigrant - so much so that she would tell me daily to think and act "Jewish first, Korean second." She knew that my Judaism was my ticket to whiteness and that my whiteness was my ticket to... literally everything.

And she was right. I won awards for my fluency in Hebrew; I had a huge group of rich, white, Jewish friends who took me on their fancy family vacations; I was senior class president; I got a scholarship to college. Was it all because I spent the better part of my childhood denying my Korean heritage and embracing my Judaism as my sole identity-defining factor? I don't think I'll ever know for sure, but what I do know is that I quickly learned that if I responded to that dreaded "where are you from?" question with the answer "my mom is from Korea... but I'm Jewish," that my Judaism would neutralize what others saw as my innate foreign otherness.

I know that I became eager to anesthetize my existence for the sake of the white Jewish community and the country as a whole. I know that I craved being thought of as relatable, I craved being understood, I craved being accepted - all of which meant that I didn't talk about being Korean. I didn't talk about Chuseok or Lunar New Year celebrations that I had at home. I stopped speaking in our special family dialect of Konglish mixed with choice Yiddish phrases. I didn't introduce any of my friends to my mom. I stopped bringing kimchi to school. I told people my favorite baby-sitter was Mary-Anne, not Claudia.

Looking back on it now, I can say with clarity and certainty that living in denial of my Korean heritage for so much of my childhood caused intense emotional and psychological damage which has lasted well into my 30s. Part of me wishes I could simply blame my mom for everything as a way to brush it all aside, but I can't. I know she was playing an unwinnable game that so many BIPOC and immigrants in this country play - a game that asks us to sacrifice everything we are for an American Dream that not only doesn't exist, but that actually demands our continued desperation, pain, and death in order to maintain the white supremacy this nation was built on and that it continues to feed on.

Because no matter how much I held up my Judaism for the world to see, it was not a shield against the overwhelming onslaught of white supremacy. It didn't help when I was 8 and a white woman attacked me in a store for being a "fucking chink." I couldn't use it the night a white man followed me home, begging me to "go North Korea on his dick." It didn't protect me in college when a Jewish guy I liked and who I thought liked me recorded us having sex and played it for his entire frat during their annual "Yellow Fever Week."

I had grown up thinking that I could force people to see me as Jewish first, when in reality they hated me for being Korean always. There was no ticket, no pass - there was only years and years of denying who I was in order to belong to a community that rejected my mom, didn't care about me, and who closed ranks the minute I suggested that the story of my Jewish experience, and the stories of other Jewish people of color, might be different than the comfortable single story of what it means to be Jewish.

If you came here looking for answers, I don't have any. Nor do I have absolution for anyone's white guilt, suggestions on how to be a better ally, or thoughts on how the Jewish community can start to protect and value Jewish people of color. All I have is my story, which I've given to you; my love of Judaism, which so many have tried their hardest to take from me; and my faith in people, which is hanging by the weakest of threads.

But I'll leave you with this: After Tuesday night's violent and devastating white supremacist attack in Atlanta which resulted in the murder of six Asian women, I sat with my mom (like many good second-generation Asian daughters, she lives with me) and cried. I felt exhausted, hollow, angry. I felt like all I had ever known in this world was rejection, fear, and death. The only question I could ask was "why?" and my mom - my beautiful, strong, stubborn, wise mom - said, "We're Jews. We suffer."

We are Jews. We suffer. Not we have suffered in the past (even though we have), or we know suffering (even though we do) - but we suffer in the present. And when one of us suffers, we all do.

Right now, the Asian American community - a community that includes many, many Jewish people - is not only suffering, but dying. So stop trying to look for ways to separate our Judaism from your Judaism, stop trying to deny us safe haven in the Jewish community - our community - and instead open your hearts and minds to our pain, our existence, our story. Because this is the story of Jewish people.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Asian Jews Are Suffering. We Need You to Listen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Over the years, I've dealt with a lot of reactions to the fact that I am Korean and Jewish. They've ranged from the absurd (Are you sure?) to the angry (That's not possible!) to the utterly exhausting (Wow, so, are you adopted?)

# 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 2,600 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
"There is an intersectional dynamic going on that others may perceive both Asians and women and Asian women as easier targets," one professor said.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The recent spate of violent anti-Asian hate crimes has shocked the country - and we must all speak up about it, no matter who we are, especially now.

One of us is a Black Muslim and the other a white Jew, and neither of us is Asian, but we are united with people of all communities who are opposed to anti-Asian violence and hate. It's our belief that solidarity in the face of anti-Asian violence is both the moral thing to do, and the most effective way to ensure safety and respect for Americans who find their roots in Asia and the Pacific.

There are too many examples to recount, but among the notable offenses was the murder last month of an elderly Thai American man in San Francisco. He was assaulted from behind during his morning walk and killed. Shortly after, in Chinatown in neighboring Oakland, a 91-year-old Chinese American man was attacked from behind in broad daylight.An elderly Filipino American woman was punched in the face on a public trolley in San Diego.

From 'Yellow Peril' to 'Chinese virus'

The list goes on. And then there are Tuesday night's shootings in Atlanta. Even if this was not a hate crime intentionally targeting Asians, the shooter's actions in singling out six women of Asian descent will reverberate deeply through a community that is already feeling vulnerable. All identity-based bias attacks don't just injure the victims - they terrorize entire populations. That's their intent.

We should not be surprised. It's not just that anti-Asian rhetoric and policy has a long history in America - from the "Yellow Peril" and Chinese Exclusion Act of the 19th centuryto the internment of Japanese Americans of the 20th century. Anti-Asian violence is also the foreseeable product of the torrent of hate-talk that came from the former occupant of the White House, who notably described COVID-19 as "the China Flu" or "the Chinese Virus" and is still using that language.

Like clockwork, this hate spawned real-world consequences. California State University reported 122 hate crimes against members of the AAPI community in 16 of the country's most populous cities in 2020, an increase of almost 150% over the previous year.Many of the culprits in these attacks literally invoked COVID-19 as they committed their crimes.

We both know what it's like to be singled out and targeted for hate. Many held all Muslims collectively responsible after the terror attack on 9/11. The Trump administration's Muslim Ban will be remembered as a black mark on our nation's soul. The Jewish community has been the most frequently attacked faith group in the United States for years and, after the massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, we saw a high mark of anti-Semitic incidents in 2019, including five murders and a deluge of vandalism.

What will bring down the violence and the hate against Asian American Pacific Island people? Changing the rhetoric at the top helps. President Joe Biden already has called out the surge of violence against AAPI people and the White House recently hosted a listening session with AAPI leaders. As a next step, we would welcome a presidential commission on ending ethnic and racial hatred, perhaps chaired by our first Asian and African American vice president. But by itself, it's not enough.
Anti-Asian violence: Violence and hate against Asian Americans is a health and safety crisis for everyone
More tools for and action from law enforcement helps. Law enforcement agencies need better training and deeper connections with community about how to identify and respond to hate-based crime against AAPI people, including how to treat victims with dignity and respect. They also need to report all hate-based crimes to state and federal authorities. That might seem obvious, but far too many cities fail to report hate crimes or preposterously report "zero" hate crimes every year. And when bias-motivated crimes occur, they must be prosecuted. But by itself, it's not enough.

Social-media platforms rooting out incitement and making hateful content hard to find helps. The attack on Jan. 6 revealed what many already knew: that it was far too easy for white supremacists, armed militia members, and conspiracy theorists to plan real violence in plain sight on social media. This is not a new problem. The complicity of the companies can no longer be ignored and they must enforce their own terms of service, let alone change their policies.

Transform bigotry into tolerance

But by itself, it's not enough.

The real key is grassroots, community-led, people-to-people responses. Neighbors, congregation members, and people from all walks of life must sit down, listen to each other, and build a truly inclusive society together from the ground up.

Along with that comes better education. We need explicitly anti-racist, anti-bias and anti-hate education programs in schools so bigotry can be beaten back before it takes root among the next generation.

We also must do the painstaking work of listening to people who hold anti-Asian and Pacific Islander and other racist views. Not to excuse it, but to transform it. We think of the powerful work that the Free Radicals Project and Life After Hate, organizations run by former white supremacists, are doing to reach out to, listen deeply to, and convert white supremacists one by one.
Alike, we are not: Asian Americans aren't here for you to objectify, ridicule or kill in Atlanta shootings
In short, we need a top-to-bottom, whole-society approach where everyone takes a stand. From the president and CEO to you and me, whether online or in line at the grocery store or coffee shop, we all have a role to play.

This Black Muslim and this white Jew are committed to putting an end to hate and violence against our Asian American and Pacific Islander friends and fellow citizens - after the tragic murders in Atlanta, now more than ever. We don't want to live in a society where only the people facing hate and discrimination are the ones speaking up about it and acting to stop it.

We believe every American has a stake in creating a hate-free society. Join us.
Keith Ellison (@keithellison) is the Attorney General of Minnesota. Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) is CEO and National Director of ADL (Anti-Defamation League).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Stand together to fight anti-Asian hate. We all have a stake in a more inclusive America.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The recent spate of violent anti-Asian hate crimes has shocked the country - and we must all speak up about it, no matter who we are, especially now. One of us is a Black Muslim and the other a white Jew, and neither of us is Asian, but we are united with people of all communities who are opposed to anti-Asian violence and hate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Report an Antisemitic, Bias or Discriminatory Incident

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Report an Antisemitic, Racist or Bigoted Incident

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Who We Are Stop AAPI Hate is a national coalition fighting against racism and racial injustice targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Together, we work with local communities and government stakeholders to document the rise of anti-AAPI hate and dismantle the systems that allow it to persist.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Committee of 100 Outlines Seven-Point Plan to Combat Increasing Violence Targeting Asian Americans
Non-profit organization calls for urgent action to help stop the hate, violence and racism directed at Chinese Americans and the Asian American and Pacific Islander community
NEW YORK, NY (MARCH 4, 2020) - In the wake of continuing incidents of hate, violence and racism against the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) community across the United States, Committee of 100 today has outlined a seven-point plan which emphasizes action - calling on lawmakers and law enforcement to intensify their efforts to combat hate and quell a climate of fear within the community. Despite President Biden's Executive Memorandum disavowing discrimination against the AAPI community, many have continued to be subjected to unrelenting intimidation, discrimination, and violence.

Committee of 100, a non-profit U.S. leadership organization of prominent Chinese Americans in business, government, academia, healthcare, and the arts, is unveiling a seven-point plan calling on local, state, and federal leaders and law enforcement to focus on concrete actions to stop the incidents of hate, violence and racism directed toward Chinese Americans and the AAPI community.

"We at the Committee of 100 are extremely saddened to witness the increased attacks against Chinese Americans and the Asian American community overall. Reports of discrimination, racism, and violence towards people of Chinese and Asian descent have significantly increased in recent years - and these are only the incidents captured or reported. These acts of hate have no place in America, whether directed against Asian Americans or anyone else," said Zhengyu Huang, President of Committee of 100. "As a proud American organization dedicated to the advancement and inclusion of all 5 million Chinese Americans, Committee of 100 has spoken out against discrimination and racism for more than 30 years. Committee of 100 calls on all our elected officials and law enforcement to urgently address racism, discrimination, and violence against Asian Americans with actionable, concrete results. With additional funding, education, and action, we have the chance to put these horrific incidents in the past and move forward as a nation."

Chinese Americans and the AAPI community overall have made tremendous contributions to the fabric of American life for centuries. In February, Committee of 100 released a report "From Foundations to Frontiers" which looks at 175 years of Chinese American contributions to the United States. Despite these contributions, members of the community continue to face violent assaults and hate because of their heritage. Like many Americans, the AAPI community has faced increased unemployment, food and housing insecurity, shuttering of local small businesses, and safety risks to frontline and healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. These unwarranted attacks, fueled by fear and misinformation, have made an already difficult time even harder. In the past year alone, close to 3,000 incidents of hate have been reported against the AAPI community.

Committee of 100 is calling on these seven initiatives to be enacted immediately:

We call on all elected officials - including governors, mayors, and members of Congress-to forcefully denounce all acts of anti-Asian racism and bigotry.

We call on the new U.S. Attorney General and the U.S. Department of Justice to set up a task force to specifically investigate and combat increased violence directed towards the AAPI community.

We call on the Department of Justice to revamp its China Initiative, which has involved the racial profiling of Chinese scientists and researchers.

We call for the federal government to provide funding to state and local law enforcement agencies for education, training, and community outreach.

We call on all law enforcement agencies to adopt a zero-tolerance stance towards acts of bigotry, racism and hate inflicted on Asian Americans, whether verbal, physical or psychological.

We call on all elected officials and lawmakers to ensure survivors of hate crimes have access to support services in languages used by their local communities.

We call for the expulsion of any public official, government employee, or law enforcement officer found to be stoking hate or discriminating against people of Asian descent.

Committee of 100 stands in solidarity with the victims, survivors, and families who have suffered loss and pain due to these incidents of hate. More work must be done to address historic inequalities facing the AAPI community and to dispel the misinformation and fear driving these attacks. With one voice, we call on our federal, state, and local elected officials and law enforcement to speak up and take action.
About
Committee of 100 is a non-profit U.S. leadership organization of prominent Chinese Americans in business, government, academia, healthcare, and the arts. For the past 30 years, the dual mission of Committee of 100 has been to promote the full inclusion of Chinese Americans in American society and help enable more constructive relations between the U.S. and China. For more information on Committee of 100, visit committee100.org and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Media Contact Information
Charles Zinkowski

Director of Communications

Committee of 100
czinkowski@committee100.org
Related Updates

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Committee of 100 Outlines Seven-Point Plan to Combat Increasing Violence Targeting Asian Americans | Committee 100

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Non-profit organization calls for urgent action to help stop the hate, violence and racism directed at Chinese Americans and the Asian American and Pacific Islander community NEW YORK, NY (MARCH 4, 2020) - In the wake of continuing incidents of hate, violence and racism against the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) community across the United States, Committee of 100 today has outlined a seven-point plan which emphasizes action - calling on lawmakers and law enforcement to intensify their efforts to combat hate and quell a climate of fear within the community.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Bystander Intervention Virtual Trainings

Anti-Asian and Asian American and xenophobic harassment are on the rise across the U.S. Unfortunately, anti-Asian and Asian American racism and xenophobia is not a new phenomenon. It has been part of our histories for a long time, and we have seen it manifested against different communities in many ways over the years. As the coronavirus pandemic escalates, we have seen more harassment, discrimination, and even violence directed at our communities. The Asian Americans Advancing Justice affiliation has been documenting hate crimes and hate incidents since 2017 through our website at StandAgainstHatred.org, which is available in English, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese. More resources are available on our new COVID-19 page.

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.

We've had a tremendous demand for these trainings, and our first three trainings completely sold out. We're adding a number of additional free trainings. Please note you must register in advance for all trainings. They will be capped at 1,000 people.

Tuesday March 23rd 2021. 4pm EST/ 3pm CT/ 2pm MT/ 1pm PT/ 10am HST. (AT CAPACITY)

Monday April 5th 2021. 1pm EST/ 12PM CT/ 11am MT/ 10am PT/ 7am HST. (AT CAPACITY)

Wednesday April 14th 2021. 6:30pm EST/ 5:30pm CT/ 4:30pm MT/ 3:30pm PT/ 12:30 HST. (AT CAPACITY)

Thursday April 29th 2021. 3pm EST/ 2pm CT/ 1pm MT/ 12pm PT/ 9am HST. Register Here.

March 29 at 3:00 PM ET/ 2:00 PM CT/ 1:00 PM MT/ 12:00 PM PT/ 10:00 AM HST. (AT CAPACITY)

April 20 at 2:00 PM ET/ 1:00 PM CT/ 12:00 PM MT/ 11:00 AM PT/ 9:00 AM HST. (AT CAPACITY)

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.

Bystander Intervention 2.0 - Conflict De-Escalation Workshop:

If you've already taken our Bystander Intervention training and you're looking to go deeper into how to directly intervene and de-escalate conflict: this training is for you. Conflict de-escalation requires patience, a willingness to listen, and an ability to see the humanity in everyone, even those we don't agree with or who seek to hurt us. Using Hollaback!'s Observe-Breathe-Connect methodology, we'll learn how to identify potential conflict before it escalates using our "pyramid of escalation" and how to assess whether intervening is the right action for you. We'll talk about specific biases that are increasing conflict, harassment, and violence during COVID19 - and the role of implicit and explicit bias in conflict. We'll also learn how to connect with others by validating and de-escalating their feelings - even if we don't understand them or agree with them. We'll have time at the end to practice using real-life scenarios.

Training dates and times for Bystander Intervention 2.0:

April 2, 2021. 1:00 PM ET/ 12:00 PM CT/ 11:00 AM MT/ 10:00 AM PT/ 8:00 AM HST. Register Here

April 21, 2021. 4:00 PM ET/ 3:00 PM CT/ 2:00 PM MT/ 1:00 PM PT/ 11:00 AM HST. Register Here

How to Respond to Harassment for People Experiencing Anti-Asian/American Harassment Training Workshop

After attending our bystander intervention trainings, many Asian/Americans want to know - how do I take care of myself when I experience harassment? If that's a question you're asking - this training is for you.

During this one-hour, highly interactive training you'll learn Hollaback!'s methodology for responding to harassment: 1) Trust your Instincts, 2) Reclaim Your Space, and 3) Practice Resilience.You'll learn how your identities can shape your experience of harassment and the impact that harassment has on you and your community as a whole. We'll talk about what to look for when assessing your safety, and how to determine if responding in the moment is the right action or not. We'll also take a deep dive into how to build your resilience on an individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and societal front. You'll leave with new tools on how to respond to harassment, whether your response is in the moment while that harassment is happening or long-term.

TRAINING DATES AND TIMES:

April 2, 2021. 5:00 PM ET/ 4:00 PM CT/ 3:00 PM MT/ 2:00 PM PT/ 12:00 PM HST. Register Here

April 15, 2021. 6:00 PM ET/ 5:00 PM CT/ 4:00 PM MT/ 3:00 PM PT/ 1:00 PM HST. Register Here

The 2020 Youth Leadership Summit cohort with Advancing Justice | AAJC staff.

Spring 2021 Youth Leadership Summit:

Our Youth Leadership Summit (YLS) is a multi-day leadership development program for high-achieving college students from a variety of disciplines who are dedicated to addressing issues impacting Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. The summit, which will take place VIRTUALLY this year, Young advocates from across the country will have a unique opportunity to collaborate with peers, as well as learn from and network with national leaders. Read about our  2020 YLS Summit and  alumni projects. Our 8th annual YLS will be held from Monday, April 12 - Friday, April 16, in 3-hour blocks. All sessions will take place online to minimize risk to participants during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Applicants will be notified of their status by the end of March 2021. Learn more.
2021 American Courage Awards: Oct. 7, 2021

Our 2021 American Courage Awards presentation will showcase the individuals and organizations who have shown extraordinary commitment to civil rights. The description of the award categories are below:

The American Courage Award goes to an individual, company, or organization that has shown extraordinary courage or commitment to the cause of civil rights. This may include a community leader who has taken an important stand, an activist who overcame extraordinary challenges, an artist with a unique vision, or a journalist breaking an important story.

The Changemaker Award honors an individual, company, or organization who is a catalyst for change. This may include an entrepreneur, student, or activist whose leadership has inspired action that has led to change on a local or national level that benefits Asian American communities.

Thank you to everyone who submitted a nomination. Stay tuned!

Honorees will receive their awards at our 2021 American Courage Awards celebration the evening of Thursday, October 7, 2021. Please contact events@advancingjustice-aajc.org should you have any questions.

Citizenship Workshops in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia

Get free legal help with your citizenship applications at our citizenship workshops. Find more information about the next workshop.

88rising - ASIA RISING FOREVER Livestream Festival

88rising hosted ASIA RISING FOREVER - a special livestream festival event on 88rising's YouTube & Twitter in celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! An antidote to global self-isolation, the festival is a celebration of Asian and Asian American music and togetherness, demonstrating unity due to the pandemic and the xenophobic hate many are experiencing.

Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC thanks 88rising for supporting our mission and their tremendous support throughout Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
Watch a recording: YouTube.com/88rising

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Anti-Asian and Asian American and xenophobic harassment are on the rise across the U.S. Unfortunately, anti-Asian and Asian American racism and xenophobia is not a new phenomenon. It has been part of our histories for a long time, and we have seen it manifested against different communities in many ways over the years.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta & Georgia NAACP

Georgia Organizations

159 Georgia Together

2Woke Mamas Podcast

9to5

Absolute Justice now & Protect The Vote Ga coalition

Access Reproductive Care-Southeast

ACLU of Georgia

Adjunct agency

Advocates for Responsible Care (ARxC)

All Voting is Local, Georgia

Amani Women Center

America Votes-Georgia/America Votes

American Friends Service Committee - South Region

American Outlaws-Atlanta

ARCHI

Area West Realty, LLC

Asian American Advocacy Fund

Asian American Law Student Association at Georgia State University College of Law

Asian Christian Counseling & Educational Seminar Services, Inc. (ACCESS)

Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Activists

Asian Real Estate Association

Asian Real Estate Association of America

Asian Youth for Civic Engagement Atlanta

Association of Fundraising Professionals, Atlanta

Athena's Warehouse Inc

Athens Immigrant Rights Coalition

ATL Radical Art

Atlanta Antifascists

Atlanta Artist Relief Fund

Atlanta Democratic Socialists of America

Atlanta Fire Rescue Foundation

Atlanta for the Planet

Atlanta Jews of Color Council, Inc.

Atlanta Jobs with Justice

Atlanta Regional Commission

Atlanta SaSaSe

Atlanta Taiwanese Women Association

Avondale ACTion--An Indivisible Group

Avondale Alliance for Racial Justice

Bend the Arc: Jewish Action Atlanta

Better to Speak

Bi+ Georgia

Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI)

Black to the Future Action Fund

Black Voters Matter

BPSOS-ATLANTA

Burmese Rohingya Community of Georgia (BRCG)

CAIR-Georgia

Cambodian American Association of Georgia

Caminar Latino, Inc.

Campus Vote Project - Georgia

Care in Action

Carter Center

Catholic Charities Atlanta

Center for Civic Innovation

Center for Pan Asian Community Services (CPACS)

Chinese Southern Belle LLC

CivicGeorgia

Clarkston Community Center Foundation, Inc.

Coalition of Refugee Service Agencies (CRSA)

Coastal Georgia Minority Chamber Inc

Cobb Coalition for Public Safety

Cobb SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference)

College AIM

Committee to Elect Brittany Trambauer-Smith

Common Cause GA

Communities In Schools of Atlanta

Communities Over Capitalism

Community EsTr(El/La)

Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta

Compassionate Atlanta

Confused Caucus Podcast

Connect the dots

Crime Victims' Advocacy Council, Inc

Crystal in the City

Dashboard

Deep Center

Democratic Party of Georgia

DH ADVISORS

Dignidad Inmigrante en Athens

E Equals MC Squared Educational Services LLC

EDU: Education & Democracy United

El Refugio

Emerging 100 of Atlanta

Empower Academic Coaching

Environment Georgia

Equally Wed

Eritrean-American Community Center

Evangelical Coalition of Korean American Ministries

Fair Count

Fair Fight Action

Faith in Public Life

Families Against Racism

Feminist Women's Health Center

Friends of Refugees

FTP Movement

Full Circle Living

Fulton County Democratic Party

GA Familias Unidas

GA Volunteer Hub

GALEO & GALEO Impact Fund

Galing Foundation, Inc.

GCADV

Generation Ratify Georgia

Georgia Advancing Communities Together, Inc.

Georgia Advancing Progress PAC (GAPPAC)

Georgia AFL-CIO

Georgia Alliance For Progress

Georgia Alliance for Social Justice

Georgia Asylum and Immigration Network (GAIN)

Georgia Budget and Policy Institute

Georgia Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations

Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda

Georgia Conservation Voters

Georgia Detention Watch

Georgia Equality

Georgia for the Planet

Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce

Georgia Indo American Chamber of Commerce

Georgia Interfaith Power and Light

GEORGIA LATINO ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Georgia Muslim Voter Project

Georgia NAACP

Georgia Safe Schools Coalition

Georgia Shift

Georgia Stand-Up

Georgia State AFL-CIO

Georgia Statewide Afterschool Network

Georgia WAND

Georgia Women (and Those Who Stand With Us)

Georgia Working Families Party

Georgians for a Healthy Future

Global Growers Network, Inc.

Global Village Project

Grantmakers for Southern Progress

GreenLight Fund Atlanta

Greenview Madani Center

Groundsheet

GSU Colony of Pi Delta Psi Fraternity, Inc.

Gwinnett NAACP

Hands On Atlanta

Heather Kilpatrick for Congress LLC

Her Term

Hispanic Young Professionals & Entrepreneurs (HYPE)

Homestead Foundation

Humanity First Movement Georgia

Indivisible Georgia 04

Indivisible Georgia Coalition

Indivisible Lumpkin

Info@georgiatheatreguide.com

Inspiritus

Inspiritus (Formerly Lutheran Services of Georgia)

International Action Center, Atlanta

International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Atlanta

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship- Georgia Area

JCRC of Atlanta

Jewish Voice for Peace-Atlanta

Justice For Georgia

Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective

Korean American Chamber of Commerce ATL-GA

Korean American Coalition

Kwans Sik Yoon

L'Arche Atlanta

Laotian American Society

Latin American Association

Latino Community Fund Inc.

Latino LinQ

Learn4Life

Los Vecinos de Buford Highway

MAAP - Metro Atlanta Association of Professionals

Madina Institute

Mariposa Consulting LLC

Masjid Al-Furqan - West Cobb Islamic Center

Masjid Jafar

Masjid Uthman Dunwoody

MAYE Corps

Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs - Welcoming Atlanta

Men Stopping Violence

Minority Outdoor Alliance

MINT

Montessori Partnerships for Georgia

My Vote Matters, Inc.

NAACP Atlanta, CivivGa, Justice For Georgia

NACDD

National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum (NAPAWF)

National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAAP) - Atlanta

National Council of Jewish Women, Atlanta Section

National Lawyers Guild - Emory

Nebo Agency

Necessary Trouble Indivisible

Necessary Trouble indivisible

Neighborhood Nexus

Nepalese Association in Southeast America (NASeA)

New American Pathways

New Georgia Project Action Fund

New Sanctuary Movement of Atlanta

No Safe Seats

OUT Georgia Business Alliance

Parable of the Sower Intentional Community Cooperative

Park Avenue Baptist Church

Partnership for Southern Equity

People in Solidarity with the Families of Sewol Ferry Victims

Planned Parenthood Southeast Advocates

Poder Latinx

POSITIVE IMPACT HEALTH CENTERS

ProGeorgia

Progress Georgia

Project South

Promote Positivity Movement

Protect Our Care Georgia

Protect The Vote GA

ProVention Health Foundation

Purpose Possible

Racial Justice Action Center

Rainbow PUSH Coalition

Raksha, Inc

Re'Generation Movement

Reform Georgia

Refuge Coffee Co.

Refugee Women's Network

REMERGE

Rep GA Institute

Represent Georgia Action Network

Resource Generation Atlanta

Roswell Community Masjid

RWDSU Southeast Council

Savannah Undocumented Youth Alliance

Savvy Social Researchers, LLC

Screven Forward

Sewn Arts

Showing Up for Racial Justice - Atlanta

Sierra Club, Georgia Chapter

Somos South Georgia

Southeast Immigrant Rights Network

Southern Center for Human Rights

Southern Poverty Law Center

Southerners On New Ground (SONG)

SPARK Reproductive Justice NOW!, Inc.

Spelman College

St. John's Lutheran Church

Step Up Savannah, Inc.

Street Groomers

Tahirih Justice Center

Taiwanese American Professionals - Atlanta

Tapestri Inc,

TEDxPonceyHighland

The Black Heritage Museum & Cultural Center, Inc.

The Center for Victims of Torture

The Counter Narrative Project (CNP)

the devi co-op

The Dr. Annise Mabry Foundation, Inc

The First Girls High School Alumni Association in the Southeast United States

The Gathering Spot

The Georgia Human Rights Clinic

The Global Purpose Approach

The Lola

THE MORENO LAW FIRM LLC

The New Georgia Project

The Path Church

The Premo School

The Swan Center for Advocacy & Research, Inc.

The Urban League of Greater Atlanta Young Professionals

They See Blue Georgia

Together We Win

Triple Play Foundation

Turn Your Back on Hate

Turnout Democrats

Twelve Tomorrow

Twice Consulting Services LLC

Union of Vietnamese Student Associations of the Southeast

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta

United Black Liberation Coalition (UBLC)

United Campus Workers of Georgia

United Way of Greater Atlanta

University of Georgia

URGE:Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity

Virginia-Highland Church (UCC)

Voices for Georgia's Children

We Love BuHi (Buford Highway) Inc.

Welcoming America

Women Engaged

Women Watch Afrika

Working Families Party

Wren Consulting: Culture on Purpose

YDG Latinx Caucus

YMCA of Metro Atlanta

Young Democrats of Georgia and the YDG AAPI Caucus

Zelverick Productions International

National/ Out of the State Organizations

#VOTEPROCHOICE

1199SEIU United HealthCare Workers East

18 Coffees

1Hood Media

350 Butte County

350 New Hampshire

350 Seattle

350 Ventura County Climate Hub

350.org

350Hawaii

350PDX

A Legacy of Equality Leadership and Organizing

A Place for Kids.

AAPAC (Asian American Performers Action Coalition)

AAPI Women Lead

AAPIs for Civic Empowerment

AAPIs for Justice San Antonio TX

About Face Veterans Against the War

ACCE

Accion Opportunity Fund

ACE

ACLU of Arizona

Act To Change

Action Center on Race and the Economy

Action Together Florida

Activist San Diego

Acupuncture With Aloha

AdaptiveX

Adhikaar

ADL

Advancement Project, National Office

Adventure Theatre Inc

Advocates for Snake Preservation

Advocating Opportunity

African American Ministers In Action

AFSCME Local 3930

AHRI for Justice

AI for the People

AJL Foundation

Akbayan North America

Alianza Americas

Alki United Church of Christ

All of them

All On The Line

Alliance for A Just Society

Alliance for Climate Education

Alliance for Justice

Alliance for Youth Action

Alliance of Documentary Editors

Alliance of Frontrunners, LLC

Alliance of Rhode Island Southeast Asians for Education

ALLIANCE OF SOUTH ASIAN AMERICAN LABOR

Alliance of South Asians Taking Action (ASATA)

Alliance San Diego

AllThrive Education

Amalgamated Foundation

Amazon Watch

America Indivisible

America Votes-Georgia/America Votes

America's Voice

American Acoustic Development

American Federation of Teachers (AFT)

American Immigration Council

American Immigration Lawyers Association

American Jewish Congress

American Muslim Advisory Council

American Muslim Empowerment Network (AMEN)

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee

Amnesty International USA

Amplify Asian America

AnakBayan Not Cbus

Andrew Goodman Foundation

Anti-Racist Academy

APALA Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance Alameda County Chapter, AFL-CIO

APALA DC Chapter

APALA MN chapter

Apala Sacramento Chapter

APANO

Apex Express

Apex for Youth

API

API Equality-LA

API Legal Outreach

API Middle TN

API Rainbow Parents of PFLAG NYC

API RISE

APIENC

Apna Ghar

Arab American civic org.

Arab American Association of New York

Arav American caucus of California Democratic Party

Arena Stage

Arizona Democratic Party

Ars Nova

Art Therapy Studio Chicago Ltd

Arte Sana

Arts & Democracy

ASHA for Women

Asian American Alliance

Asian American Arts Alliance

Asian American Documentary Network (A-Doc)

Asian American Federation

Asian American Film Lab, Inc.

Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF)

Asian American Organizing Project (AAOP)

Asian American Playwright Collect of Boston, StageSource of Boston

Asian American Progressive Student Union

Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW)

Asian American Senior Citizens Service Center (AASCSC)

Asian American Studies City College of San Francisco

Asian American Women Artists Association

Asian American Women in Conservation (AAWiC)

Asian American Women's Political Initiative (AAWPI)

Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus

Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta & Georgia NAACP

Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Los Angeles

Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC

Asian Americans in Action

Asian Americans Rising

Asian Americans United

Asian and Pacific Islander Queers United for Action (AQUA DC)

Asian Arts Initiative

Asian Chamber of Commerce

Asian CineVision

Asian Community & Cultural Center

Asian Community Development Corporation

Asian Community Development Council (NV)

Asian Counseling and Referral Service

Asian Democrats Central TX

Asian Economic Development Association

Asian Family Support Services of Austin

Asian Immigrant Women Advocates

Asian Law Alliance

Asian Leather and Kink Alliance (ALKA)

Asian Media Access

Asian Pacific American Artists for Change

Asian Pacific American Coalition at UCF

Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance Seattle Chapter

Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO

Asian Pacific American Librarians Association

Asian Pacific American Municipal Officials (APAMO)

Asian Pacific Community in Action

Asian Pacific Environmental Network

Asian Pacific Institute on Gender-Based Violence

Asian Pacific Islander American Chamber of Commerce & Entrepreneurship (National ACE)

Asian Pacific Islander American Vote -Michigan

Asian Pacific Islander Community Actions

Asian Pacific Islander Community Actions

Asian Pacific Islander Council of San Francisco (API Council)

Asian Pacific Islander Initiative

Asian Pacific Islander Political Alliance (API PA)

Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council

Asian Prisoner Support Committee

Asian Services in Action (ASIA)

Asian Solidarity Collective

Asian Studies Department, Berea College

Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence

Asian Women Giving Circle

Asian Women United of California

Asian Women's Shelter

Asian Youth Center (AYC)

Asian Youth for Civic Engagement

Asian-American Association in Charlotte

ASIAN, Inc. 美亞輔鄰社

Asian/Pacific Islander Domestic Violence Resource Project

Asians Against Domestic Abuse (AADA)

AsiaTrend

ASISTA

Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations (AAPCHO)

Association of Black Law Students - Rutgers Law School

Association of Fundraising Professionals - Greater Atlanta Chapter

ATL Social Change

Austin Border Relief

Autistic Self Advocacy Network

AYPAL:Building API Community Power

AZ AANHPI Advocates

AZ AANHPI for Equity

BAD REP Theatre

Ballot Initiative Strategy Center

BANDALOOP

Battle Born Progress

Bayanihan Collective

BCAC

Be A Hero

Beautiful Trouble

Becker & Lee LLP

Beehive Strategic Communication

Belchertown Justice Collaborative

Belchertown Voices for Justice

Bend the Arc: Champaign-Urbana

Bend the Arc: Jewish Action

BestWater USA Inc.

Bet Tzedek

Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition

Bhutanese Community Association of Pittsburgh (BCAP)

Bindlestiff Studio

Black and Brown Womyn Power Coalition, Inc.

Black Lives Matter Global Network

Black Sex Worker Collective- NV & PNW chapters

Black Women for Wellness Action Project

Blackbird Benefits Collective

Blackstone Valley Prep, Rhode Island

Blossom Street Films

Blount County (TN) SURJ

Blue Future

Blue Garnet

Boat People SOS Center for Community Advancement

Boat People SOS, Inc

Bocoup

Body Politic

BOLD

Bolton Refuge House, Inc

BORDER ANGELS

Border Workers United

Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center

Boston University School of Law Women of Color Collaborative

Boston Workers Circle Center for Jewish Culture and Social Justice

BPSOS Center for Community Advancement

Brady

BreastfeedLA

Bridging Access To Care

Brooklyn Acting Lab

Brooklyn Chinese-American Association

Brooklyn Movement Center

Bucks County Anti-Racism Coalition

Build Back Better USA

Building Antiracist White Educators

Building Movement project

Building Regenerative Econmies

Burmese Community Resettlement Initiative

Businesses for a Livable Climate

CA Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative

CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities

CADEM Delegate AD 9

CAIR - New Jersey

CAIR Central California

CAIR San Francisco Bay Area

CAIR- Pittsburgh

CAIR-LA

CAIR-Minnesota

CAIR-PHILADELPHIA

CAIR-Sacramento Valley

CAIR-SD

California Calls

California Coalition for Women Prisoners

California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs

California Democratic Party

California Environmental Justice Alliance

California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative

California Sanctuary Campaign

California Shakespeare Theater

Call to Action Colorado

Cambodian American Community Council of Washington

Can't Stop! Won't Stop! Consulting

CANN-A (COFA Alliance National Network - Arizona)

CAP Services, Inc.

CAPA21

CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment)

Care Club LA

CARESTAR Foundation

Carolina Jews for Justice

Casa Quetzalcoatl

Case Watson

Catalyst Project

Catatumbo Cooperative Farm

CatholicNetwork.US

Causa Justa :: Just Cause

CAUSE

Center for Asian American Theology and Ministry at Fuller Seminary

Center for Biological Diversity

Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice

Center for Latinx and Latin American Studies, University of Southern California

Center for Organizing, Renewal, and Leadership (CORALph.org)

Center for Responsible Lending

Center For Sustainable Economy

Center for Transformative Action

Center on Policy Initiatives (CPI-San Diego)

Center on Race, Poverty, & the Environment

Central America Solidarity Coalition

Central Valley Air Quality Coalition

Centro Cultural de México

Centro Legal de la Raza

Chalk Repertory Theatre

Challah for Hunger

ChangeLab

Charity Cultural Services Center

Chen Dance Center

CHETNA

Children's Defense Fund

Chinatown Community Land Trust, Boston

Chinatown Manpower Project

Chinese American Museum of Chicago

Chinese American Progressive Action

Chinese American Service League

Chinese American Women's Sisterhood Society of Philadelphia

Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco

Chinese for Affirmative Action

Chinese Information and Service Center

Chinese Methodist Center Corporation

Chinese Progressive Association (CPA)

Chinese Progressive Association- SF

Chinese Progressive Association, Boston

Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC)

CHUANG Stage

Church World Service

Cira Center for Behavioral Health

Citizen Action of New York

CLAP Community Lead Advocacy Program

Clean and Healthy New York

Clean Energy action - Colorado

Clean Water Action

Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice - Ventura County (CA)

Climate Innovation (former program held by Movement Strategy Center MSC)

Climate Justice Alliance

Climate XChange

CO+HOOTS / HUUB

Coalition for a Diverse Harvard

Coalition for Asian American Children and Families

Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA)

Coalition for Social Justice

Coalition of Asian American Leaders

Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans (CAPA)

Coalition of Seattle Indian Americans

Collaborative for Gender and Reproductive Equity

Collaborative on Race

Collective Chicago

Collective for Community, Culture & Environment

College of San Mateo Mana Learning Community

Collierville Community Justice

Color Of Change

Colorado Businesses for a Livable Climate

Colorado Coalition Against Sexual Assault

Colorado Funders for Inclusiveness and Equity

Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition

ColorfactoryATX

Columbia County Sanctuary Movement

Columbus Crossing Borders

Common Cause

Communities for a Better Environment

Communities United for Police Reform (CPR)

Community Care Alliance

Community Catalyst

Community Coalition

Community Housing Fund

Community Innovation Network, Case Western Reserve Univetsity

Community Justice Action Fund

Community Records

Community Refugee & Immigration Services (CRIS)

Community-University Health Care Center

Comprehensive Community Health Centers

Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement

Connective Theatre Company

Corazón Arizona (Federation of Faith in Action)

Council Of Peoples Organization

Council on American-Islamic Relations - Sacramento Valley / Central California

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA)

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR-Ohio, Cleveland Chapter

Council on American-Islamic Relations, New York (CAIR-NY)

Council on American-Islamic Relations, Oklahoma Chapter

Counseling Care Circle

Courageous Change Collective LLC

CPAF

CPCA

Crazy Woke Asians

Creating Equity, LLC

Crowded Fire Theater Company

Culinary Union

Cullasaja Synergy Consulting, LLC

Dancing Classrooms

Daya Inc

Dayton Chapter Japanese American Citizens League

Delta Phi Epsilon Sorority

Denver Celtic Women's Circle

Desert AIDS Project d/b/a DBA Health

Design Action Collective

Desis for Progress

Detention Watch Network

Dew Beauty Agency

Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network

Disability Justice.net

Disability Rights California

Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund

Diverse & Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries Asian/Pacific Islander Caucus

Diverse and Resilient

Diversity Alliance of the Puget Sound

DNC Climate on Environment and Climate Crisis

DNC Environment and Climate Crisis Council

Dolores Huerta Foundation

Donaldina Cameron House

Donors of Color Network

DoorDash

Down Home NC-Alamance

Down Home North Carolina

DPC

Dream Corps

DRUM - Desis Rising Up & Moving

Earth Action, Inc.

Earthworks

East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy

East Bay Community Law Center

East Coast Asian American Student Union

East Michigan Environmental Action Council (EMEAC)

East West Players

Eastwind Books of Berkeley

Economic Opportunity Institute

EDU: Education & Democracy United

EL Education

El Tribuno del Pueblo

Electronic Arts

Elements Consulting

ELEVATE AAPI @ Irvine Valley College

EMBARC

Embrace Services, Inc.

Emgage

Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC)

Empowerment Solidarity Network

Encuentro

Endangered Species Coalition

Engage San Diego

ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH COALITION

Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist

Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist

Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin

Equal Justice Society

Equality California

Equality Labs

Equality Virginia

Equity and Transformation

Equity-Based Dialogues for Inclusion (EBDI)

Espacio Migrante

Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, CCLA Inc.

Esperanza Peace & Justice Center

Eve's Politics

Eviction Defense Collaborative

Extinction Rebellion San Francisco Bay Area

Exygy

Fair Elections Center

Faith and Community Empowerment (formerly KCCD)

Faith in Action Alabama

Faith in New Jersey

Faith Organizing Alliance

Faithful America

Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement

Families for a Livable Climate

Families for Freedom

Families United for Education

Family Values @ Work

Fayetteville Police Accountability Community Taskforce

Feminist Founder

FilAmplified

Filipino Advocates for Justice

Filipino Community Center

Filipino Resource Center

Filipino-American Development Foundation

Filipinx Filmmakers

Filipinx for Immigrant Rights & Racial Justice Minnesota (FIRM)

Film Fatales

Firat family

First Unitarian Church of Rochester

Five-11

Floop

Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC)

Florida Student Power Network

Food & Water Watch

Food Not Bombs Salt Lake City

For Our Future Nevada

Fort Collins Community Action Network

Forum One

FracTracker Alliance

Free Clothing Queens

Free Speech For People

Freedom Action Now

Freedom Inc

Freedom Network USA

Fresno Building Healthy Communities

Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries (FIRM)

Friends of the Earth

Fulbright Lotus (AAPI affinity group for Fulbrighters)

Funders for LGBTQ Issues

Futures Without Violence

FWD-Doc (Filmmakers with Disabilities-Documentary)

GABRIELA USA

GAIA

GAPIMNY - Empowering Queer & Trans Asian Pacific Islanders

Gateway High School

Generation Vote

Generic Ensemble Company

Genesi Group, Inc.

Georgia State AFL-CIO

GGE Media

Gig Workers Rising

Girls Inc. of Omaha

Global Sikh Economic Forum

Gold House

Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees

Grantmakers in the Arts

Grassroots Asians Rising

Grassroots Global Justice Alliance

Grassroots International

Greater Boston Legal Services' Asian Outreach Unit

GreenLatinos

Greenpeace

GRID Alternatives

HA:N UMC

HabitatMap

Haiti Action Committee

Haitian Bridge Alliance

Hamilton-Madison House

HANA Center

Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employers Network

HangOutDoGood

Hardy girls healthy women

Harvard SEAS Graduate Council

Harvard Task Force for Asian American Progressive Advocacy & Studies (TAPAS)

Hate Is A Virus

Hawai'i Workers Center

Hawaiian Inter Club Council of Southern California

Hawj United of Minnesota

Health Justice Commons

Healwell

Hella Heart Oakland Giving Circle

Helping Hands

HEP

Hepatitis B Foundation

HepatitisC Association

Her Justice, Inc.

HERliograph

Hickman high school Young Democrats

Higher Logic

Highlander Research & Education Center

Hinesight

Hive Fund for Climate & Gender Justice

Hmong Innovating Politics

Hmong Youth and Parents United

HonoZulu Enterprises

Hope Community Services

Human Impact Partners

Human Rights Campaign

Human Rights Committee of Corona-Norco Teachers Association

Humboldt Asians & Pacific Islanders in Solidarity

Hunterdon County Anti-Racism Coalition

Hyphen magazine

Idaho Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence

Ideas In Motion

Idk

Imago Relationships North America

Immigrant Guide

Immigrant Justice Network

Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota

Immigrant Legal Resource Center

Immigrants Rising

Immigration Hub

Immigration Task Force of the Diocese of San Joaquin

Indigenous Environmental Network

Indivisible

Indivisible Activate NYC

Indivisible Marin

Indivisible Northern Nevada

Indivisible Oregon

Indivisible Project

Indivisible Ventura

Inland Equity Partnership

Inlandboatmen's Union

InnerCity Struggle

Innovation Law Lab

Institute of Forgiveness

Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA)

Intentional Endowments Network

InterCultural Projects

Interfaith Power & Light

Interim Community Development Association

International Campaign for the Rohingya

International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE)

International League of Advocates

International Longshore and Warehouse Union

International Rivers

INTO ACTION LAB

Iowa 1st District Asian/Pacific Islander Caucus

Iowa Unity Coality

IRIS - Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services

Islamic Association of Collin County Youth

Islamic Networks Group (ING)

Islamic Scholarship Fund

Islamophobia Studies Center

Island Liaison, Inc.

Ismailis Rise Up

ITASA (Intercollegiate Taiwanese American Students Association)

IthacaJVP/CJP (Jewish Voice for Peace/Committee in Solidarity with Palestine)

JACL Chicago

Jahajee Sisters

Japanese American Citizens League Philadelphia Chapter

Japanese American Citizens League, New England chapter

Japanese American Citizens League, Twin Cities Chapter

Japanese American Citizens' League, Berkeley Chapter

Japanese Americans for Justice

Japanese Community Youth Council

JCET Project

jennyyang.tv

Jetpac Resource Center

Jewish Community Action (MN)

Jewish Liberation Fund

Jewish Voice for Peace

Jewish Voice for Peace - Denver/Boulder

Jews for Palestinian Right of Return

jochs@humanarts.org

Julie Kwon Evans, Ph.D.

Just Breathe Manual Therapy

Just Futures Law

Justice Action Center

Justice for all

Justice for Girls

Justice For Muslims Collective

Justice Funders, Inc.

Justice Is Global

Ka Lei Pāpahi ʻo Kākuhihewa

Kaha i ka Panoa Kaleponi Hawaiian Civic Club

KAN-WIN

Kanfot Ha'aretz

Kansas City Indian Center

KAYA - Filipino Americans for Progress

Keep Beyond

Kehilla Community Synagogue, Oakland, CA

Khmer Girls in Action

Kimochi, Inc.

Korea in Kulture.org

Korean Amereican National Coordinating Council

Korean American Center (a division of Korean Community Services)

Korean American Coalition - Los Angeles

Korean American Democratic Committee (KADC)

Korean American Family Services (KFAM)

Korean American Federation of Los Angeles (KAFLA)

Korean American Rainbow Parents (KARP)

Korean Community Services

Korean Resource Center (KRC)

KoreanAmericanStory.org, Inc.

Koreatown Youth and Community Center (KYCC)

Kovner Center for Behvaioral Health

Labor for Palestine

Labor Network for Sustainability

Laboratory to Combat Human Trafficking

Lambda Literary

Laotian American National Alliance

LAS VEGAS INDIAN CTR

Latino Community Foundation

Latino Health Access

Latino Union of Chicago

Law Offices of Anjali Bakshi-Rami

Law Offices of Ian M Seruelo

Lawyers for Good Government (L4GG)

LE GaFa--Leadership and Education through Gagana Fa'a Samoa

Leadership and Education for All Foundation (LEAF)

Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability

League of Latinx Educators

LePrix

Let's Get Free: The Women & Trans Prisoner Defense Committee

Leviathan Lab

LGBTQ+ Lorain County

Liberation in a Generation

Libra Foundation

Lincoln

Lion Rock Cafe

Little Tokyo Service Center

Little Village Environmental Justice Organization

Live Oak County Democrats

Local Clean Energy Alliance

Long Beach Center for Economic Inclusion

Long Island Progressive Coalition

Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE)

Lovelace Consulting Services, Inc.

LPSTK Inc

LuzDelMes, Co.

Magic Tooth Bus

Mai Family Services

Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault

Mainers for Accountable Leadership

Maitri

Majlis Ash-Shura: Islamic Leadership Council of New York

Majority Action

Make It Work Nevada

Mālama I Ke Ola Health Center

MALO Motivating Action Leadership Opportunity

MALO- Motivating Action Leadership Opportunity

Manavi

Mangrove Web Development

Manilatown Heritage Foundation

March For Our Lives GA

March For Our Lives: Boston

March for Science

Marvel Imagination Community

Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation

Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault

MAS

MAS Bay Area

MAS Central Florida

MAS COLORADO

MAS Detroit

MAS nj

MAS of Urbana-Champaign, IL

MAS South Florida

MAS Toledo

Masa fund

Masjid Al-Furqan - West Cobb Islamic Center

Masjid Al-Momineen

Matahari Women Workers' Center

Math circles of Chicago

Mayor's Commission on Asian Pacific AmericanAffairs

Me Too Springfield

Media Justice

Mekong NYC

Miami University

Miami University Mindfulness & Contemplative Inquiry Center

MICHIGAN APALA

Michigan Coalition to End Domestic & Sexual Violence

Micronesia climate change alliance

Mid-City CAN (Community Advocacy Network)

Middlebury Chinese School

MidTown Cleveland, Inc.

Mindful QA

Minnesota Indigenous Business Alliance

Mississippi Rising Coalition

MJ Consulting Firm, LLC

Model Majority

MomsRising

Montagnard American Organization (MAO)

Montana Voices

More Than A Vote

MotivAsians for Cleveland

MoustacheCat Dance

Movement for Black Lives

Movement Rights

MoveOn Civic Action

MPower 360

MPower Change

MSA West

Mt. Diablo Peace & Justice Center

Mujeres Latinas en Accion

Multiculturalism Rocks, & Davis Network for Africa (DNA)

Muslim Advocates

Muslim Alliance in North America

Muslim American Society

Muslim American Society - Kansas City

Muslim American Society (MAS)- National

Muslim American Society at Syracuse

Muslim American Society of Minnesota

Muslim American Society of New Jersey

Muslim American Society-Public Affairs and Civic Engagement (MAS-PACE)

Muslim American Society, AL chapter

Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative (MuslimARC)

Muslim Association of Puget Sound (MAPS)

Muslim Community Association

Muslim Justice League

Muslim Power Building Project

Muslim Wellness Foundation

NACEDA

Narrative Initiative

National Action Network, Atlanta Chapter

National Asian American Community Foundation

National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders

National Association of Korean Americans

National CAPACD

National Coalition Against Domestic Violence

National Council of Jewish Women

National Council of Jewish Women, Greater New Orleans Section

National Domestic Workers Alliance

National Employment Law Project

National Equality Action Team (NEAT)

National Federation of Filipino American Associations

National Federation of Filipino Associations (NaFFAA) Capital Region

National Filipino American Lawyers Association (NFALA)

National Immigration Law Center

National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC)

National LGBTQ Task Force

National Network for Arab American Communities

National Network for Immigrant & Refugee Rights

National Ocean Protection Coalition

National Organization for Women

National Partnership for Women & Families

National Performance Network

National Resource Center on Domestic Violence

National Women's Law Center

Native Voters Alliance Nevada

Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts NY

Naturopathic Medicine Awareness and Access Alliance

NDN Collective

NDWA / Care in Action

NEA Asian and Pacific Islander Caucus

NEMS

Network for Victim Recovery of DC

Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA)

Nevada Alliance

Nevada Conservation League

NEW

New American Leaders

New American Voices

New Breath Foundation

New Era Colorado

New Generation for Palestine

New Haven Legal Assistance Association

New Haven Teachers Association CTA/NEA

New Mexico Asian Family Center

New Mexico Immigrant Law Center

New York Immigration Coalition

New York Immigration Coalition

NFLUENCE

NICOS Chinese Health Coalition

Nihonmachi Street Fair, Inc.

Nikkei Progressives

Nikkei Resisters

Nolef Turns Inc.

Nomadic Press

Nonprofit Finance Fund

North Carolina Asian Americans Together (NCAAT)

North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (NCCADP)

North Hollywood Sunrise

Northeastern University Chinese Student Association

Northridge Indivisible

Not In Our Town-Princeton

NPNA

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Nyc Korean school

Oakland County for Racial Justice

Oakland Peace Center

Oakland Rising

Oasis Center

OCA - Asian Pacific American Advocates

OCA Asian Pacific Islander American Advocates Utah Chapter

OCA Greater Chicago

OCA Greater Phoenix

OCA-Greater Los Angeles (OCA-GLA)

OCAPICA (Orange County Asian Pacific Islander Community Alliance)

Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence

Ohio Asian American Health Coalition, Asian Festival Corporation of Columbus, Phil Nurses Association of Central Ohio, Phil American Society of Central Ohio, Phil Seniors of Central Ohio

Ohio Immigrant Alliance

Oil Change International

Ojala Threads Inc.

Ologie

One APIA Nevada

One Dance Company

OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon

OPAWL - Building AAPI Feminist Leadership in Ohio

Open to All

Optimal Solutions Consulting

Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church

Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance (OCAPICA)

Orange County Asian Pacific Islanders Community Alliance

Orange County Environmental Justice

Organized Communities Against Deportation (OCAD)

Organized Uplifting Resources and Strategies

Our Maryland

Our Revolution Brazoria County

Our Revolution Texas

OutLaw, Boston University School of Law

OVEC-Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition

Pacific American Community Cultural Center

Pacific Asian Counseling Services

Pacific Islander Health Board of WA

Pacific Islander Health Partnership

Padres Organized Community

Palestine American League

PANA

Pangea Legal Services

Pantsuit Republic Houston

ParentsTogether

Participatory Culture Foundation

Partnership for Working Families

Pasifika Vote

Passion Impact

Peace Action

Peace Builders of OC

Pennsylvania Downtown Center, Inc.

Pennsylvania Dragon Boat Club

People For the American Way

People of Color Sustainable Housing Network

People's Action Institute

People's Justice Council

People's Action

People's Collective for Justice and Liberation

PFLAG San Gabriel Valley API

Philippine American Bar Association

Philippine Study Group of Minnesota

Pi Delta Psi Fraternity

PICO California

Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California

PIVOT

Polaris

Poligon Education Fund

Poligon Education Fund

Political Research Associates

PolyByDesign

Positive Women's Network-USA

Possibility Labs

Power California

Presente.org

President of San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association ("SDLRLA")

Prince George's County Moral Minyan

Prince William Public Defender

Princeton Diversity Discussions

Program for Torture Victims (PTV)

Progress Kentucky

Progressive Caucus Action Fund

Progressive Democrats of America

Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada

Progressive Technology Project

Project by Project

Project Nongenue

Project Respectt Leadership Center & Academy

Project Safeguard

Protect Oakland Chinatown

Providence St. Joseph Health Hospital

Providence Youth Student Movement

Public Defenders for Racial Justice

Public Justice Center

Public Wise

Puente Human Rights Movement

Puerto Rico on the Map

PUSH Buffalo

Putnam Proggressive

Q-Wave - Building Queer & Trans API Community Since 2004

R.A.C.E. for Restorative Justice

Race, Equity And Leadership (REAL)

Racial Equity Institute

Racial Equity Task Force Amherst

Racine Coalition for Peace & Justice

Radical Access Mapping Project

Radical Kindred

RAICES

Rainbow PUSH Coalition

Rainforest Action Network

RapidShift Network

RCHN Community Health Foundation

re:power

Reach Counseling

Rebuild The Dream

Reclaim the Block

Red Canary Song

REDF

Redmond United Methodist Church

Release MN8

Resolve Conservation

Resource Media

RESULTS

Revere Youth in Action

Reviving the Islamic Sisterhood for Empowerment

Rhiza Collective

Richards Law Office, PC

Richmond Area Multi-Services, Inc. (RAMS)

Richmond Our Power Coalition

Right to the City Alliance

Rise to Resilience

Rise Up Doylestown

Rising Hearts

Rising Voices of Asian American Families

Ritual Midwifery

River Warrior Society

Robert Hirsch ADR

Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network

Roger Williams University School of Law

Root to Rise Coaching

Rowan Tree

RUN AAPI

Rural Arizona Engagment (RAZE)

RYSE Center

Saahas for Cause

Sacramento ACT

Sacramento Asian Pacific Film Festival

Sacramento Asian/Pacific Islander Network

Sacred Heart Community Service

Safe Horizon

Safe Medford

Saheli Boston

Saheli Inc

SAJE (Strategic Actions for a Just Economy)

Sakhi for South Asian Women

Sama Sama Cooperative

SameSide

San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium

San Francisco Bay Area QTAPI Coalition

San Francisco Education Fund

San Francisco Rising

San Francisco Women Against Rape

San Jose Nikkei Resisters

Sapna NYC

SASMHA

SCOPE LA (Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education- Los Angeles)

Seac village

Seattle Works

Seed the Vote

Seeding Change

Seema Sueko LLC

SEIU Healthcare 1199NW

SEIU Healthcare Minnesota

SEIU UHW Latíno Caucus

SEIU-UHW

SeniorFusion

Serita Yoga

Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

Seventh Generation

SEWA-AIFW

Sexual Assault Services

SF Hep B Free - Bay Area

She the People

Sheriffs for Trusting Communities

Shining Valley LLC

Shomeret Shalom Global Congregation

Showing Up For Racial Justice, SURJ Sacramento

Siengkane Lao MN

Sigma Psi Zeta Sorority, Inc.

Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF)

Sikh Coalition

Silicon Valley Rising Action

Silicon Valley Sunrise

Silver State Equality

Silver State Voices

Sins Invalid

Skawinski Cat Sanctuary

Skilled Lactation Solutions, LLC

SOCIAL ECOLOGICAL EDUCATION-LA (SEE)

Social Transformation Project

Sociologists for Women in Society

Sojourn Strategies

Solidaire Network

SolidarityINFOService

SOMA Pilipinas

Sonora Action Network

South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT)

South Asian Helpline and Referral Agency

South Asian Network

South Asian Public Health Association (SAPHA)

South Asian SOAR

South Asian Youth Action

South Asian Youth In Houston Unite (SAYHU)

South Bay Labor Council

South Bay Youth Changemakers

South Central Brooklyn United for Progress

Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC)

Southeast Asian Community Alliance

Southeast Asian Defense Project

Southeast Asian Development Center

Southeast Asian Freedom Network

Southeast Center for Cooperative Development

Southerners On New Ground (SONG)

Southland Integrated Services, Inc.

Sparks Magazine

Springfield-Eugene SURJ

St. Clair Superior Development Corporation

St. Mary of the Expectation Church

Stand with Kashmir

State House District 47

State Innovation Exchange (SiX)

State Voices

Statess United to Prevent Gun Violence

Step Up Savannah, Inc.

Stepping Stones, Inc.

Stop Repeating History

Students for a Democratic Society at UW

Subtext

Sueños Sin Fronteras de Tejas

Sunflower Alliance

Sunrise Bay Area

Sunrise Boone

Sunrise Dallas

Sunrise Movement Martha's Vineyard Youth

Sunrise St. Louis

SURJ

SURJ Marin

SURJ San Francisco

Survival Media Agency

Susan Save LIves

Sustainable Energy & Economy Network

Swash Labs

Tahirih Justice Center

TaikoArts Midwest

Taiwanese American Citizens League

Taiwanese American Foundation

Taiwanese American Professionals - Austin Chapter

Taiwanese American Professionals - Los Angeles

Taiwanese American Professionals - New York

Taiwanese American Professionals - San Diego

Taiwanese American Professionals - San Francisco Chapter

Taiwanese American Professionals - Washington DC

Taiwanese Americans for Progress

TaiwaneseAmerican.org

Taulama for Tongans

Tea Roots

Team ENOUGH

Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation

Terrebonne Advocates for Possibility

Thai Community Development Center

Thai, Lao, & Cambodian Association

The Alliance

The Almond Group

The Assembly Theater Company

The California Wellness Foundation

The Cambodian Family

The Campaign to Keep Guns Off Campus

The Children's Partnership

The Conflict Center

The Door - A Center of Alternatives

The Drawing Studio

The Environmental Center

The Flourish Collective

The Frontline

The Gathering for Justice

The Healing Trust

The Kalaimoku Group, Inc

The Libra Foundation

The Mental Health Collective

The Multi Cultural Center

The National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA)

The New Group

The Noguchi Museum

The Ocean Project

The People's Resource Center

The Playwrights Realm

The Restaurant Opportunities Center of Pennsylvania (ROC PA)

The Revolutionary Love Project

The San Diego LGBT Community Center

The SEAD Project

The Slants Foundation

The Society for the Study of Southern Literature

The United Methodist Church - General Board of Chu

The Watershed Center

The We Collective

The Wilderness Society

The Worldview Project

Theater Mu

Theaterlab

Theatre Communications Group

ThisAbility Limited

Thompson& Thompson Ph.d,CPA

TIME'S UP

TIRRC

TJ Alumni Action Group

TN Advocates for Planned Parenthood

Together in Dance

Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club

Town of Marblehead Board of Selectmen's Task Force Against Discrimination

TransForm

Transformative Leaders for Change Fellowship

Transforming Generations

Transgender Law Center

Trying to help

Tsuru for Solidarity

Tulane Asian American Student Union (AASU)

Tulane University's Phyllis M. Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking

Twice Consulting Services LLC

UC Berkeley Labor Center

UCI DREAM Center

UCLA Center for Community Engagement

UFCW 21

Ujima Inc., The National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community

Unarmed

Union of Concerned Scientists

Union of North American Vietnamese Student Associations

Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC)

Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East

Unite North Metro Denver

Unite Oregon

United Against Hate

United Cambodian Community

United for a Fair Economy

United Parish, Brookline, MA

United States Postal Service

United Territories of Pacific Islanders Alliance Portland - UTOPIA PDX

United Vision for Idaho

United We Dream

University of California, Irvine

University of Michigan Association of Chinese Professors (UM-ACP)

University of San Francisco, Asian Pacific American Studies

University Settlement Society of New York

University Synagogue

UPROSE

Urban Tilth

Urbanity Magazine

URI Women of Color Network

US Campaign for Palestinian Rights

utah chinese association

UTOPIA WA

UURISE - Unitarian Universalist Refugee & Immigrant Services & Education

VC Community Healing Collaborative

Venceremos

Ventura County Activists for Bernie Sanders 2020 #Our Revolution

Viet Rainbow of Orange County

VietAID

VietLead

Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campain

Vietnamese American Arts & Letters Association (VAALA)

Vietnamese American Cancer Foundation

Vietnamese American Pharmacists Association of Texas

Vietnamese American Roundtable

Vietnamese Social Services of Minnesota

VietRISE

Violence Free Minnesota

Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights

Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance

Vision Quest Shoes

Visual Communications Media

VOCAL Voices for Change, Activism, and Leadership in Mansfield, OH

Voice of Witness

Voices for Racial Justice

Voqal

Voto Latino

VSAM 1040 VIETNAMESE RADIO STATION

Wah Lum Kung Fu Temple

Waking Planet

Water Foundation

WAVE - Women for American Values and Ethics

WAVE Educational Fund

Way to Win

WDN Action

WE ACT For Environmental Justice

We Are Oceania

We the People Organize

We, the People.

Welcoming America

Wellington Avenue UCC

West Bay Pilipino Multi Service Center

Western Environmental Law Center

Western Front Indivisible

Western States Center

White Center Community Development Association

Whole Story Group, LLC

Win Without War

Wind of the Spirit Immigrant Resource Center

Wind of the Spirit, Immigrant Resource Center

Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault

Witness at the Border

WLAN

Women & Girls Foundation Southwest Pennsylvania

Women Donors Network

Women for Afghan Women

Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security, and Conflict Transformation

Women's Biz Coop

Women's Foundation of Florida

Women's Interfaith Network (WIN)

Women's March Oakland

Women's Coalition of St. Croix

Women's March

Working Partnerships USA

Wu Yee Children's Services

Xochipilli Chicano/Latino Men's Circle

Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre

YaYa, Inc.

Yemeni American Merchants Associaiton

YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles

YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles - Anderson Munger Family YMCA

YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles - Hollywood YMCA

Yoga Wild

Yoga@

Yolo People Power

Young Bhutanese Coalition of New York

Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights

Youngstown Warren Black Caucus

Youth Farm Project

Youth Leadership Institute

YWCA Berkeley/Oakland

Zioness

Zoodog Productions

List of organizations updated on March 22, 2021 (2:30 PM EST)
For more information please email jwoo@advancingjustice-atlanta.or

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Community-Centered Response to Violence Against Asian American Communities - Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta & Georgia NAACP Georgia Organizations 159 Georgia Together 2Woke Mamas Podcast 9to5 Absolute Justice now & Protect The Vote Ga coalition Access Reproductive Care-Southeast ACLU of Georgia Adjunct agency Advocates for Responsible Care (ARxC) All Voting is Local, Georgia Amani Women Center America Votes-Georgia/America Votes American Friends Service Committee - South Region American Outlaws-Atlanta ARCHI Area West Realty, LLC Asian American Advocacy Fund Asian American Law Student Association at Georgia State University College of Law Asian Christian Counseling & Educational Seminar Services, Inc.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Petition: Respond to Hate and Violence Against Asian American Women - NAPAWF

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We must call this moment what it truly is: white supremacy, anti-Asian racism, sexism, and sexual violence against Asian American women. Send a message to your elected officials now.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A surge in anti-Asian attacks reported since the start of the pandemic has left Asian Americans across the country scared and concerned, but a Los Angeles-based civil rights group says the actual number of hate incidents could be even higher.

"There are far more people who have not reported incidents than those who have," Connie Chung Joe, CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Los Angeles, told NPR.

This underreporting is due to a combination of several factors, ranging from language and cultural barriers to a lack of trust in law enforcement, Chung Joe said an interview with Morning Edition host Rachel Martin.

"If the community feels that the police aren't going to do anything, then chances are that word gets around and the community feels next time I'm not going to report it then. What's the point?" Chung Joe said.

Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition aimed at addressing anti-Asian discrimination during the COVID-19 pandemic, received more than 2,800 firsthand reports of anti-Asian hate, including physical and verbal assaults, between March 19 and Dec. 31, 2020.

By now, the number of reported incidents has surpassed 3,000, according to Russell Jeung, a co-founder of the coalition and a professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University.

"What we've discovered isn't that we've just had a spike, but we've had a surge over the entire year last year with COVID-19 and with the president's political rhetoric in the last administration," Jeung told NPR's Michel Martin.

The reported incidents range from verbal harassments to physical altercations. Last month, Denny Kim, a 27-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran, was reportedly attacked by two men in LA's Koreatown neighborhood.

The altercation, which left Kim with a black eye and injuries to his nose, was witnessed by his friend, Joseph Cha, local TV station KTLA said.

The two assailants, who ran off after the attack, allegedly said that "all f-ing Asians gotta die," according to Cha.

As a man in his late 20s, Kim is not the typical victim of anti-Asian attacks. Chung Joesaid thatmost attacks target the more vulnerable members of the Asian American community.

"Women are targeted more than twice as often as men," she said, and "we are seeing a spate of hate and violence targeted at our seniors."

The rise in racially motivated attacks has put an entire community on edge.

"Many of the folks that I speak to are scared to go out or they're encouraging their elderly parents not to go out of the house, even for things like daily walks or trips to the grocery store," Chung Joe said. "We do feel like there's sort of a bullet on our backs in our community. And so folks are really worried about this."

Jeung described the situation as a "nationally traumatizing moment" for Asian Americans.

Nearly 44% of all incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate have come from California.Asian Americans account for roughly 15% of California's estimated 40 million people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. No other state in the continental United States has a larger Asian population.

NPR's Eric Westervelt reported last month that business and civil rights groups across California are demanding action in light of the surge in violence in the San Francisco Bay Area, which left one man dead and others badly injured.

In January, Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, was going for a morning walk in his San Francisco neighborhood. Surveillance cameras captured a man running at him full speed and smashing his frail body to the pavement. Ratanapakdee died of his injuries two days later. A 19-year-old man has been charged with murder and elder abuse.

The issue has also caught the attention of President Biden, who signed a memorandum pledging to combat anti-Asian and Pacific Islander discrimination, shortly after taking office.

"The Federal Government must recognize that it has played a role in furthering these xenophobic sentiments through the actions of political leaders, including references to the COVID-19 pandemic by the geographic location of its origin," Biden said. "Such statements have stoked unfounded fears and perpetuated stigma about Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and have contributed to increasing rates of bullying, harassment, and hate crimes against AAPI persons."

It was part of a series of racial equity-focused executive orders.
Taylor Haney and H.J. Mai produced and edited the audio version of this story.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Asian Americans Experience 'Far More' Hate Incidents Than Numbers Indicate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A surge in anti-Asian attacks reported since the start of the pandemic has left Asian Americans across the country scared and concerned, but a Los Angeles-based civil rights group says the actual number of hate incidents could be even higher.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Thirty-eight years ago this week, Vincent Chin, an Asian American man, in Detroit, Michigan, died after being attacked because of his race At the time, a growing Japanese auto industry was leading to major job loss in the city's own auto sector, and his killers, two auto workers, mistook him for a Japanese person and used racial slurs when they beat him outside a strip club where he was celebrating his bachelor party. He died from his injuries days later.

It wasn't the first such hate crime, nor the last, but it did galvanize Asian Americans from disparate backgrounds to unite against anti-Asian racism and attacks. Now, some of those same advocates who mobilized during the Vincent Chin movement warn that they're seeing the same sort of scapegoating towards the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. Only this time, it's the coronavirus pandemic, which was first reported in Wuhan, China, driving xenophobia and racism in the United States.

"Instead of blaming Japan, now we're blaming China, and anybody who looks Chinese," said Helen Zia, a Chinese American activist who helped found a pan-Asian civil rights group, American Citizens for Justice, following the sentencing of Chin's killers. (The two men ultimately paid a $3,000 fine and served no prison time).

"It's actually pretty terrifying for most people because we have been through this before. And we know what dog whistles to racism, and calling people who look a certain way the enemy - we know what that leads to."

"It's actually pretty terrifying for most people because we have been through this before. And we know what dog whistles to racism, and calling people who look a certain way the enemy - we know what that leads to," said Zia, who is also the executor of the Chin estate.
READ MORE: Asian Americans describe 'gut punch' of racist attacks during coronavirus pandemic
When nationwide shutdowns began in March, the FBI warned that hate crimes against the Asian and Asian American communities would grow, according to reports obtained by ABC News. Official government data on this is hard to come by, but statistics compiled by other organizations show that anti-Asian racism, which has been an ugly, persistent part of American history, is now tinged with anti-Chinese, coronavirus-related sentiment. The website Stop AAPI Hate has been tracking anti-Asian American discriminatory incidents since mid-March, when social distancing measures started to take effect in the U.S. It has identified more than 1,800 such cases reported to them by people across the country, 502 of which included assailants mentioning the terms "China" or "Chinese." The Anti-Defamation League keeps its own list of anti-Asian crimes dating back to January based on media reports from across the country.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said last month it was concerned about how the pandemic was contributing to anti-Asian racism, noting in a list of recommendations for federal agencies that this kind of discrimination can not only lead to hate crimes, but also to discrimination in education, housing and employment, among other areas. Other countries have reported a rise in crimes targeting Asian communities in the wake of the pandemic, too; ministers in the UK have reported a 21 percent increase in such hate crimes since lockdown measures were put in place.

But Cynthia Choi, an activist who helped create Stop AAPI Hate, attributed the rise in anti-Chinese rhetoric in the U.S. to President Donald Trump's use of terms like "Chinese virus" and "Kung flu" to describe the coronavirus. He used the latter term in two rallies this month, both times eliciting cheers from the audience.

"They're parroting Trump's language; animus that's tied to China being the source and spread of the virus and the pervasive use of orientalist stereotypes and racist demagoguery," Choi said.

For example, one person who contributed to Stop AAPI Hate's tracking effort said a middle-aged white woman yelled "Chinese virus!" and then threw an empty soda can in their direction. A student teacher at an elementary school reported one student, whose race was not identified, teasing a Chinese student, saying he had the coronavirus and saying the virus spread because of what Chinese people eat.

The White House has defended Trump's use of the term; earlier this week, when asked about the president's use of a racist term to describe the virus, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said "what the president does do is point to the fact that the origin of the virus is China."

Choi also said she believed Trump was employing such rhetoric deliberately.

"We know this is an intentional and orchestrated tactic to deflect attention from his epic mismanagement from what we know is the worst public health crisis in recent history," she said.

The rise in anti-AAPI racism borne of one global movement is taking place against the backdrop of another: the worldwide reckoning over race, and systemic racism against Black people in America. All the AAPI activists noted that the Black-led civil rights movement has always embraced the struggle of Asian Americans as part of its own, and worked to amplify their voices.

Writer Jeff Yang, cohost of the podcast "They Call Us Bruce," noted that even the term "Asian American" is rooted in Black activism, as it was coined in 1968 by college students who were inspired by and wanted to show solidarity with the Black Panther movement.

Decades later, following Chin's murder, Black civil rights leaders like Jesse Jackson rallied on the Chin family's behalf.

"There would not be an Asian American community as we know it, had it not been for both the civil rights victories that African Americans won with blood and sweat and tears, but also the desire by early Asian American activists to create common cause," Yang said. "There's absolutely a sense in which African American activists and political leaders have been a key part of ensuring that Asian American activists and political voices could be amplified."

Choi said that the rise in anti-Asian sentiment meant it was all the more important for AAPIs to stand with the Black Lives Matter movement.

"We see that this is the same racist system that has defined our treatment," Choi said. "Of course there is no question in our minds that Black Americans have endured tremendous brutality and systemic racism more than any other racial group in this country. And so it's really important for us to talk about [anti-AAPI discrimination] and to connect this to the racial reckoning that's happening sparked by George Floyd's murder."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'We have been through this before.' Why anti-Asian hate crimes are rising amid coronavirus

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said last month it was concerned about how the pandemic was contributing to anti-Asian racism, noting in a list of recommendations for federal agencies that this kind of discrimination can not only lead to hate crimes, but also to discrimination in education, housing and employment, among other areas.

# data[].attributes.headline
A Literary Guide to Combat Anti-Asian Racism

# data[].attributes.subject
A Literary Guide to Combat Anti-Asian Racism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We'll send you the best of EL each week, and you'll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events.

In the last year, the Asian American community has seen an onslaught of verbal harassment and physical attacks, triggered by the onset of COVID-19-still called "the Chinese virus" by many Americans. Despite the continued violence, however, U.S. media has kept relatively silent on the matter. As Anne Cheng writes for The New York Times, "When it comes to Asian-American grief, do Americans want to know?"

We've compiled this list as a way to better understand the deep roots of Asian American discrimination in the U.S. We hope we can help amplify the urgent need to acknowledge anti-Asian racism and the complexity of Asian American identity today. Staying silent exacerbates the portrayal of Asian Americans as the "model minority," ignoring the violent and potentially fatal consequences of anti-Asian racism. This, in turn, creates internal division within BIPOC communities, de-validates Asian American experiences, and continues to perpetuate the vicious cycle of white supremacy. We'd like to emphasize that we should not look towards increased policing as a way to combat the violence; the U.S. police force-as these books note -is a system that perpetuates anti-Black violence and upholds white supremacy. Combating anti-Asian racism means looking beyond the black-and-white binary of racial discussions in America, and understanding how white supremacy pits minority against minority.

The term "Asian America" itself encompasses a broad array of nationalities and accompanying differences; though we've approached this list with an eye towards a variety of perspectives, we recognize we are constrained by our own experiences as Korean American and Chinese writers. While we have tried to include a variety of genres, this is also a limited introduction to an array of books on this topic. However, we hope it offers a starting point to better understand the systematic structures of racism, inequity, and silencing that have let anti-Asian violence in America flourish. If you're moved to take action against anti-Asian violence and help those who have been affected, here is a site of compiled resources; Next Shark is also a non-profit media source that addresses Asian American issues, particularly those that have gone unseen in mainstream media.

Thank you to Dieu Ho, Matt Chan, Jayne Nguyen, Kiki Nakamura-Koyama, and Dana Nguyen for sharing their book recommendations!

Beginning with "Is Diversity for White People?," Chang's collection of essays is a thorough look at how racial inequity functions in America today. Through personal reflection, cultural analysis, and journalism, Chang tackles topics like Ferguson, Black Lives Matter, and the whiteness of Hollywood. The last essay, "The In-Betweens: On Asian Americanness," addresses the unique predicament of Asian Americans in this country, contextualizing it within the broader discourse of race in the U.S. Chang emphasizes the necessity of Asian American communities standing in solidarity with movements like BLM; as he states in an interview, "I think racial justice impacts us all, and now is not the time to be neutral."

A mix of personal anecdotes, journalism, and legal analysis, Yellow offers an intersectional way of dissecting race beyond Black and white. Wu questions the absence of the Asian perspective in America's discussion around race and touches on the complex ideas that have led to our understanding of Asian America via the model minority myth, perpetual foreigner stereotype, affirmation action, interracial marriage, and more.

We may think that jokes about cheap junk being "made in China" are a recent phenomenon. The truth is that this anxiety surrounding Asian influences, or "yellow peril," has been around in Europe since the Enlightenment. Scholars Tchen and Yeats compile a comprehensive archive of "yellow peril" paraphernalia and offer critical insight into this Western paranoia, shedding new light on the structures of current-day anti-Asian sentiments.

An homage to W. E. B. Du Bois's classic The Souls of Black Folk, Vijay Prashad's The Karma of Brown Folk takes a look at the complexities of being South Asian in America. Prashad gives a complex analysis of the model minority myth, particularly as it is deployed against Black America. He takes a deeper look at both Indian and American history, tracing the ways in which Indian culture and thinkers have influenced American issues, and explores not only how South Asian American identity is defined, but also how Americans define and view themselves.

Written by psychotherapist Shinhee Han and critic David L. Eng, Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation combines critical race theory with case studies to explore the predicaments Asian American young adults face. Han and Eng take a closer look at Gen X and Gen Y Asian Americans who deal with challenges such as depression, coming out, adoption, parachute children, and a racial discourse in America that excludes Asian America. Eng and Han use psychoanalysis to illuminate the larger social and historical questions and challenges around Asian American identity in our times. Throughout the book, Eng and Han explore and define the concepts of racial melancholia and racial dissociation, taking a closer look at the experiences of loss so many Asian Americans face.

Immigrant Acts is a well-researched, nuanced look at how Asian American culture and identity have been constructed in the U.S. today. Lowe offers acute analysis of Asian American texts (such as No-No Boy), legal proceedings, and historical events-including the history of interracial division within Asian America. In order to better understandthe systems of inequity-like racism, capitalism, and neoliberalism-that help shape and reinforce anti-Asian violence, this academic studyis a must-read.

A radical look into the reality of walking through the world as an Asian American, Cathy Park Hong's Minor Feelings weaves the personal with the political and brings the tough questions around race and identity to the table. The title phrase, "minor feelings" refers to the sense of American optimism that is often forced onto Asian Americans; consequently, Asian Americans often experience a cognitive dissonance that creates a sense of failure. Going beyond the theoretical, Hong grounds us in lived experiences that perhaps create more questions than answers, and opens the table for actual discussion.

Asian American racialization, economics, and the U.S. empire take center stage in this academic study. Analyzing geopolitical events alongside media representations of Asian America, Bascara tracks how the model minority myth and Asian American assimilation interact with American imperialism. Ultimately, Model Minority Imperialism challenges readers to examine the current-day U.S. empire, particularly how it is rooted in racial exclusion.

Asian American Dreams looks into the time period when the Asian population in America grew and Asian American identity began to form. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Helen Zia was born in 1950s America when there were only 150,000 Chinese Americans in the country. From the murder of Vincent Chin to the LA Riots, this book is a historical and personal account of the events that have transformed Asian identity in America. Zia is also the author of Last Boat Out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Fled Mao's Revolution, a dramatic account of the real-life stories of those who fled China during the Cultural Revolution, when Zia's family first left for the States.

Chia-Chia Lin's debut novel The Unpassing tells the story of a Taiwanese immigrant family of six struggling to make ends meet in Anchorage, Alaska. Against the bleak and cold backdrop of Alaskan winter, ten-year-old Gavin contracts meningitis at school, falls into a coma and wakes a week later to find out his little sister Ruby was infected and died. As grief envelops the family, we see the remaining five members of the family struggle to stay afloat, navigate marginalization and alienation, and search for a sense of belonging in a foreign land. What does it mean to lose the ones you love in a place that is not home? What does it mean when there is no home to return to?

No-No Boy received practically no public recognition upon its publication in 1957, when Americans wanted to leave behind the atrocities of WWII-including the Japanese American internment and the nuclear bomb. Thanks to the efforts of Asian American writers Jeff Chan, Frank Chin, Lawson Fusao Inada and Shawn Wong who reissued the novel in 1976, No-No Boy is now recognized as a canonical Asian American text, one that deals head-on with the long history of anti-Asian racism.

The protagonist, Ichiro Nakada, refuses to serve in the American army and pledge loyalty to the U.S., remembering how the same country forced him and his family into internment. Because of his "No"s, Ichiro is forced to go to prison; and finds himself the target of his community's anger upon his return. Okada's novel examines both the collective and individual trauma of racialized violence against Japanese Americans.

I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita

This wide-ranging novel centers on "I Hotel"-short for the International Hotel in San Francisco-as a way to explore the Yellow Power Movement in the '60s. The Yellow Power Movement-started by UC Berkeley students who were inspired by the Black Power Movement-is credited with coining the term "Asian American". I Hotel is meticulously researched, including memorabilia like pamphlets and news clippings from the era; it is also radical in experimentation as well as content, exploring with multimedia modes like comic strips. Yamashita poignantly conveys the historical struggle for Asian American rights, and the many shifting identities the term "Asian American" can encompass.

Set in both New York and China, The Leavers follows a Chinese American boy whose undocumented mother Polly vanishes one day. Deming Guo-later renamed Daniel Wilkinson by his white adoptive parents-is forced to reckon with what it means to be an "all-American" whose sense of belonging has vanished. What does it mean to belong? Does assimilation mean learning a new language, a new home, a new family, a new house, or a new name? And what happens to the person you used to be?

In Castillo's debut novel, Hero De Vera moves from a politically turbulent Philippines to suburban San Jose. America is Not the Heart explores social inequity and racism amidst the Filipinx American community, as well as what it means to pursue the "American Dream." Castillo also pays careful attention to the code-switching that often happens for immigrant families; her characters speak Spanish, Tagalog, Pangasinan, and Ilocano. The title nods to Carlos Bulosan's groundbreaking novel from the 1970s, America is in the Heart, which describes a Filipino migrant worker's experiences with brutal racism on a California farm. For more books on Filipinx America, check out Castillo's reading list.

About the Authors

Jae-Yeon Yoo is an MA candidate in English at New York University.

Stefani Kuo (郭佳怡) is a poet/playwright/performer and native of Hong Kong and Taiwan. She received her B.A. from Yale and is an MFA Playwriting Candidate at the Yale School of Drama. Fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin, French, and English, she is interested in crafting multicultural, multilingual narratives for an international audience. She has been an awardee of the Jerome Fellowship at PWC, Dramatist Guild Fellowship, finalist for the National Playwrights Conference, Jerome fellowship at Lanesboro Arts Centre, Many Voices Fellowship at PWC, the Working Farm with SPACE on Ryder Farm, Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, NAP Series, DVRF Playwrights' Program, BRIC Lab, semi-finalist for the Page 73 Playwriting Fellowship, Princess Grace Fellowship, Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, Scratchpad Series at Playwrights Realm. Her play, Architecture of Rain, premiered at the Iseman Theatre at Yale and received a reading in the DVRF Roundtable and Checkmark Theatre Company series. She has received commissions from the Rubin Museum, Roundhouse Theater Company, and Yangtze Repertory Theater Company. Her play delicacy of a puffin heart was produced with the 2018 Corkscrew Theatre Festival and The Parsnip Ship. Her play on the Hong Kong protests, Final Boarding Call,will be presented as a virtual reading co-produced by WP and Ma-Yi Theater Company in March 2021, and was workshopped as a part of the 2020 Bay Area Playwrights Festival at Playwrights Foundation and the 2020 Irons in the Fire Series with Faultline Theater Company. It was also a semi-finalist for Barrington Stage' Company's Burman New Play Award. Her play on the work of Dr. Wu Chien-Shiung, the only Chinese woman to work on the Manhattan Project, will be workshopped and co-presented by the Kitchen and Ma-Yi Theater Company in March 2021. She was a member of Interstate-73, Page 73's Writers Group, in 2019. Her work in creative non-fiction, poetry, and translation have appeared in The New York Times, China Hands, Yale Literary Magazine, and more. Her poetry has been displayed as an installation piece, as part of Berlin Art Week 2017 at the Centre of Substructured Loss. She is represented as a playwright by Kevin Lin at CAA and Jacob Epstein at Lighthouse Management. ( www.stefanikuo.com)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Literary Guide to Combat Anti-Asian Racism in America - Electric Literature

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We'll send you the best of EL each week, and you'll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events. In the last year, the Asian American community has seen an onslaught of verbal harassment and physical attacks, triggered by the onset of COVID-19-still called "the Chinese virus" by many Americans.

# data[].attributes.headline
A reading list to understand anti-Asian racism in America

# data[].attributes.subject
A reading list to understand anti-Asian racism in America

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On Tuesday, eight people were killed in shootings in Atlanta; six of those eight people were Asian women. While authorities have not yet established an official motive for the shooting, the tragedy fits into a rise of anti-Asian hate crimes across America.

Those hate crimes followed months of xenophobic rhetoric from then-President Donald Trump, who repeatedly and falsely associated the Covid-19 pandemic with Asians and Asian Americans. But the rise in hate crimes is also rooted in a long history of specifically anti-Asian racism in America, going back to the first wave of Asian immigration to the United States in the 1800s.

Americans tend to be bad at talking about racism in general. But Americans tend to be particularly bad at talking about racism toward Asian Americans, with those outside the community leaning on outdated myths like the idea of the "model minority" to argue that Asian Americans don't face any particular prejudice and have nothing to worry about. And in the process, the history of the way Asian Americans have been deliberately and violently excluded from the United States' dominant culture gets ignored, overwritten, and erased.

To help place the recent rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in context, Vox reached out to experts in Asian American studies and asked for their help in compiling a reading list focused on the long and unjust arc of anti-Asian racism in America. Here's the result. These eight books will help you understand the history of anti-Asian racism in the US, how it's operated in the past, and the effects it's having now.

William Gow, a lecturer on Asian American studies at Stanford, calls The Making of Asian America one of "the foundational histories of Asian Americans in the United States." In this volume, historian Erika Lee tracks waves of Asian immigration to the United States, beginning with Chinese laborers in 1850s California and ending with Hmong refugees in 1980s Minnesota. In between, she looks at all the Asian immigrants who came to the US during the period when the Chinese Exclusion Act made Asians the first group of people explicitly banned from immigrating to the country; they hence became the first undocumented immigrants.

Throughout, Lee's larger argument tracks the way Asian Americans cycle between getting labeled "good immigrants" and "bad immigrants," depending on the mood of the political moment. The Making of Asian America, says Gow, "provides needed context for understanding that anti-Asian racism is not something new but rather has been deeply embedded in the history of the United States."

Starting in 1848 and continuing into the 20th century, in towns across the American West, Chinese Americans were violently rounded up, driven out of town, or killed in a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing. In Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans, Jean Pfaelzer, a professor of American studies at the University of Delaware, chronicles this campaign - and the way the persecuted Chinese Americans fought back, in what would become one of the largest displays of mass civil disobedience to date in the United States.

Driven Out comes recommended both by William Gow and by Janelle Wong, a professor of Asian American studies at the University of Maryland. "Too often, media reports today fail to connect the history of anti-Asian violence with a longer, more systemic history of anti-Asian violence in the US," says Gow. "This work provides context that will help readers make these important connections."

Trump's repeated invocation of the false idea that Asian Americans somehow carried Covid-19 into the US has long and racist roots. Early Chinese immigrants to the US in the 19th century were repeatedly demonized as filthy disease carriers by the public health authorities of the era.

To understand this period better, UCLA Asian American studies professor Grace Hong recommends the 2001 study Contagious Divides. In it, USC American studies professor Nayan Shah tracks the ways Chinese Americans were scapegoated, and how Chinese American activists responded by helping to build the public health bureaucracies that would undergird 20th-century America.

Before the social uproar of the 1960s, white America unfailingly clumped all Asian Americans loosely together in one large group commonly referred to as "Orientals." In Serve the People, Karen L. Ishizuka, a documentary film producer and museum curator, tells the story of the 1960s social movements that saw activists from Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino communities coming together to forge a common political identity as Asian Americans.

"In discussing anti-Asian violence, it is important to remember that Asian Americans have never been passive victims," says Gow. "Ishizuka's text covers this important history and provides a counterweight to narratives of Asian Americans as silent victims."

To understand some of the ideas the activists in Serve the People were fighting against, turn to Orientals, the book Grace Hong calls "a classic." In this study from 1999, Robert G. Lee, a professor of American studies at Brown, tracks the way pop culture has othered Asian Americans from the 19th century into the 20th - and how rarely any of pop culture's ideas about Asian Americans were actually created by Asian American people.

"I think it's important to talk about anti-Asian racism both in the United States and how they are tied to imperial wars in Asia," says Dean Itsuji Saranillio, a professor of Asian American studies at NYU. Vestiges of War begins its study of the US-Philippine relationship with the little-known 1899 Philippine-American War, and goes on to examine half a century of American colonial occupation.

At least four of the women killed in the Atlanta shootings were of Korean descent. In To Save the Children of Korea, historian Arissa Oh examines the history of Korean American international adoption, in a book that fellow historian Ellen D. Wu calls "indispensable for understanding how war and US military engagements in the Asia-Pacific region have shaped American's ideas about Asian women and children."

International adoption began in the aftermath of the Korean War as an emergency measure with which to evacuate multiracial "GI babies." But it would soon become a mechanism through which the Korean government could export unwanted children. In To Save the Children of Korea, Oh argues that the US-Korea relationship would serve as the template for future international adoption systems, and that this relationship is fundamentally one of colonialism.

Part of why mainstream America finds it so easy to ignore anti-Asian racism is the idea that Asian Americans are a "model minority": They may not be considered white, but they're still considered well-assimilated and upwardly mobile. To understand where this idea comes from, and why it's harmful, Janelle Wong recommends The Color of Success, the first book-length study of the myth of the model minority. Here, historian Ellen D. Wu tracks the origins of the myth, and the way it continues to shape the way Americans think about race and what it means to be an American.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A reading list to understand anti-Asian racism in America

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On Tuesday, eight people were killed in shootings in Atlanta; six of those eight people were Asian women. While authorities have not yet established an official motive for the shooting, the tragedy fits into a rise of anti-Asian hate crimes across America.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Asian Americans: PBS documentary series | KQED

# data[].attributes.body
Takeshita Shiro recalls instances of anti-Japanese hate that targeted by Japanese Americans after they returned home from internment camps following World War II.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How were these Topics Identified?

The USC Shoah Foundation identified the IWitness topics based on:

1. Common queries to the Curator of the Institute's Visual History Archive

2. Most popular search queries from the Institute's full Visual History Archive of 52,000 testimonies

3. Topics of courses taught by professors using testimonies at colleges and universities around the world

4. Data collected by the Institute and its partners through research and surveys of teachers

Born

Date of Interview

Location of Interview

IWitness Activities Students use embedded tools to build videos, word clouds and other testimony-based projects.

Registration Required
In order to use the Favorites feature, you'll need to log in or register to become an IWitness User.
Who Can Register?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Watch | IWitness - Education through Genocide Testimony

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The USC Shoah Foundation identified the IWitness topics based on: Common queries to the Curator of the Institute's Visual History Archive Most popular search queries from the Institute's full Visual History Archive of 52,000 testimonies Topics of courses taught by professors using testimonies at colleges and universities around the world Data collected by the Institute and its partners through research and surveys of teachers Born Date of Interview Location of Interview IWitness Activities Students use embedded tools to build videos, word clouds and other testimony-based projects.

# data[].attributes.body
Barton Nagata recalls how the surge in anti-Japanese racism in America that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor instantly transformed his life.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How were these Topics Identified?

The USC Shoah Foundation identified the IWitness topics based on:

1. Common queries to the Curator of the Institute's Visual History Archive

2. Most popular search queries from the Institute's full Visual History Archive of 52,000 testimonies

3. Topics of courses taught by professors using testimonies at colleges and universities around the world

4. Data collected by the Institute and its partners through research and surveys of teachers

Born

Date of Interview

Location of Interview

IWitness Activities Students use embedded tools to build videos, word clouds and other testimony-based projects.

Registration Required
In order to use the Favorites feature, you'll need to log in or register to become an IWitness User.
Who Can Register?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Watch | IWitness - Education through Genocide Testimony

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The USC Shoah Foundation identified the IWitness topics based on: Common queries to the Curator of the Institute's Visual History Archive Most popular search queries from the Institute's full Visual History Archive of 52,000 testimonies Topics of courses taught by professors using testimonies at colleges and universities around the world Data collected by the Institute and its partners through research and surveys of teachers Born Date of Interview Location of Interview IWitness Activities Students use embedded tools to build videos, word clouds and other testimony-based projects.

# data[].attributes.body
Shiraishi Clinton describes the conditions he witnessed when he visited a Japanese American internment camp while he was a US soldier in World War II.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How were these Topics Identified?

The USC Shoah Foundation identified the IWitness topics based on:

1. Common queries to the Curator of the Institute's Visual History Archive

2. Most popular search queries from the Institute's full Visual History Archive of 52,000 testimonies

3. Topics of courses taught by professors using testimonies at colleges and universities around the world

4. Data collected by the Institute and its partners through research and surveys of teachers

Born

Date of Interview

Location of Interview

IWitness Activities Students use embedded tools to build videos, word clouds and other testimony-based projects.

Registration Required
In order to use the Favorites feature, you'll need to log in or register to become an IWitness User.
Who Can Register?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Watch | IWitness - Education through Genocide Testimony

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The USC Shoah Foundation identified the IWitness topics based on: Common queries to the Curator of the Institute's Visual History Archive Most popular search queries from the Institute's full Visual History Archive of 52,000 testimonies Topics of courses taught by professors using testimonies at colleges and universities around the world Data collected by the Institute and its partners through research and surveys of teachers Born Date of Interview Location of Interview IWitness Activities Students use embedded tools to build videos, word clouds and other testimony-based projects.

# data[].attributes.body
Shiraishi Clinton recounts what he witnessed in his community as the Japanese American internment process began after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How were these Topics Identified?

The USC Shoah Foundation identified the IWitness topics based on:

1. Common queries to the Curator of the Institute's Visual History Archive

2. Most popular search queries from the Institute's full Visual History Archive of 52,000 testimonies

3. Topics of courses taught by professors using testimonies at colleges and universities around the world

4. Data collected by the Institute and its partners through research and surveys of teachers

Born

Date of Interview

Location of Interview

IWitness Activities Students use embedded tools to build videos, word clouds and other testimony-based projects.

Registration Required
In order to use the Favorites feature, you'll need to log in or register to become an IWitness User.
Who Can Register?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Watch | IWitness - Education through Genocide Testimony

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The USC Shoah Foundation identified the IWitness topics based on: Common queries to the Curator of the Institute's Visual History Archive Most popular search queries from the Institute's full Visual History Archive of 52,000 testimonies Topics of courses taught by professors using testimonies at colleges and universities around the world Data collected by the Institute and its partners through research and surveys of teachers Born Date of Interview Location of Interview IWitness Activities Students use embedded tools to build videos, word clouds and other testimony-based projects.

# data[].attributes.body
Katsugo Miho describes how his military experience at Camp Shelby in Mississippi was impacted by anti-Japanese hate in America.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How were these Topics Identified?

The USC Shoah Foundation identified the IWitness topics based on:

1. Common queries to the Curator of the Institute's Visual History Archive

2. Most popular search queries from the Institute's full Visual History Archive of 52,000 testimonies

3. Topics of courses taught by professors using testimonies at colleges and universities around the world

4. Data collected by the Institute and its partners through research and surveys of teachers

Born

Date of Interview

Location of Interview

IWitness Activities Students use embedded tools to build videos, word clouds and other testimony-based projects.

Registration Required
In order to use the Favorites feature, you'll need to log in or register to become an IWitness User.
Who Can Register?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Watch | IWitness - Education through Genocide Testimony

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The USC Shoah Foundation identified the IWitness topics based on: Common queries to the Curator of the Institute's Visual History Archive Most popular search queries from the Institute's full Visual History Archive of 52,000 testimonies Topics of courses taught by professors using testimonies at colleges and universities around the world Data collected by the Institute and its partners through research and surveys of teachers Born Date of Interview Location of Interview IWitness Activities Students use embedded tools to build videos, word clouds and other testimony-based projects.

# data[].attributes.body
Katsugo Miho explains how anti-Japanese laws and sentiments in America contributed to his decision to join the US Army.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
How were these Topics Identified?

The USC Shoah Foundation identified the IWitness topics based on:

1. Common queries to the Curator of the Institute's Visual History Archive

2. Most popular search queries from the Institute's full Visual History Archive of 52,000 testimonies

3. Topics of courses taught by professors using testimonies at colleges and universities around the world

4. Data collected by the Institute and its partners through research and surveys of teachers

Born

Date of Interview

Location of Interview

IWitness Activities Students use embedded tools to build videos, word clouds and other testimony-based projects.

Registration Required
In order to use the Favorites feature, you'll need to log in or register to become an IWitness User.
Who Can Register?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Watch | IWitness - Education through Genocide Testimony

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The USC Shoah Foundation identified the IWitness topics based on: Common queries to the Curator of the Institute's Visual History Archive Most popular search queries from the Institute's full Visual History Archive of 52,000 testimonies Topics of courses taught by professors using testimonies at colleges and universities around the world Data collected by the Institute and its partners through research and surveys of teachers Born Date of Interview Location of Interview IWitness Activities Students use embedded tools to build videos, word clouds and other testimony-based projects.

# data[].attributes.headline
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong

# data[].attributes.subject
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Patiently educating a clueless white person about race is draining. It takes all your powers of persuasion. Because it's more than a chat about race. It's ontological. It's like explaining to a person why you exist, or why you feel pain, or why your reality is distinct from their reality. Except it's even trickier than that. Because the person has all of Western history, politics, literature, and mass culture on their side, proving that you don't exist."

"When I hear the phrase "Asians are next in line to be white," I replace the word "white" with "disappear." Asians are next in line to disappear. We are reputed to be so accomplished, and so law-abiding, we will disappear into this country's amnesiac fog. We will not be the power but become absorbed by power, not share the power of whites but be stooges to a white ideology that exploited our ancestors. This country insists that our racial identity is beside the point, that it has nothing to do with being bullied, or passed over for promotion, or cut off every time we talk. Our race has nothing to do with this country, even, which is why we're often listed as "Other" in polls and why we're hard to find in racial breakdowns on reported rape or workplace discrimination or domestic abuse. It's like being ghosted, I suppose, where, deprived of all social cues, I have no relational gauge for my own behavior. I ransack my mind for what I could have done, could have said. I stop trusting what I see, what I hear. My ego is in free fall while my superego is boundless, railing that my existence is not enough, never enough, so I become compulsive in my efforts to do better, be better, blindly following this country's gospel of self-interest, proving my individual worth by expanding my net worth, until I vanish."

More quotes...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Patiently educating a clueless white person about race is draining. It takes all your powers of persuasion. Because it's more than a chat about race. It's ontological. It's like explaining to a person why you exist, or why you feel pain, or why your reality is distinct from their reality.

# data[].attributes.headline
Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White by Frank Wu

# data[].attributes.subject
Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White by Frank Wu

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Yellow book. Read reviews from world's largest community for readers. A leading voice in America's Asian community tackles what it means to be Asian Amer...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Join us in building the most impactful home for true stories that honor the everyday lives of Asian American people - and pass the mic for everyone to represent their whole self.

Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, or wherever you get podcasts.

We launched Self Evident in 2019 with a goal to build serious infrastructure for Asian Americans to become the authors of their own stories. We put tangible resources into the hands of under-served producers, reporters, filmmakers, and listeners from every corner of Asian America. And while crafting our own episodes for the podcast, we've done our best to also pass the mic to an inclusive range of contributing producers and guest hosts, working as a studio devoted to maximizing the impact of their voices.

As we move forward from our recently concluded third season, we're also growing this model for co-creation. Here are a few ways you can help us amplify the voices of people and communities whose stories are unfurling, in real life, right now:

"...a beautifully produced show that uses reported narratives, personal stories, and community conversations in order to present a complex, empathetic portrait of Asian American life. Since its launch in 2019, Self Evident has been unafraid to tackle thorny questions of identity and to carefully unpack the specific challenges faced by AAPI communities ... Soft and sharp at the same time, Self Evident is a must listen.

- Justine Goode, Vanity Fair

"...serves to interrogate, expand, and explore what it means to be Asian American, and before one even listens to the content, details about the show support a consistent idea - that many voices are needed to accomplish this task ... and the team has made room for them."

- Aria Bracci, Hot Pod Insider

"It's about time we had a show dedicated to Asian Americans who aren't celebrities."

"It's a big tent with room to examine many approaches to living in the U.S."

"I like that it's from a variety of voices instead of the traditional hosts talking about events format."

"Brought me to tears and drove me to action."

"After listening, my daughters shared personal stories and experiences with me that they've never spoken to me about before."

"It's not a static reporting show, but really dynamic ...I also love Cathy's warm/smart/trusting personality!"

"The editing is perfection. I can envision so well what's happening with the sound design. The stories also feel so relatable. They are stories about human existence with authentic emotions and experiences. It's so poetic as well."

"Covers so many different walks of life, like not just all of the asian diaspora, but old and young, all genders and sexualities, etc."

"I like that listeners are also guests of the show."

"There are not many podcasts that shed light on the everyday life and issues that Asians face."

"Asian American focus that really covers a lot of different communities instead of a narrow one."

"Real people, real issues"

"Up to par with NPR/NYT ... One of few podcasts that Asian Americans have put a lot of thought, intention, nuance, resources and research behind."

"Capitalism is openly discussed"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We tell Asian America's stories to go beyond being seen. Join us in building the most impactful home for true stories that honor the everyday lives of Asian American people - and pass the mic for everyone to represent their authentic self.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the aftermath of the recent increase in hate crimes and bias incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, many communities are showing their support in various ways, from social media activism to mutual aid efforts.

Efforts like these are starting to heighten awareness surrounding racism against Asian Americans, which can be ingrained and subtle - ranging from racially insensitive incidents to physical attacks, experts say. And it's been fueled over the past year by pandemic-related rhetoric such as referring to the coronavirus as the "China virus," reports have shown.

Initiatives including educational resources, donation sites, in-person volunteering and reading lists all aim to help prevent further violence. Last year from March to December, there were 2,800 anti-Asian American hate incidents, according to the online self-reporting tool Stop AAPI Hate. There were 69 incidents that included racist language in addition to a physical incident. The site doesn't report these to police.

Experts share further resources below on how to be anti-racist and support the Asian American and Pacific Islander, or AAPI, community.

Racism against AAPIs has a long and painful history, dating back to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred Chinese laborers from entering the United States. Scholars say this law scapegoated Chinese workers on the West Coast who were often blamed for declining wages and job opportunities. A century later, many Americans continued to blame Asian Americans for their economic woes, this time in the auto industry, as Japanese manufacturers made their way into the U.S. market. In 1982, Vincent Chin, a 27-year-old Chinese American was murdered in Detroit by two white men - one a Chrylser worker and another a recently laid-off Chrysler worker - who, according to a witness, used obscene language while blaming him for losing his job.
Resources:

"Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning" is a collection of essays published in 2020 about the nuances of the Asian American experience.

"Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White" examines stereotypes, such as the perpetual foreigner and the model minority myth, and tackles issues including affirmative action, immigration and interracial marriage.

Self Evident: Asian American's Stories is a podcast that aims to challenge assumptions about Asian Americans.

PBS' Asian Americans is a five-part documentary series on the history of Asians in America.

#AsianAmCovidStories is a YouTube documentary series exploring Asian Americans' experiences and challenges during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Many members of the AAPI community have long said they feel the need to "prove" they experience racism, and social media has been somewhat of a game changer in terms of being able to offer "receipts." Though experts say the fact the community even feels compelled to do so points to a larger problem.

"Asians have had a harder time proving racism in a large part because, in general, people still don't know the history and struggles of Asian Americans," Stewart Kwoh, president emeritus of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles, said previously. "That's the overwhelming problem we have to confront as a society."

Sharing racist incidents on social media helps dispel the myth that Asian Americans don't experience violent crime or racism, said Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director at the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council and a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, told NBC Asian America.

"The enormous force of the model minority myth - that you're all doing well, that your issues are not the same as others who are really suffering - is what we're fighting against," she said.

Factual information is essential to furthering conversations about racism in a productive way, said Russell M. Jeung, a professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. He points to specific suggestions surrounding terminology.

"'Xenophobia' assumes we're foreigners, so call it 'racism'," Jeung said. "And don't call it 'anti-Asian sentiment' because sentiment is all warm and fuzzy. Call it 'Asian hate,' because that's what it is."

Be clear on the difference between a hate or a bias incident and a hate crime -- that a bias incident might involve an act like a slur and a hate crime is a physical act of violence that shows racial motivation. Public mislabeling of incidents can have an impact on a jury and lead to a greater sentence for a suspect. The distinction between these terms is essential, experts say.

"Hate crimes are really narrowly defined as crimes for which you can be arrested with a racial bias there," Jeung said. "It's not an indicator of the level and extent of racism occurring."

Experts say that the conversation around anti-Asian American hate must include incidents besides hate crimes and that just because an act is not categorized as such doesn't diminish its significance.
Resources:
Promoting safety doesn't necessarily mean calling for more policing, experts say. Instead, safety can "look like neighbors helping each other out," said John C. Yang, president and executive director of civil rights nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC. "It's about creating that community where people feel like they are better protected and that they are not alone."

In places like Oakland, California, Yang said community members are supporting their local Asian American elders by helping them run errands, walking them to the grocery store, or buying food for those who are too afraid to go outside. Aside from donations and volunteers, many nonprofits are also seeking help with political lobbying and letter writing.

"It's important for us to always be building coalition, working in solidarity so that it's not only when crises happen that we're reaching out to an organization for support," said Michelle Kim, author of The Wake Up and CEO of Awaken, a company that offers diversity and inclusion workshops.
Resources:
Although the current moment is focused on hate incidents and crimes as a result of language such as "China virus," many Asian American subgroups have long been the targets of racism as well. Groups such as South Asian Americans and Southeast Asian Americans face other challenges and issues that are often hidden by the model minority myth, the belief that all Asian Americans are successful.

Support and seek resources from a broad range of AAPI advocacy groups, such as South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), which focuses on public policy analysis, advocacy and community building; The National Federation fo Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA), which develops young leaders, urges political participation and supports small businesses; the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA), which promotes visibility and provides education and tools to tackle homophobia and racism; the Sikh American Legal Defense & Education Fund (SALDEF), a media and educational organization that promotes civic and political participation; and Empowered Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC), which seeks to empower Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) communities through advocacy and research.

Support groups like StopAAPIHate, which organized a tracking tool for hate incidents last year; The National Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Association, which helps provide affordable care, translated resources and cultural competency for professionals; Send Chinatown Love, which supports restaurants, many of which are immigrant-run and cash-only and so were rejected for government aid.

In addition, the Asian American advocacy group Goldhouse has compiled a comprehensive fundraising page on GoFundMe featuring local nonprofits by region, ways to help small businesses and social media toolkits.

Experts have pointed out that it's a sign of progress that we no longer name viruses after their country of origin.

"Just because certain terms have been used in the past doesn't make it appropriate now. We know that language evolves," Yang said in a past interview. "Certainly, there are terms that have been used in the past, whether in the health context or also elsewhere, that we all recognize have become inaccurate, anachronistic or inappropriate."

He pointed out that we no longer uphold the tradition of naming hurricanes only after women. From about 1953 to 1978, common female names were chosen for storms. Feminist activist Roxcy Bolton fought to end the practice as she and others saw the harmful rhetoric that resulted.

Before Asian Americans ask others to advocate for them, the community must do its own work on addressing biases -- one example being anti-Blackness, experts say.

"We have a responsibility to call out racism, whatever we see, not only when it happens to Asians," Yang said.

When addressing loved ones who might hold racist misconceptions, he thinks it's helpful to approach the subject from a place of care. "Don't approach it in a way where they will get defensive, because it's a learning process for them too," he said.

Jeung said that when it comes to understanding racism, playing "oppression olympics" is both counterproductive and misleading.

"When we try to dismantle white supremacy, we're working in partnership with Black Lives Matter, but we are addressing a different aspect of racism," Jeung said.

One way Asian Americans can call attention to racism without comparing it to anti-Blackness, Jeung said, is to "recognize that Asians are racialized differently" in the U.S., and "placed on an outsider-insider spectrum."

"Sometimes we're insiders to America, we belong and should have white-adjacent or honorary rights," he said. "But in times of war, times of pandemic, times of economic downturn, we're pushed. We can be deported, cut refugee resettlement and H1-B visas because we're outsiders."
Resources: This story first appeared on NBCNews.com.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Anti-racism resources to support Asian American, Pacific Islander community

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the aftermath of the recent increase in hate crimes and bias incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, many communities are showing their support in various ways, from social media activism to mutual aid efforts.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The book list includes titles on Asian Americans and Asia for children, young adults, and educators.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Hate crimes, anti-immigrant bias and discriminatory acts against Asians and Asian Americans have significantly increased in the U.S. since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Congress can take action by passing two resolutions that condemn this rising tide of hatred and aim to curb the damaging effects of hate, bias and violence to society.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hate crimes, anti-immigrant bias and discriminatory acts against Asians and Asian Americans have significantly increased in the U.S. since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Congress can take action by passing two resolutions that condemn this rising tide of hatred and aim to curb the damaging effects of hate, bias and violence to society.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
She'd never been attacked for being Asian American. The pandemic changed that.

Mel Cole

Mari was at Taco Bell filling a paper cup with Baja Blast when the man started shouting. White and 30-something, and wearing a bulky winter coat, he lumbered up to the soda fountain and confronted her. His words sounded slightly slurred, Mari thought, like he might be drunk. At first she ignored him; this wasn't the first time a drunk man had shouted at her at a fast-food place in Chicago. But then her brain focused on his words: "The Oriental touched the dispenser!" the man yelled to the other patrons. "Somebody stop her!" Mari, who is half-Japanese, turned to look at the man, with just her eyes visible above her mask. He poked his index finger at her face. "She started this whole thing!" he said.

A few things happened at once. Mari's friend moved to stand between her and the shouting man. Two workers behind the counter asked the man to leave. He said something about how he was just making a joke-Mari doesn't remember the specifics. She was still stuck on "Oriental"-how old the word sounded, how it conjured the racist imagery of anti-Japanese World War II propaganda, and how strange she felt to hear it used to describe her. "I had never experienced anything like this," the 26-year-old told me this week, a month after the encounter. It felt "like a time jump."

Recommended Reading

Mari does not want her experience to be compared with any of the violent attacks against Asian Americans that have occurred across the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic, she told me. Because she is biracial, she explained, her own experience with racism is notably different from that of other Asian Americans, a category that itself is not monolithic. Last month alone, an 84-year-old man in San Francisco, originally from Thailand, died after being shoved to the ground, a Korean American military veteran was beaten in Los Angeles, and a Filipino American man was slashed with a box cutter on the New York City subway. But the physical attacks are outnumbered by the smaller and sometimes subtler episodes of racism that Asian Americans have experienced. Researchers and hate-watch groups have gathered thousands of examples of these moments; taken together, they are an astonishing collection of viciousness. They also demonstrate that the past year has been doubly hard on many Asian Americans, who go out in public bracing themselves not just against a deadly virus, but against the scourge of racism too.
Read: The other problematic outbreak
For Mari, who asked that I not publish her last name out of privacy concerns as she applies for doctorate programs, the incident at Taco Bell was more surprising than traumatizing. She'd never been harassed or attacked for her race. Actually, her racial identity has always felt a bit uncertain. Mari's mother is Japanese and her father is white. As a child in Tokyo, where she lived until she was 4 years old, Mari was considered white, she told me. But in Honolulu, where she attended elementary, middle, and high school, she blended in with the many other mixed-race students. Now, in Chicago, where Mari works as a research technician in an immunogenomics lab, most white people view her as Asian.

Mari's firsthand experiences with racism came from watching her fellow Americans interact with her mother, she told me. Her mom, who is in her 60s and works for the Hawaii state government, grew up in Tokyo and has lived in Honolulu for two decades. She moved to the city in part because she liked that it was diverse, and tolerant of many cultures. But discrimination was still common. When Mari was young, white strangers would often address her instead of her mother when the two of them were together, because they assumed that her mother didn't speak English. Once, in the elevator of their condo building in Honolulu, an older white woman examined Mari's mom for a moment. "Is this your nanny?" she asked 5-year-old Mari. Interactions like these occurred regularly throughout Mari's childhood. It didn't matter that her mother speaks perfect English, or has a Ph.D. "She's told me that moving through the world with me is a different experience," Mari said. "It's almost like I legitimize her."

The recent incidents of anti-Asian harassment are nothing particularly new, Mari's mom, who requested anonymity because she's worried about her colleagues and employer identifying her, told me in an email exchange. "Although this pandemic certainly triggered the violence," she said, "it's been in this country for a long long time." But just because encounters with racism are typical doesn't mean they are forgettable. That's the difference, she said, between racism's perpetrators and its victims: "They forget, and we never forget."

As for her daughter, Mari's mom said, the attack at Taco Bell "unmistakably reminded" Mari that she's not 100 percent white. "In a sense, I think it was good that she experienced that." Now Mari will be "more careful"-the way people of color are in order to protect themselves, she said.

Moments of national upheaval have historically made anti-Asian harassment worse, from the discrimination against Chinese immigrants during the bubonic-plague epidemic in San Francisco in the early 20th century, to the internment of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II, to the targeting of Asian American autoworkers in the 1980s during a rise in unemployment in that industry. This dark precedent is one reason Asian American advocacy groups protested former President Donald Trump's repeated use of the phrase "Chinese virus" to rile up his supporters last year. Just as in crises past, the pandemic has clearly exacerbated anti-Asian racism, Melissa Borja, an American-culture professor at the University of Michigan, told me. Borja and a team of researchers have spent the past year compiling a list of more than 700 incidents of anti-Asian harassment reported in local news outlets in places as varied as Martinsville, Indiana, and Bayview, California. Almost all of them involved a direct reference to the pandemic. Asian Americans Advancing Justice-AAJC, a civil-rights organization that offers an online tool for self-reporting harassment, in 2020 recorded the highest number of incidents it's seen in four years. Together with two other organizations, it has captured more than 3,000 incidents since April, a spokesperson told me.
Read: The invisible artistry of Asian actors
But even as the pandemic begins to wane in America, the frequency of anti-Asian discrimination may not, Borja warned. The trope of the "perpetual foreigner" has long kept Asian Americans from being viewed as fully American. Geopolitics can make it worse, Borja said: American politicians now regularly criticize-even villainize-China, admonishing its government on issues related to trade policy, technology, and human rights. When that rhetoric is irresponsible-when it targets regular people, not leaders-even Asian Americans who aren't Chinese can feel the effects stateside. As long as these tensions continue, Borja said, Asian American people and communities will be vulnerable. Government leaders should speak and act carefully, she added.

After leaving Taco Bell that day, Mari went to her friend's apartment, where she ate her Doritos Locos tacos and watched a few episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race. Then she went home and called her mother to tell her what the man had said by the soda fountain. When Mari finished the story, her mom let out a long sigh-one that seemed to imply she was sad, but not surprised. "Well," she told Mari, "unfortunately, it finally came to you."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
recent incidents of anti-asian harassment

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What It's Like When Racism Comes for You

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
She'd never been attacked for being Asian American. The pandemic changed that. Mari was at Taco Bell filling a paper cup with Baja Blast when the man started shouting. White and 30-something, and wearing a bulky winter coat, he lumbered up to the soda fountain and confronted her.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Amid the ongoing threat of the coronavirus, there are surging reports of xenophobic and racist incidents targeting members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community in the U.S.

Since January 2020, there have been a significant number of reports of AAPI individuals being threatened and harassed on the street. These incidents include being told to "Go back to China," being blamed for "bringing the virus" to the United States, being referred to with racial slurs, spat on, or physically assaulted. Statements by public officials referring to COVID-19 as the "Chinese virus," "Kung Flu" or "Wu Flu" may be exacerbating the scapegoating and targeting of the AAPI community. Meanwhile, extremists continue to spread antisemitic and xenophobic conspiracies about COVID-19, blaming Jews and China for creating, spreading and profiting off the virus.

The following is a representative list of coronavirus-related anti-Asian incidents reported in the media or by the victims. The description of the victims is based on media reporting. Please note: This is not a comprehensive list; for more detailed information or to report an incident, refer to resources established by the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON) or Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA).

July

July 31 - Bronx, NY: A man was arrested after harassing an Asian woman on the subway. The man reportedly spat on the woman and yelled at her, "Asians caused the virus!" and "Go back to China! Go back to Manhattan!" (Source: New York Daily News)

July 18: An Asian American restaurant owner says he was attacked by a man who refused to comply with the restaurant's health measures. The man allegedly told the restaurant owner, "Fuck you and your chinky ass policy" and told him to "Go back to China, you COVID ass." (Source: NextShark)

June

June 17 - Wyckoff, NJ: A Chinese restaurant was vandalized with graffiti that read, "coronavirus" and "COVID-19." (Source: NorthJersey.com)

June 14 - Newark, DE: Fliers targeting Asian and Asian American students were found at off-campus housing at the University of Delaware, Newark. The flyers included the message "Kill China Virus." (Source: WDEL)

June 13 - Queens, NY: A man at a Bayside 7-Eleven made anti-Asian remarks regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and then verbally harassed an Asian customer whom he also allegedly pushed. (Source: NY Daily News)

June 6 - Denver, CO: Two Asian American people were verbally accosted while walking on the street by a woman who told them they "smell like shit" and "You guys are all disgusting! You all!" (Source: Reported to ADL)

June 3 - Brooklyn, NY: Conspiratorial anti-Chinese fliers were posted in Bay Ridge. The flyers blamed the spread of COVID-19 on Chinese immigrants. (Source: Gothamist)

May

May 30 - San Mateo, CA: Racist anti-Chinese messages were found in the Laurelwood neighborhood, written on utility boxes and poles. (Source: The Daily Journal)

May 23 - Seattle, WA: A man harassed Asian people at a park and an Asian woman in her car, saying, "Where are you from...where is your ID?", and "Chinese disease...they bring it here!" Later, the man allegedly yelled anti-Asian remarks inside an Asian restaurant. (Source: King 5)

May 22 - San Leandro, CA: A woman was arrested after posting handwritten fliers on homes that read, in part, "If you are a woman or man and was born in other country, return, go back to your land immediately, fast, with urgency" and "In this place, no Asians allowed." (Source: SF Gate)

May 17 - Contra Costa, CA: A farm stand displayed a racist sign that read "Fresh bat soup" and "Thank you China." (Source: Reported to ADL)

May 15 - New York, NY: An Asian woman was verbally harassed by fellow subway passenger for not wearing her mask "properly." The passenger yelled at the victim, "You fucking Chinese don't speak English! Go back to China!" She also slapped the victim's phone away. (Source: NY Daily News)

May 12 - Stevens Point, WI: A man was arrested after using racial slurs against Asian customers in a grocery store. According to police "the customers were called names and harassed for wearing masks because of their race." (Source: WSAW)

May 14 - San Luis Obispo, CA: The Cal Poly Chinese Student Association's Zoom meeting was disrupted by unknown participants who drew swastikas and filled the chat box with xenophobic comments blaming the pandemic on people of Chinese descent. (Source: KSBY)

May 5 - St. Louis, MO: A restaurant displayed a pinata in the shape of the coronavirus with a racist depiction of an Asian face on it. (Source: Riverfront Times)

May 17 - Contra Costa, CA: A farm stand displayed a racist sign that read "Fresh bat soup" and "Thank you China." (Source: Reported to ADL)

May 3 - Pasadena, CA: Police arrested a man who threw a drink at several Asian American people while yelling racial slurs at them. (Source: Pasadena Now)

May 3 - New York, NY: An Asian man was attacked on the subway by a stranger who shouted at him, "You're infected China boy, you need to get off the train." The assailant then grabbed the victim and attempted to pull him out of his seat. (Source: NY Daily News)

May 1 - Hoboken, NJ: Spray-painted anti-Asian graffiti was reported on the sidewalk outside an apartment building. (Source: Patch)

April

April 26 - Queens, NY: An Asian woman in Rego Park was harassed by a man who yelled expletives and told her, "You're the one who brought the virus here." After the woman attempted to record him on her cellphone, he slapped her phone away. (Source: Patch)

April 25 - Pasadena, CA: An Asian man was walking with a friend when a motorist drove past and yelled at them, "Fucking Asians, motherfuckers. You brought this disease here." Source: NextShark

April 25 - Chesapeake, VA: A Chinese restaurant owner was harassed by an individual who entered the restaurant and threw water on her and her husband. The owner of the restaurant also reported that someone painted "Go back to China" on her car. (Source: The Virginian-Pilot)

April 22 - San Jose, CA: Five Asian-Owned businesses were vandalized in nearby neighborhoods of San Jose. (Source: East Bay Times)

April 20 - Orange County, CA: During a second-grade class held on Zoom, one student told the class he does not like "China or Chinese people because they started this quarantine." (Source: Facebook)

April 19 - San Francisco, CA: An Asian American woman was harassed while walking her dogs. She was told to "Go back to whatever fucking country you came from" and that "nasty people should stay in fucking Asia." (Source: Facebook)

April 18 - Atlanta, GA: A plaque of Winnie the Pooh using chopsticks to eat a bat and the words "Wuhan Plague" was found outside a coffee shop. The plaque was also reportedly posted at other locations around East Atlanta on April 13 and April 16. (Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

April 17 - Philadelphia, PA: (Date approximate) An Asian-owned restaurant was vandalized with spray-painted graffiti that included the racial slur "Chink." Source: WHYY

April 17 - Albuquerque, NM: A Chinese American man reported that while at a supermarket another customer singled him out and told him to "stay away." (Source: Reported to ADL)

April 16 - Brooklyn, NY: An Asian woman was walking on the street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood when two men harassed her with remarks about Chinese people and called her a "Fucking freak." (Source: Reported to ADL)

April 15 - Newton, MA: A high school advance placement Chinese class held on Zoom was disrupted by individuals who targeted the students and teachers using racial slurs and loud mock-Chinese, and posting "vile, hate-filled images." (Source: Boston Globe)

April 12 - Seattle, WA: Patriot Front, an alt right group, posted propaganda around Seattle's International District targeting Asian American/Pacific Islander businesses. (Source: ADL identified)

April 10 - New York, NY: A Korean restaurant was defaced with graffiti that read, "Stop eating dogs." (Source: NY Eater)

April 10 - New York, NY: A Zoom session hosted by an Asian American organization was disrupted by unknown individuals who wrote racist and anti-Asian slurs in the chat function. (Source: Reported to ADL)

April 8 - Houston, TX: A woman verbally harassed employees of a Vietnamese restaurant, telling them, "Get out of our country." (Source: ABC-13)

April 7 - Amherst, MA: (Date approximate) In a letter to the Amherst College community, the president of the college reported that two Asian students at Amherst College had reportedly been the victims of verbal harassment in the town of Amherst. (Source: Amherst College)

April 5 - San Marcos, CA: An Asian woman was verbally harassed in a Costco parking lot of by an unidentified male who blamed the woman and Chinese people for the virus. (Source: FOX 16)

April 4 - Edison, NJ: A group of juveniles surrounded an Asian woman and attacked her with racial slurs before punching her in the back of the head. (Source: NJ Advance Media)

April 3 - Seymour, CT: A Chinese food restaurant received racist and threatening phone calls from callers who blamed the owners, who are Chinese, for the COVID-19 pandemic. The callers also threatened to shoot the owners. (Source: Valley New Haven Independent)

April 2 - Cherry Hill, NJ: A Vietnamese American man was walking his dog when he was verbally harassed by a stranger who yelled that he "caused the coronavirus and needed to get the fuck out of here." Source: WHYY

April 1 - Pittsburgh, PA: (Date approximate) An Asian American woman was at a grocery store when she was told by another shopper to shop with her own kind and that she "should be rounded up with the virus and shipped back to China." (Source: Pittsburgh's Action News 4)

March

March 31 - Philadelphia, PA: Several Asian American homes received a letter that referenced eating bats and pangolin and encouraged the recipients to burn themselves alive. Source: WHYY

March 31 - Webster Groves, MO: American Identity Movement, an alt right group, distributed propaganda that read promoted their group and featured a Corona beer bottle with the coronavirus germ and read: "Immigration kills," and "Made in China." (Source: ADL identified)

March 30 - Yakima, WA: An Asian buffet restaurant was vandalized with graffiti that included an ethnic slur and a message that read, "Take the corona back." (Source: YakTriNews)

March 29 - Bronx, NY: Three teenage girls harassed and used an umbrella to attack an Asian woman, saying, "You caused coronavirus, bitch." (Source: New York Post)

March 28 - Evanston, IL: "Chinese virus" was found spray-painted on a jetty on the Northwestern University campus. (Source: Reported to ADL)

March 28 - New York, NY: An Asian woman walking her dogs was verbally harassed by two people who called her "the virus." (Source: NextShark)

March 27 - San Angelo, TX: A Korean student at Angelo State University returned to his dorm room to find that someone had placed posters about COVID-19 on his door. (Source: San Angelo Live)

March 27 - Martinsville, IN: A man of Korean descent was denied entry into a gas station and told to "never come back." The gas station attendants reportedly told police that "anyone of Chinese descent was not allowed in the store." (Source: WISH-TV)

March 27 - Cerritos, CA: A Korean American woman was verbally harassed in the parking lot of a Walmart by a man who called her a "bitch asshole" and threatened to hit her. (Source: Reported to ADL)

March 27 - Evanston, IL: Someone spray-painted the words "Make China Pay" inside a bus shelter. (Source: Reported to ADL)

March 27 - Asheville, NC: A cooking class held on Zoom by an Asian American chef was disrupted by an unknown person who yelled anti-Asian and homophobic epithets. (Source: Citizen-Times)

March 26 - Seattle, WA: A Chinese restaurant in the Chinatown-International District of Seattle was vandalized. (Source: NBC News)

March 25 - South Bend, IN: A student at the University of Notre Dame posted racist, anti-Asian, anti-Chinese comments on their Facebook page. The student also wrote "Go home" on the Facebook page of an international student from China. (Source: The Observer)

March 25 - Woodbury, MN: A woman returned home to find this flier posted on her door: "We're watching you fucking chinks take the [C]hinese virus back to [C]hina. We don't want you hear [sic] infecting us with your diseases!!!!!!!" (Source: Facebook)

March 24 - Brooklyn, NY: In a subway station, someone spat on an Asian man and yelled, "You fucking Chinese, spreading the coronavirus. You people got the virus." Source: NY Daily News)

March 24 - Columbia, MD: An Asian-American family was walking on a neighborhood trail when they were verbally harassed by neighbors who shouted at them, "Coronavirus, coronavirus! Asian pig!" (Source: Baltimore Sun)

March 24 - Madison, WI: Anti-Chinese messages referring to COVID-19 as the "Chinese Virus" were found written in chalk on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. (Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

March 24 - San Francisco, CA: A man yelled at a Filipino-American man, using an anti-Asian derogatory term. (Source: Twitter)

March 23 - Des Moines, IA: An Asian American woman was waiting in line at a bakery when a white couple said, "Oh gosh, not here" and "fled" to another line when they saw she was Asian. (Source: Des Moines Register)

March 21 - Huntington Beach, CA: A flier that read, "You guys are Chinese Viruses" and "Get out of our country" was posted on a family's front door and left on their car. (Source: Reported to ADL)

March 21 - Naperville, IL: A Chinese American man was jogging when he was attacked by two women who accused him of having the virus and told him to "go back to China." They also threw a log at him and spat on him. (Source: WBEZ Chicago)

March 20 - Los Angeles, CA: CNN journalist Kyung Lah was preparing for a broadcast when a man approached her and used a racial slur. (Source: CNN)

March 19 - Brooklyn, NY: Oswald Jones, 60, targeted a 26-year-old Asian woman, allegedly yelling "Go back to China" and "You are dirty, get your temperature checked," before attempting to punch her and steal her cellphone. Source: (NY Daily News)

March 17 - New York, NY: Jiayang Fan, a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine, reported being verbally harassed outside her apartment building by a passerby who repeatedly yelled "Fucking Chinese" at her, and called her a "Chinese bitch." (Source: Twitter)

March 17 - Albuquerque, NM: A local Asian restaurant was vandalized with a spray-painted message that read "Trucha with the corona virus." "Trucha" is slang in Spanish for "beware" or "watch out."(Source: KOB 4)

March 16 - Daly City, CA: An Asian man coughed while shopping at Target and was verbally harassed by other shoppers. (Source: NextShark)

March 16 - Vestal, NY: A student at Binghamton University discovered that someone had submitted a racist response to a public Google form she had posted for an event. The submission included anti-Asian terms and referred to the coronavirus. (Source: Pipe Dream)

March 16 - New York, NY: An Asian woman was physically assaulted by a woman who accused her of spreading the coronavirus. The alleged perpetrator was arrested and charged with a hate crime. (Source: New York Post)

March 16 - Fresno, CA: An Asian American woman was harassed while buying diapers. She was told to "move out of the way" and then referred to using a racial slur. (Source: The Fresno Bee)

March 15 - Los Angeles, CA: A Filipino-American woman was harassed by a woman on the street who said, "Please don't give me the virus." (Source: Twitter)

March 15 - New York, NY: A man approached an Asian woman on the subway and said, "You're Chinese, why did you bring Corona to America?" (Source: Facebook)

March 15 - Louisville, CO: Union Jack Liquor changed the message on their marquee to read "Firestone $14.88 Thanks China." "14/88" combines two popular white supremacist numeric hate symbols. (Source: Colorado Hometown Weekly)

March 15 - Davie, FL: An Asian woman who works as a musician received harassing and racist text messages saying that she would not be hired anymore until she surrenders her "Chinese passport and renounce your Chinese citizenship." (Source: NextShark)

March 14 - Midland, TX: A Burmese man and his two children, ages six and two, were attacked and stabbed at a Sam's Club by a 19-year-old man. The alleged assailant admitted to targeting the family because he believed the family was Chinese and infecting people with coronavirus. The assailant was charged with three counts of attempted capital murder and one count aggravated assault. (Source: The Daily Beast)

March 13 - Pasadena, CA: A movie poster for Mulan was defaced with graffiti that depicted a mask over the titular character's face and the message "Toxic made in Wuhan." (Source: NBC News)

March 13 - Miami, FL: (Date approximate) Video shows an elderly Asian woman being chased with a bottle of Purell and a man yelling, "Come here! You need some hand sanitizer. Sanitize your ass!" (Source: NextShark)

March 12 - New York, NY: An Asian man was in a restroom at Penn Station when he was verbally harassed by a man who called him a "Chinese fuck" and said, "I hope you die by the coronavirus." The perpetrator also spat on the victim. (Source: Patch)

March 12 - Queens, NY: Police arrested Raoul Ramos and charged him with aggravated harassment as a hate crime after he allegedly harassed and pushed a 47-year-old Asian man who was walking with his 10-year-old son in the Forest Hills neighborhood. Ramos approached the pair and started screaming, "Where the [expletive] is your mask?" He also referred to them as "You fucking Chinese." (Source: New York Post)

March 12 - Albuquerque, NM: (Date approximate) At the University of New Mexico, an international student from China returned to his dorm room in Lobo Village to discover plastic covering his door and a sign that read, "Caution, Keep Out, Quarantine." (Albuquerque, NM). Source: KOB 4

March 12 - Albuquerque, NM: (Date approximate) Kay Bounkeua, Executive Director of NM Asian Family Center, told local news that while walking into her office building someone on the street yelled at her to "go back" to where she came from. (Source: KOB 4)

March 12 - Milwaukee, WI: Komeng Yang recounted in a Facebook post that people on the bus avoided him and kept their distance "because of the fear of the virus." After he sneezed because of pollen from a passenger's flowers, someone allegedly said, "Kick him off the bus." (Source: Facebook)

March 11 - Seattle, WA: A student at the University of Washington told reporters that he had been harassed the previous week while commuting on the light rail to school. According to Kim, another passenger yelled at him about Chinese people bringing diseases to the United States. (Source: Crosscut)

March 11 - Washington DC: A Cambodian-American man was at a 7-Eleven when a fellow customer called him a "chink" multiple times. (Source: NextShark)

March 10 - Charlottesville, VA: The Mainland Student Network at the University of Virginia reported that two Chinese international students were attacked by assailant(s) who threw raw eggs at them from a moving vehicle. (Source: Facebook)

March 10 - New York, NY: NYPD arrested a 13-year-old boy and charged him with assault and aggravated harassment as hate crimes after he approached a 59-year-old Asian man from behind and made anti-Asian statements. The boy allegedly told the victim to "go back to his country" and mentioned the coronavirus. He also kicked the victim. (Source: CBS-NY)

March 10 - New York, NY: An international student from Korea was assaulted while entering a building on West 34th Street. The suspect asked her, "Where's your (expletive) mask?" She then proceeded to grab the victim by the hair and punch her in the face. The woman allegedly also told the victim, "You've got coronavirus, you Asian (expletive)." NYPD is investigating the assault as a possible bias crime. (Source: ABC-NY)

March 10 - New York, NY: Ed Park wrote in The New Yorker magazine that "a young black man" told him "Get the fuck away from me." Park asked the man, "Are you talking to me?" and the man responded: "Yes, you, fucking Chinese motherfucker, don't fucking get me sick." Park is Korean. (Source: The New Yorker)

March 9 - San Francisco, CA: A woman told reporters that while walking to the gym she was harassed by a man who shouted expletives about China at her and encouraged a passing bus to "run them over." The man then spat at her. (Source: New York Times)

March 9 - Fresno, CA: An Asian man's car was vandalized with the message "Fuck, Asions [sic] and Coronyvirus [sic]." (Source: ABC 30)

March 7 - Syracuse, NY: At Syracuse University, a flier with information about preventing the spread of the coronavirus was vandalized with racist language targeting Chinese people. (Source: The Daily Orange)

March 7 - New York, NY: A 13-year-old boy spat at a 59-year-old Asian man and allegedly saying Chinese people have COVID-19. The same boy attacked the same man again on March 10 in a similar incident. (Source: CBS-NY)

March 6 - Cumberland County, PA: A passerby on campus harassed and hurled racist insults at an Asian-American student at a local college. (Source: Reported to ADL)

March 6 - Garden City, CA: Two students at Bolsa Grande High School filmed themselves verbally harassing and mocking Vietnamese-American classmates, yelling "coronavirus" at them during an International Week assembly. (Source: OC Register)

March 4 - Brooklyn, NY: Video shows a man on the subway arguing with a fellow passenger, who is Asian, and then spraying Febreze air freshener on the Asian passenger. (Source: ABC-NY)

March 1 - New York, NY: An Asian man was standing on the street smoking a cigarette when someone threw a bucket of water on him, resulting in a physical altercation. Source: NextShark

Early March - Los Angeles, CA: A woman reported that a man followed her while she was jogging, and shouted that because she is Chinese, she was to blame for bringing the virus to the United States. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

Early March - Orange County, CA: It was reported in an op-ed that in early March, an Asian-American fourth grade student's classmates accused him of having coronavirus. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

February

February 27 - Philadelphia, PA: A young man and woman were physically assaulted by a group of juveniles at a SEPTA station in what appears to be a racially motivated anti-Asian attack. (Source: NextShark)

February 22 - San Francisco, CA: An elderly Asian man was physically assaulted while collecting recyclables near a housing project. The incident was filmed and shared widely on social media. In the video, one person can be heard saying, "I hate Asians." Dwayne Grayson was arrested on suspicion of robbery, elder abuse and committing a hate crime, as well as a probation violation for an earlier robbery. (Source: San Francisco Chronicle)

February 13 - Los Angeles, CA: In the San Fernando Valley, a 16-year-old student, who is of Asian descent, was physically assaulted by classmates due to coronavirus fears. (Source: CBS-Los Angeles)

February 12 - Plymouth, IN: Kao Lor and Lee Lor, both of Hmong descent, were traveling through Indiana and tried to get a room at a Super 8 Motel. The Super 8 employee asked Lor if he was Chinese. When Lor asked why he needed to know the employee responded, "Because of the coronavirus going around. And anyone from China, I am told, has to be picked up and quarantined for two weeks." (Source: WBND)

February 5 - Los Angeles, CA: An eighth-grade Asian-American student at Walter Reed Middle School was sent to the nurse's office after he started coughing from choking on water. After the nurse sent him back to class the other students teased him that he had coronavirus. (Source: FOX-Los Angeles)

February 2 - New York, NY: An Asian woman was attacked in the subway station for wearing a mask. One witness said she heard a man call the woman, who appeared Asian, a "diseased bitch." (Source: CNN)

February 1 - Los Angeles, CA: An Asian woman was subjected to an anti-Asian xenophobic rant about the coronavirus from another passenger while taking the Metro. The man stated that "Every disease has ever come from China, homie. Everything comes from China because they're fucking disgusting." (Source: Twitter)

Early February - Pasadena, CA: Chinese-American actor Tzi Ma reported that in early February a man yelled at him, "You should be quarantined." (Source: Good Morning America)

January

January 26 - Bellevue, WA: A man's son, whose mother is Asian, was told to "get away" from a food sample table at a Costco because "he may be from China" (Bellevue, WA). Source: Twitter

January - Jersey City, NJ: The NJ Patch reported that in January, a man approached an Asian woman on the street and told her to "Go back to China" and referred to her with an anti-Asian slur. He also spat in her direction. (Source: Patch)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Reports of Anti-Asian Assaults, Harassment and Hate Crimes Rise as Coronavirus Spreads

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Amid the ongoing threat of the coronavirus, there are surging reports of xenophobic and racist incidents targeting members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community in the U.S. Since January 2020, there have been a significant number of reports of AAPI individuals being threatened and harassed on the street.

# 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.readable_text
This story is part of a group of stories called

First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others thinking and writing about public education.

My first concern about COVID-19, back when it was still mostly something that was happening 7,000 miles away in China, was not just safety and sanitation. It was racism.

As an Asian American, I have long encountered slurs and offensive eye movements, and calls "go back" to where I came from. So as news of the new coronavirus made its way around the world, I asked my nine-year-old, American-born, Korean son if anyone at school was making comments to him about the coronavirus.

"Yeah," he said. "They yelled across the room, 'You're Chinese, you have coronavirus!'"

Later on, I talked with some of my Asian "mom friends." While their children had experienced racist bullying well before the coronavirus outbreak, the illness seemed to accelerate the behavior, they said. At school, they were subjected to repeated group taunts in which misinformation about the coronavirus mixed with racist taunts.

These children are not alone. Across the country, Asian-American students have reportedly been targeted amid the coronavirus outbreak. Locally, when Asian students spoke up, their peers told them they were just joking and urged them to have a sense of humor. As for their teachers, some addressed the problem quickly, while others did nothing, leaving the children to defend themselves.

My son's experience, and those of other Asian-American children, made me realize that the outbreak of coronavirus isn't only the time to talk about frequent hand washing and wiping down high-touch surfaces. It's also time to talk about bias and bullying toward Asians or anyone who may feel "othered" because of their race or religion, because of how they look, or because they have a disability or behavioral challenges.

I told my son that what the other children were saying about him is not true and that he doesn't need to keep these incidents to himself. Teachers and parents can help.

But I didn't just address the matter with my son. Since he attends a public school with strict policies against bullying, I also made an appointment to speak with the principal. I wanted to make clear to her that I was taking action not as one mom advocating on behalf of her child, but as a concerned parent acting for all children who had been bullied in any way.

I brought with me a slideshow that touched on bullying in general, with a focus on racist bullying, and especially on racist bullying toward Asian Americans. The slideshow presented myths and facts about the virus. I explained that "Asians/Asian Americans residing in the U.S. who have not traveled to China (recently or EVER) are no more at risk than non-Asians/Asian Americans to contract the Coronavirus." Even to write those words seemed ridiculous to me, but it needed to be said directly because it seemed that so many people in our communities had not taken that in.

The slides also presented a short history of racism targeting Asians and Asian Americans in the U.S, from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. While Asians in America are often dismissed because of the "model minority myth," which may praise them at the expense of other people of color, history shows us know how quickly attitudes can turn.

My slideshow ended action steps for teachers, such as "Talk about the myths surrounding coronavirus to cultivate empathy and support" and "Let minoritized students know that you are a safe person to talk to about any comments or racist taunts, or if they are being targeted."

My son's principal was receptive, not having realized that Asian students faced harassment in the era of coronavirus. She sent my slideshow to the entire school staff and heard comments such as, "Oh, I've never thought of coronavirus' effects in this way before. I hadn't considered bullying and racism."

That was back when the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in America numbered about a dozen. Now that the disease has been labeled a pandemic, it's even more important that educators consider its impacts on physical and mental health. Racist bullying must be curbed alongside the disease itself. I hope that parents, teachers, and administrators will take action for the sake of their children and their schools and all children and all schools.
Angie Hong is a church leader, writer, and speaker residing in Durham, North Carolina with her husband and two sons. Her areas of interest include racial justice, Christian worship, and leadership. She is currently pursuing graduate studies at Duke University.
First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others trying to improve public education. Read our submission guidelines here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Amid the coronavirus outbreak, Asian-American students like my son face racist taunting. Let's change that.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
First Person is where Chalkbeat features personal essays by educators, students, parents, and others thinking and writing about public education. My first concern about COVID-19, back when it was still mostly something that was happening 7,000 miles away in China, was not just safety and sanitation. It was racism.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
4. What evidence is there that discrimination against Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders has grown during the pandemic? Why is it difficult to quantify incidences of harassment many Asian-Americans have experienced?

5. Some of the people arrested in attacks against Asian-Americans are Black, bringing complicated racial dynamics to the forefront. According to Lai Wa Wu, the policy and alliance director for the San Francisco-based Chinese Progressive Association, what perpetuates tensions among communities of color? In what ways have these communities also supported one another amid the pandemic and a national reckoning on race?

6. This article includes many ways in which people have tried to address anti-Asian discrimination. Identify at least two ways in which:

People have responded on an individual level.

People have responded on a community level (for example, in a specific neighborhood, city or state).

People have responded on a national level.

Which of these responses do you think might be the most effective in stopping violence, harassment and racism against Asian-Americans? Which, if any, might be the least effective in your opinion? Why?

7. In the video you watched in the warm up, Katherine Oung says, "It seems like since the start of the Coronavirus outbreak, schools have been a petri dish for racism. It's dangerous to normalize behavior like this for people my age." Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not? What connections can you make between the racially charged comments you might hear at school and the harassment and violence against Asian-Americans that you read about in the article?

There are many ways you can take action to address anti-Asian racism in your community. Choose one of the options below, depending on how you identify:

If you are Asian or Asian-American, you might first think about your own well-being. Create a tool kit that you can turn to if you experience harassment, discrimination or a hate incident. Here are some ideas for resources you might include in your tool kit:

"Whether you've been subjected to discrimination or not, simply hearing about the widespread xenophobia can affect your mental health," writes Brittany Wong in " Self-Care Tips For Asian Americans Dealing With Racism Amid Coronavirus " for HuffPost. How are you caring for your mental health during these stressful times? Read the article and add the self-care strategies you find most helpful, plus some of your own, to your tool kit.

Make a list of trusted teachers, administrators, coaches or family members to whom you feel comfortable reporting stereotyping, racially charged language, threats, violence or any other type of discrimination.

Include links to organizations that are tracking hate incidents. Reporting helps these groups call for policies and resources that can help address anti-Asian discrimination. Stop AAPI Hate and Asian Americans Advancing Justice are just two where you can share your story.

Then, you might consider the ways you can help your community. The article mentions that some are handing out pamphlets on how to report a hate crime, creating protest art, spreading awareness on social media, fund-raising and organizing volunteer initiatives. Which, if any, of these efforts might benefit your community? What other ideas can you come up with?

If you are not Asian or Asian-American, learn how to be an effective ally. Here are several sources that provide strategies for standing up for the Asian community:

Choose at least one of the strategies mentioned in any of these resources that you can commit to, such as educating yourself on the history of anti-Asian racism and xenophobia, intervening if you witness harassment, amplifying Asian and Asian-American voices on social media or supporting Asian-American businesses. Then, in a short paragraph, make a specific plan for how you will take action and explain why you think this strategy is effective and important.
Additional Teaching and Learning Opportunities

Analyze protest art. Look at the images in this article about a new public art series in New York City. What messages do you think the art is trying to communicate? How effective do you think this campaign is? Do you think art can be a form of activism? Why or why not?

Read two editorials written by student winners of our editorial contest: " Not American Yet" by Alexander J. Lee, 16, and " This Land Was Made for You and Me " by Nicole Tian, 15. What argument is each of these essays making? How do these articles relate to and build upon what you watched in the warm-up video and read in the featured article? How is it different reading about anti-Asian discrimination from a first-person perspective versus from the third-person perspective you read in the featured article?

Make connections to history. Learn more about anti-Asian discrimination in the PBS NewsHour article " The Long History of Racism Against Asian Americans in the U.S. " What connections can you make between history and what is happening today? What lessons can we learn?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Lesson of the Day: A Rise in Attacks on Asian-Americans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
4. What evidence is there that discrimination against Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders has grown during the pandemic? Why is it difficult to quantify incidences of harassment many Asian-Americans have experienced? 5. Some of the people arrested in attacks against Asian-Americans are Black, bringing complicated racial dynamics to the forefront.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately harming all people of color in the United States. For Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, one way this harm has manifested is in a rise in hate incidents. These incidents are fueled by both a long history of anti-Asian xenophobia and racism, and stigmatizing references to COVID-19 as a "Chinese virus."

MAEC and the National Education Association engaged in a webinar and live conversation where, through interactive dialogue and audience participation, participants examined the historical and current context of Anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) racism and xenophobia, distinguished between hate incidents and hate crimes, and identified actions we can all take to address bigotry and discrimination.
National Education Association Planning Partners Moderators Presenters

Jason Oliver Chang

Michelle Nutter

Fred Pinguel

Noreen Rodriguez

Yan Yii

Downloads
Nyla: [00:00:00] We recommend that you click on the chat icon at the bottom or top toolbar
on your screen and keep the chat box open at all times. We will be doing a poll of the
audience, so you will see a poll here on your screen. Please click the appropriate response
and I will read out the results when they're generated.
At a specified time during the seminar, we will be moving into breakout rooms. You'll be
given a prompt and please follow them when they come up.
And then lastly, but also the very importantly, with the exception of when you're in a
breakout room, please keep your microphones muted and your video cameras off at all
times. The only people on camera are the speakers and the moderators and our tech team
will mute audio and video as needed.
Next slide. This webinar's being hosted by MAEC, but we are doing so in partnership with the
National Education Association. So it's my pleasure to acknowledge their partnership and
participation in planning this webinar. And that includes partners, members, including
Merwyn Scott, Hilario Benzon and Gabriel Tanglao.
Joining us today as part of our webinar support, you'll see their names in the chat box are
Kate Farbry and Tanner Petry, they are our tech support. If you have an issue, a tech issue,
you can message them directly. Joining us as our chat box moderator is Jessica Lim. she will
be posting webinar links, responding to questions, resources, our evaluation survey into the
chat box when as needed, when the time comes. Handling our Facebook live is Kathleen
Pulupa and joining us as a speaker support and will do the webinar PowerPoints, and to
keeping time is Nikevia Thomas.
Our moderators for today are me, I'm Nyla Bell, I'm senior education equity specialist at
MAEC and my moderator Gabriel Tanglao, who's the associate director of PDII and Gabriel, I
don't know what that stands for so if we can clarify that when you get the mic,for the New
Jersey Education Association.
So who are we? We, as MAEC, which stands for Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium, our
organization was founded in 1991. As an education nonprofits dedicated to increasing access
to high quality education for culturally, linguistically and economically diverse learners. Our
vision is that one day all students will have equal opportunities to learn and achieve at high
level.
And our mission is to promote excellence and equity and education to achieve social justice.
Next slide.
We run, we at MAEC run several large centers. The largest and oldest of which is our center
for education equity. Our center, CEE, is a project of MAEC and is one of four regional equity
assistance centers funded by the US Department of Education under title four, the civil rights
act of 1964.
We work in partnership with WestEd and AIR to improve and sustain a systemic capacity of
public education to increase outcomes for students, regardless of their race, gender,
religion, and national origin. And our region is the Northeast. And you can see the state's
posted in the map and the image.
So a bit about our, the purpose of today's webinar and our goals. This webinar was
conceived in response to, the rise in hate incidents against Asian and Asian Americans, as we
go the COVID pandemic. We know that the COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately
harming all people of color in the United States. For Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders,
one way this harm has manifested is in a rise in hate incidents. These incidents are fueled by
both a long history of anti-Asian, xenophobia and racism, and by stigmatizing references to
COVID-19 as a quote, China virus or Chinese virus.
So today we will examine historical and cultural and current context of Asian American or
anti Asian American and Pacific Islander racism and xenophobia. Distinguish between hate
incidents and hate crimes and identify actions we can all take, particularly as educators to
address bigotry and discrimination. In doing so we hope to identify and understand hate
incidents against Asian-Americans, raise educator awareness and deepen educators'
understanding of anti-Asian xenophobia and racism and help build the capacity of educators
to address anti-Asian xenophobia and racism in school.
Next slide. So a couple of important notes, as we move through this webinar, we recognize
that our audience is diverse in it's understanding, experiences, beliefs, and opinions on race
and racism. We want to acknowledge that discussing this topic might be difficult for some,
with varying levels and diverse comforts engaging in this issue. And we hope that you
embrace the discomfort you experienced and grow and learn from the dialogue.
Lastly, this is one of a series of MAEC online events on the topic of race, racism, and other
forms of social inequality. Particularly as they pertain to the current moment of uprising,
protest, and COVID-19
It's my honor to welcome today's speakers, who would include. Dr. Jason Oliver, I'm sorry.
Dr. Jason Oliver Chang. He is an associate professor of history and Asian American studies
and director of the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute at the University of
Connecticut.
Also with us is Michelle Nutter. She is among many things, an education and outreach
program manager and civil rights outreach specialist with the Pennsylvania office of the
Attorney General. Also with us is Fred Pinguel. Fred is the Executive Director of the
Philadelphia Student Union and former organizer with Filipino Advocates for Justice.
Also with us is Dr. Noreen Rodriguez. She is an assistant professor at the School of Education
at Iowa State University. And last, but definitely not least is Yan Yii. Yan Yii is a fifth grade
teacher in Canton, Massachusetts, and the president of the Canton teachers association.
Okay. So next up is a poll question, I mentioned earlier that we will be asking you a poll. We
want to know who you are and what kind of role you play in schooling. In a moment, a poll
will come up on screen. Please take a second to fill it out. And we'll wait about a minute to
give folks a chance to respond.
And I can't see from my end, whether or not the poll question comes up on screen, so Kate
I'm going to need you to let me know.
Kate: [00:07:25] Sure. I'm just gonna, there's still a lot of people responding, so I'll wait until
it slows down.
[silence]
Okay. I just shared it. Can you see it?
Nyla: [00:08:00] I cannot, I cannot see it. Do you mind reading out the responses?
Kate: [00:08:04] Nope, so we've got, an equal number or percentage of pre-K elementary
teachers, district leaders and staff and parents and guardians. It's about 14%. It's multiple
choice. So you could be more than one.
We've got a few, counselors and psychologists, we've got some SEA staff, a few students, so
there's at least, you know, one to two people in each category. But the district leader, staff,
parent, guardians and teachers are the ones from the top there.
Nyla: [00:08:40] Okay. Okay.
And if you are in other categories, we encourage you to post, put your role into the chat box.
I see that some folks have started doing that already. And so at this point I was going to turn,
this past the proverbial mic over to my wonderful moderator, co-moderator Gabriel.
Gabriel Tanglao: [00:09:03] Thank you. Nyla and greetings everybody. Good afternoon,
depending on where you are in the country. My name is Gabriel Tanglao, I'm a Filipino
brother, so bringing that energy in to this space. And I'm really appreciating the diversity of
job categories that are present in this community that we have here.
So the next thing that we wanted to ask you to start to chat storm, meaning, just share some
of this information in the chat. We wanted to get a sense of where you are geographically
located. So whether it's the city, county or state that you wanted to share in the chat, please
do that now. So we get a sense of where everybody is in terms of geography.
One of the things that we wanted to also do is that we wanted to do a land
acknowledgement that regardless of where you are across this country, that these are
indigenous lands, prior to colonization. And were cultivated by indigenous people for
thousands of years. And we wanted to make sure to name that before we begin our
conversation today and just as an additional resource, as I see people that are chiming into
the chat, I'm going to drop in a link to a website that will allow you to identify what
particular tribes exist in your area. And that's just something we wanted to do.
So we're seeing a range of different locations. So very grateful to those of you who are
participating in our chat. We're also going to invite you to add one more thing into the chat,
but this one is going to be a different type of check-in. So the question that we'd like you to
respond to in the chat is to briefly describe your level of comfort in discussing the topic of
race.
So I'll reframe that. How comfortable, are you with this talking about issues of race, and we
invite you to consider dropping in some of your feedback in the chat. And we welcome any
type of feedback that you have to offer. So, with that, we are going to begin to lead into our
presentation and I'll be handing it off in about 30 seconds, but I wanted to make sure that
you all have clarity that in the chat, even as the presentations are going on, please continue
to offer any thoughts on how comfortable you are with talking about race.
And with that, I'm going to kick it over to our first presenter. Michelle, I'm super excited to
hear you set the stage for the framing of our conversation today. And, Michelle we'll get you
prepared to begin your presentation. For now we'll ask for the next slide. Meanwhile, the
participants, you are absolutely welcome to continue the dialogue in the chat.
Michelle Nutter: [00:12:00] Awesome. Thank you, Gabriel. It's my honor to be with you all
here today. I was asked to kind of set the context as Gabriel said, and to talk about what we
have seen since COVID-19 has hit our country and hit the world. And set the stage to discuss
what those bias incidents and hate crimes have looked like. And then we'll go a little bit
deeper and examine what allowed those things to happen. What in our past history has
made it possible for these continued expressions of hate and bias to continue.
Next slide, please. We're gonna start with a video, it's about six minutes in length from the
Today's show. Just in case any of you are not familiar with the rise in anti Asian-American,
Pacific Islander incidents, since Covid, we wanted to give you this as a way to show context.
So if we could go ahead and show that video, please.
[silence]
Nikevia are we able to show the video? Or should I just continue on?
Nikevia: [00:13:47] Oh, sorry. I'm showing it, but let me make some adjustments. Hold on.
[silence]
External Video: [00:13:58] With an unexpected side effect of this coronavirus crisis, Asian
Americans becoming targets of discrimination. The FBI recently issued a warning about a
potential spike in hate crimes. And just this week, the NYPD launched a social media
campaign to raise awareness. Tweeting Hate is an ugly word, and it has no place in our
vocabulary.
A growing number of celebrities are also speaking out, including actor, John Cho, who
penned an Op-Ed for the LA times. NBC news investigative and consumer correspondent,
Vicky Nyugen is here with more. And Vicky this is a really, really troubling trend.
It is. And I will say it is personal for me too, Hoda. And the numbers really back it up one
Asian advocacy group says it has received more than 1500 reports of COVID related hate
incidents, since mid January. People are saying they'd been harassed online, spit on, yelled
at, even physically attacked. But as more people speak up to fight back against the hate
there is hope we can stop it from spreading.
Dr. Chen Fu is on the front lines, in the battle against COVID-19 as a Chinese American
doctor, he feels both celebrated and vilified.
I feel an animosity that I've never felt before.
On his commute to the hospital, Dr. Fu says he was approached by a stranger.
You dirty Chinese. And he just kept saying that over and over again. I've never felt anything
like it.
This, just one of many incidents across the country. Now being reported. Asian Americans
targeted for their race in Texas. This person yelling at a Vietnamese restaurant owner. And
this man and his two children stabbed at a Sam's club. The suspect, according to the FBI
thought the family was Chinese and infecting people with the Coronavirus. In Minnesota,
this note, the tenants claim was posted on their door reading, we're watching you take the
Chinese virus back to China .In New York City in just a month police say they've investigated
11 hate crimes against Asian-Americans compared to three in all of last year.
OCA Asian Pacific American advocates, a nonprofit group that tracks discrimination against
Asian Americans says it is received more than 1500 COVID-19 related reports of hate
incidents since January.
We have seen everything from cashiers who will tell somebody I'm not going to serve you
because I don't want to catch coronavirus. We've also seen patients who have gone into
health clinics who say, I don't want you as a nurse. I want somebody else to help me.
Because the nurse was Asian American?
Exactly.
From mid to late March, President Trump repeatedly referred to the Coronavirus as the
Chinese virus.
The Chinese virus, the fight against the Chinese virus. It comes from China. It's not racist at
al, no.
This photo of his speech with the word Chinese replacing Corona went viral on social media.
I have never seen the Asian American community this scared. They're in fear for their life.
Jene Wu is a state representative in Texas. Why not call it the Chinese virus?
Because it could create harm and has created harm.
Now, many are calling for people to rise above the hate. New York mayor, Bill Be Blasio.
We will not tolerate any discrimination. We will not tolerate any hate crimes.
Black, Hispanic, and Asian congressional leaders uniting to condemn racism.
It's important for us to negate the hate come, together as Americans.
And celebrities, urging fans to stand up for each other. Actor Daniel Dae, Kim, please, please
stop the prejudice and senseless violence against Asian people.
Social media campaigns #washthehate #racismisavirus, and #IamnotCOVID19 are spreading.
Namaste, Let's wash the hate.
Also spotlighting the growing discrimination, multiple Op-Eds, including mine. While there's
more work ahead, some things have changed. After repeatedly calling it the Chinese virus,
president Trump appears to have stopped. And tweeted in part, it is very important that we
totally protect our Asian American community in the United States and all around the world.
They are amazing people and the spreading of the virus is not their fault. And in some of the
racist attacks, people stepped in to help. Zach Owens risked his life to save the family
attacked in Texas.
And for Dr. Fu. A stranger jumped in.
He defended me and said, no, you can't do this. That guy was my hero. And this is not just
happening with adults. Just this week an Asian mom posted this to her Instagram, a student
in her daughter's second grade class said he didn't like China or Chinese people because they
started this quarantine. She encouraged her daughter to put her feelings on paper. And the
result was this letter, it reads in part, this made me feel sad because he was my friend and
I'm Chinese. It's wrong, because he doesn't know what he's saying. But it ends on a
compassionate note, thank you for being my friend. And it really is so important Hoda for
kids to speak with, for parents to speak with our kids about this kind of discrimination.
I mean, it's so jarring, but to think of a second grader who's being mocked by another
classmate is just so disturbing. And I was just, I mean, this whole thing makes me so sick, but
if you are put in a position, like some of these folks have been, what's the best thing for you
to do?
Well safety far. So you really do want to try to remove yourself from the situation of course,
report the incident if can. Both law enforcement and these advocacy groups say they take it
very seriously. They will investigate, and talk about it. Lean into your family and your friends
for support. Sometimes you feel embarrassed or ashamed. Like it's something you did to
bring it on, but that's not the case. And you've got to put these messages out there and it
reminds us all. We're all in this together.
Wow. What a really eyeopening report. All right. Thank you so much, Vicky.
Michelle Nutter: [00:19:58] We're gonna switch back to the power point... Okay, we'll be
putting the PowerPoint back up on the screen. It's really difficult to watch that story, to hear
the types of incidents that have been happening. On this slide, we've put some additional
incidents that have taken place since that particular clip was filmed back in April. And I
would be remiss if I didn't point out that while, there was a, a particular moment where folks
at the white house we're not using the term, just this weekend over the, 4th of July
weekend, we have again been seeing, the president referring to coronavirus as the Chinese
virus and other officials in his cabinet. And, speaking out using that term as well. Next slide,
please.
So I just want to take a second and, give some information about the difference between a
bias incident and a hate crime. A bias incident is an act of prejudice that is not a crime. It
doesn't involve violence, threat or property damage. While a hate crime is a criminal act or
crime motivated in whole or part by a hatred against a person's protected class.
I think it's important for us to understand the difference between the two. Because knowing
what type of incident it is, helps to streamline the reporting process. And in my last slide
with you today in just a minute, I'll go over what that reporting process looks like. But more
importantly, knowing the type of incident it is helps a victim to understand what legal
remedies are available to them. But I definitely want to just take a moment to caution all of
us that we don't undervalue the importance of intervention and response, regardless of
what type of incident it is. We all have an obligation to stand up and speak up whenever we
hear biased remarks.
This is our goal, especially for those of us who are educators and judging by the poll and the
chatbox comments, a lot of us are in education. So we have a duty to provide a safe and
supportive school climate for all of our students. You know, the first amendment does give
people freedom of speech and it allows people to say things that are offensive. That are
untrue or based on stereotypes are based on bias. And while that's not illegal, we still have
an obligation to speak up when we hear it.
And as I said, especially in the school setting, going back to the 1969 Tinker Supreme court
decision, schools were given some guidance by the Supreme court that students don't
abandon their right to free speech at the school house door. However schools can limit or
quash speech if it interferes with a student's education, creates a threatening environment
or substantially disrupts the orderly operation of this school. And further federal and state
civil rights laws and statutes also create an obligation for educators to eliminate harassment
and end hostile environments. Next slide please.
As I said, a hate crime is a crime that is based in whole or in part on the perpetrators bias,
hatred, animus against the individual and then that makes it a hate crime. The term hate
might be a little misleading, because you might think that hate means that then it's rage or
anger, or, you know, that kind of thing. But in this context, hate really does refer to bias
against a person or a group of people with specific characteristics that are defined by law.
Next slide, please.
As you can see by this graphic, which shows, the United States and its territories, this is
where, you can look to see, does your state have a hate crime statute? Does it require data
collection on hate crimes or not? And so the States and territories that are in blue have both
a hate crime statute and require data collection on hate crimes. States in gray have a hate
crime law, but don't require collection of data. And the red States, the four red States there
do not have either a hate crime statute nor do they require police departments to collect
information on hate crimes. Next slide please.
I just really want to take a second to think about whether we're talking about a hate crime or
bias incident. Hate sends a message. It sends a message across the entire community. And as
we're seeing across the country, across the world. Hate crimes, bias incidents they target the
initial individual, the person that they target with that activity. But it also significantly,
negatively impacts people who are similarly situated that they may think well, if that
happened to him, if that happened to her, it could happen to me next. And it then impacts
the greater community.
Sometimes I hear people say, well, aren't all crimes, hate crimes? Hate crimes are different
from other crimes in the way that it affects the victims and the community hate crimes are
especially brutal, they leave the victims traumatized and terrified. It creates a community
situation where people may be tempted to repeat the actions or escalate the actions or
retaliate to the actions. And so it really is this very broad response that happens anytime we
see a hate incident, whether it's a bias incident or a hate crime occur. And next slide, please.
And finally I'd mentioned this earlier. What do we do if we witness or experience an act of
bias or hate? Well, we need to report it. It is really, really important. And you can see I have
hate crimes, bias incidents and acts of discrimination to give you an understanding of who to
report it to. If it's a hate crime, if you are in danger or you witnessed someone else in
danger, call 9-1-1 to get a response immediately. And collect and retain evidence and report
to civil rights organizations as well. Both the MAEC website, as well as our co-sponsor the
National Education Associations EdJustice Project have put together lists of resources that
identify federal, state, and in some cases, local agencies that you can report to. As well as
civil rights organizations that you can report to as well.
I hope that that has provided some context for you. And we're going to go ahead and pass
the mic to Dr. Noreen Rodriguez. Excuse me. Noreen.
Noreen Rodriguez: [00:28:12] Thank you everyone. I'm Noreen Naseem Rodriguez, and I'll
be talking briefly about anti-Asian xenophobia and racism in classroom pedagogy in schools.
I could spend an entire academic semester discussing these topics, but I'm going to do my
best to give you a quick overview today in about 10 minutes.
I was a bilingual elementary educator in Texas for nine years before I became a teacher
educator so I'm thrilled to see so many early childhood and elementary folks present. Next
slide please.
In 2020, we've seen an uptick in anti-Asian racism across American society that's
predominantly been affecting Chinese and East Asian Americans and some Southeast Asian
Americans as well. While hundreds of incidents against adults have been reported through
organizations and websites like Stop AAPI Hate, incidents against school age youth are
harder to track. Particularly given that many schools began to shut down after COVID-19
began to spread in March.
In one example, a friend told me that in February, her Korean American friends elementary
age son was accused of having COVID and was punched by another peer in their Seattle
school. Many personal attack accounts of similar attacks can be found on social media.
However, anti-Asian racism is not a new phenomenon. In fact, the racism that occurs in
schools often reflects the racism found in broader society, which you've seen modeled in the
adults who surround them and in the media they consume.
So let's just consider a few common examples that I recall from my own childhood in the
1980s. There are several ways in which Asians and Asian Americans are a centralized in US
society. So first this idea that we speak Ching Chong, this reduces all Asian languages to
nonsensical jibberish and is a pervasive stereotype.
Second, there's the notion that all Asians are exotic foreigners rather than US born and that
they don't speak English fluently or without an accent. We often see this manifested in the
question, where are you from? This is a question that my own high school history teacher
asked me and not anyone else in the class. After she asked me this, she asked my
Vietnamese American friend if her family ate dogs. This is the third way in which Asians and
Asian Americans are a centralized. We're viewed as uncivilized barbarians who eat stinky
and disgusting foods.
Many Asian Americans recall what is known as a lunchbox moment in which they brought to
school, a favorite ethnic dish from home when that was made with love and care only to
have their peers make fun of it. I have a link to a short video about these experiences and
our resource document I'll share with you after I'm finished talking. And that will also go out
with the slideshow after the talk today.
And then lastly, we often see Asians and Asian Americans identified in particular ways.
They're quiet, obedient nerds. Women can often be viewed as exotic and hypersexual while
men are viewed as impotent and asexual.
So all of these stereotypes have historic roots and continue to be perpetuated in popular
media today. After the September 11th attacks, we saw a surge in racist harassment, and
violence against Southeast Asian Americans. Particularly those who are Muslim or perceived
to be Muslim. This happened with adults and also occurred to a significant degree in schools.
Elementary children, as well as secondary children have been called racist or have been
called terrorists, excuse me, and attacked on school buses and in classrooms. And that again
was a direct reflection of the racial discrimination and violence in broader society.
Much of this is a result of the general lack of knowledge of Asian countries, geography and
Asian American history, which we'll talk more about in a moment. What's important to
remember is that these acts of anti-Asian racism are often under reported. And when they
are reported, maybe classified as bullying or harmless jokes, rather than recognized as
harmful and violent acts. Next slide, please.
So while today we're focusing on anti-Asian racism in schools, in response to COVID-19. We
need to consider that there are multiple ways that Asian American students, communities,
experiences and historys are rendered invisible across preschool through 12th grade. First,
there's an intense lack of representation in the curriculum. Asian-Americans are the least
represented group in history curriculum. While people usually recall learning about a
handful of black and indigenous historical figures in school, they can rarely name any famous
Asian Americans who weren't entertainers or athletes. As a social studies educator, I can say
with certainty that we need far more representation of black indigenous and people of color
across the curriculum and the resource document I'll share has a few starting points for you
to diversify your classroom libraries. And parents there's also lots of resources for you as
well.
But we don't need to just focus on different ethnic racial groups in isolation. It's also
important that we teach and learn about cross-racial solidarity in examples that fully
demonstrate the pursuit of liberty and justice for all. As Martin Luther King famously said, no
one is free until we are all free. But it's hard to teach what we don't know. Asian Americans
make up less than 3% of the national teaching force. The lack of information about AsianAmericans also results in stereotypes and cultural assumptions that guide the ways
educators interact with and assess students. For example, Asian Americans are
underrepresented in special education programs and often receive services much later than
their peers. At the same time Asian Americans are overrepresented in gifted and talented
programs. These are consequences of the model minority myth, which several folks had
mentioned in the chatbox, which negatively affects Asian Americans by masking the
struggles they may face while at the same time pitting them against black and brown
communities in ways that sustain meritocracy and the poor white supremacy.
Moreover, as Asian families may be viewed as not needing the same level of support. They
may not have school communication provided to them in their home languages. I've only got
a few minutes left, but let's consider what teaching against anti-Asian racism might look like.
Let's see, next slide please. For the elementary educators and school leaders in the
audience, it can look simply like expanding existing lessons about school segregation and
immigration. Often school segregation is taught solely through the story of Ruby Bridges,
this relegates school segregation along the black, white binary. Instead in addition to
consider other groups who are not allowed in so-called white schools by including stories of
Mexican American and Asian American segregation. And I've listed a few major court cases
on the right there.
Similarly expand content about immigration beyond immigrants from Europe.
Unfortunately, many elementary teachers begin and end at Ellis Island. Considering Filipinos
came to what would become the United States in 1587 and Asian immigration began at a
large scale in 1965. There's so much history that could and should be included, but isn't.
Let's change that.
For secondary educators, please take up this history in your courses rather than teaching
about the Chinese in the 18 hundreds in a single day, or as an add on lesson to lessons about
the gold rush of the railroad. Spend time examining the wealth of primary sources from that
time period to discuss stereotypes, xenophobia and labor. Similarly, Japanese American
incarceration during World War II, merit significant conversation. And can we come to
compelling discussion around what it means to be an American and how the government
perpetrates racism and xenophobia in ways we continue to see today. And again, focus on
the 1965 immigration and nationality act. It's responsible for much of the ethno-racial
diversity we see in the US today, but is rarely given enough context and instructional time.
Lastly, when you teach the civil rights movement, explore how the black communities work
inspired asian-Americans. This term isn't just a category, but a name created to show a
shared sociopolitical identity and make sure that you share examples of cross racial
solidarity over time, not just during one particular moment. Next slide please.
To summarize, you can't teach with a critical lens if you don't have one yourself. So making
these changes to your pedagogy requires work. Here's some starting points. First explore the
history of Asian immigration. Early Asian immigrants were viewed as an exploitable labor
force. They're routinely subjected to discrimination and racism and were not allowed to
become citizens. This meant that they could not own land or vote.
Second disrupt the model minority myth, the stereotype about Asian intelligence and being
able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps without relying on social services was created
to pit Asian-Americans against black Americans and Latinex. Don't let the stereotype
influence how you perceive your Asian American students and their families. And if you
notice it among your students, discuss it. And if you don't know much about it, there's a
great video in your resource list that helps explain it.
Third teach about racialization and racial solidarity in the past and present because
obviously we do not live in a post racial society. Race isn't static, and fixed it changes over
time .While it is a social construct, it has real world implications that result in
disenfranchisement and dehumanization. If we truly believe in the US as a pluralist
democracy, we need to show solidarity against depression and act in ways that demonstrate
collective interests for just futures.
Fourth create regular opportunities to discuss racism and white supremacy. Particularly in
our current moment. Racism is a fundamental part of US society and history, just think about
who was first eligible to be a citizen and the ongoing fight to ensure that all members of our
democracy can exert their full rights as citizens. We need to be unafraid of discussing racism
and white supremacy with all students, not just students of color, as it affects all of our lives.
Next slide please.
Finally, it's important to remember that blackness is heterogeneous. There are people who
are both black and Asian, people can be mixed race, and we can't disregard that reality, and
the complexity that comes with that. While Asian Americans are facing a great deal of racism
today in our own communities, anti-blackness is often present and it needs to be discussed
and disrupted. There are several great webinars this summer that aim to support Asian
American educators in this work. Next slide please.
Thank you. I know that was really quick. Please contact me if you have any questions and I'll
hand it over to Dr. Jason Oliver Chang, and I'll put the resource link in the chat box.
Dr. Jason Oliver Chang: [00:38:09] Hello everyone. Can you hear me?
Someone just make a note in the chat if they can hear me. Oh, good. Okay, cool. Alright,
wow. Thank you professor Rodriguez it was amazing, and everyone Michelle's presentation
as well. I'm so grateful to be here with y'all. My name is Jason Oliver Chang. I'm a professor
at UConn and a Director of the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute. And I lived on a
Mohegan, Mashantucket, Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Paugussetts Golden Hill, Narraganset,
Nipmuck and Quiripi land. And what I wanted to do today was to share a little bit of the
background for what I've been calling anti Asian pathogen racism. And, I entitled this part of
the presentation Anti-Asian Racism in the Forever Time of Anti-Blackness, as a way of lifting
up the, our current context around the national and global social movement for black lives.
And, that these are two strains of racism that have always existed together.
And so it's important to realize that anti-Asian politics have been a part of, and based on
anti-blackness, because the founding of the colonial settler state of the United States was
based on enslaved Africans and indigenous genocide. And so in my academic field, we think
of stereotypes as a common term for what we call racial formations, which is a specific way
to specify the language, images and rationale embedded in those stereotypes. And so to
recognize that US-Asian racial formations are rooted in the history of us imperialism,
imperial warfare in the Pacific and mass labor migration to the US in the second half of the
19th century following the emancipation of enslaved Africans.
So we can see these parallels throughout history, in the sense that the first anti-Asian
immigration laws coincided with the writing of new rules of Jim Crow segregation and the
second half of the 19th century. And, also we have to recognize that black political power
that was developed in the civil rights era was mobilized to advocate for the entry of
Southeast Asians, Asian refugees after the Vietnam war.
So the rise of the largest social mobilization for racial justice and the Black Lives Matter
movement during a time of a global pandemic and anti-Asian racism may seem incredibly
unlikely. But our racial worlds have always been interlinked and it's up to us to maintain that
awareness and to make those connections. So the fear of foreigners is a perennial concern
within a white supremacist society. Because this type of xenophobia has a number of
political uses. Anti-Asian xenophobia has always been used to reorder the racial hierarchy, to
certify the claims of a white ruling class. And this, it becomes more and more important, as
the, or more useful as the US becomes more and more diverse.
And so when we see this, our current pattern we to think of it in a context of of increased
diversity and challenges to white hegemony or white power. And, and so we can look at this
from a number of different angles, including, historically. Can I get the next slide please?
So, I've assembled a couple images of anti Asian pathogen racism from history just to show a
certain continuity. And these come from popular, the first two, the 1982, the Wasp cover
and the 19, or the 1886, cartoon image of the yellow peril octopus. Both represent disease
as the defining characteristic of Chinese immigration. And then I also included an image
from a work in Mexico to show that, pathogen racism is not only a part of a white settler
societies, but that is quite common elsewhere. In fact, anti-Asian immigration laws were the
gold standard of immigration laws across the world, from the 1880s to the 1930s.
And so, just to show that there's, that all societies, you know, can and do use these forms of
difference and racialization. And it's important to recognize the political value that they
create for dominant societies. Right? So, if we could go to the next slide?
Right, so here we see, you know, we often, you know pay attention to the, you know, as
professor Rodriguez was pointing out, that we often look at the 1880s as an important
milestone in Asian American racialization. And indeed that's true. And it's significant to see
that these continue through the 20th century and while it's less known, there were two
other Corona viruses that came out of Eastern Asia, in the fifties and sixties. In 1957 there
was the Asian flu. And in 1968, there was what was called the Hong Kong flu. And, it's
striking to look at the historical record and to see that these, the same discourse, the same,
basically the same language being used today around coronavirus is taken almost exactly out
of pages from 60 years ago.
So, and then another image here from 2003, surrounding the SARS epidemic. And so I
wanted to ask folks, did any of these images strike you as particularly powerful? We can
invite you to respond in the chat. And how did, what do you make of these images?
Yeah, I think it's interesting to see, to share these with students because there is a way that
the visual language kind of encapsulates a lot of the ideas of racism and communicates them
quite effectively. Yeah.
So I wanted to also point out that the anti Asian racism has, or it really, any racism that is
connected with disease has four really important impacts. One is that, if it's related to
doctors and officials, they really miss the epidemiological dynamics of the disease and they
can prolong the course of the disease, which I think, you know, we've seen with the
mishandling of the disease by the administration. Second we have added violence, and
victim blaming. And which leads to targeted people not seeking, help if they need it. And
three, whites often believe themselves to be immune and ignore preventative protocols. Or
don't Institute protocols when needed. And this can, again, prolong the disease and make it
even more impactful, more deadly. And forth scapegoating a population leaves underlying
vulnerabilities completely unchanged. Right. So, and it diverts attention and resources away
from actually solving real epidemiological problems.
And so at this point, you know, I wanted to draw an intersection with the BLM movement, to
underscore that the historic inequality is created from black racialization have increased
their vulnerability.To the exposure of the chrona virus. And so at this time where we see
both anti-Asian racism and increased black death, by the hands of police, as well as from the
virus, these are conditions that we have to consider them at the same time.
So I wanted to offer a couple takeaways, and I know that my time is running low. So I'll go
quickly. One that racism is more than prejudice. This is not just about mean people and nice
people. That racism is historically produced as professor Rodriguez was pointing out.
And that, you know, this is, while we do want to maintain attention to language, we also
need to be attentive to material conditions and opportunities, such as the recent, ICE rules,
immigration, customs enforcement rules around, college students and online classes.
So, in that vein, you know what we need to realize about racialization is that stereotypes are
formed and take hold of people's imaginations when they're reinforced by state action.
Okay. And this history serves as an important reference point. And in order to address this,
it's not just about addressing the language. But we do, if we don't recognize the history of
the formation of these stereotypes and we naturalize them and make them seem
permanent or natural.
Another point just to echo a professor Rodriguez, that really when we think about racial
formations, we have to consider them as relational, not solitary development. Racial
formations never happened in a vacuum. I often try to, when I teach this, I often teach it as a
racist, racial formations are constellation in which we have multiple points, in a hierarchy.
And this is, this leads me to the last point here about the fact that Asian racial formations
really revolve around these kind of polemic binary between a yellow peril and the model
minority. And so in, which is really stark for this generation because they experience a
transformation from crazy rich to crazy sick, and they're, in the public's eyes. And, this is
something to be attentive of for the mental health of Asian Americans. As they, or Asian
American students, as they really try to make sense of this dramatic landscape.
So, I know I'm running out of time, but let's see, I did want to say here, that, you know, when
we often talk about anti-Asian racialization, we often focus on just how they're treated. But
really Asian Americans have fought back continuously throughout these times. And they've
been engaged in other political struggles that link them to their homelands and highlight the
ways that Asian American communities have been involved in international political
movements for human rights, decolonization and antiwar. And many of these movements
signified independence, dignity, and democracy. And so, you know, there's a couple other
ways that we can identify, sort of unconventional, Asian-American responses, you know, not
just to either be a yellow peril or a model minority, but that Asians have formed numerous
interracial coalitions throughout history and today. Including the 1903 Japanese and
Mexican labor association, Filipinos and Mexicans have formed numerous political and social
organizations together. And these are regular folk that are making sense of their world
together. Right? So, these experiences show that Asian Americans can't earn their belonging,
because the basis of exclusion is on white supremacy. Not on contributions, right. So whites
weren't citizens because they earned it. But because they were assigned themselves the
status of natural born Americans. And Asian Americans express a broad range of political
expressions on this issue.
So in that way, I tend to teach, I tend not to teach assimilation. Assimilation is a poor
concept to teach our students about belonging, because many already know about the false
promise of acceptance. And this is important to discover student experiences with this false
promise. If they do feel it's true, then to explore why others don't. And this background is
important to understand that anti-Asian racism occurs in a multiracial and deeply stratified
society. And racism, whether it's anti Asian or anti-black is strongest when it's practiced by
people of color. It reaffirms the white dominant interpretation of society. And this includes
the practice of anti-Asian racism, pathogen racism from people of color, as well as anti-black
attitudes from Asian Americans. And racism from people of color is a symptom of struggles
for belonging in white supremacist society.
And there's a couple of ways to address this. Address anti-blackness and colorism and in
Asian American communities is by looking at their countries of origin and the racial politics
there. We can also explore what a society would look like without police. And addressing
anti-Asian and anti-black violence, as a speculative future. So with that, I'm going to leave a
couple of links here to some resources that I've been a part of, to teach on anti-Asian racism.
So hopefully that was, know it was a little abrupt there at the end, but, I hope that was
useful and look forward to the conversation.
Gabriel Tanglao: [00:52:50] Thank you so much to our three presenters, Jason, Noreen and
Michelle, just incredibly rich dialogue unfolding before us. And before we transitioned to the
panel, this is actually an opportunity for our participants to begin to process and unpack this
in small groups, which we will be moving you all to in a moment.
But before we do that, we wanted to just first set the stage with some community
agreements. Prior to going into these small groups, which we'll manage on our end with the
technology. We're going to invite you to honor these community agreements and create a
space where you can hold each other accountable to these agreements. To be curious, open
and respectful. To honor confidentiality. And what we mean by that is, as you unpack,
what's said here stays here, but what's learned here leaves here. We want to make sure that
although we may have the best intent with our words and actions, that we are all
responsible for the impact of our words and actions. So knowing the difference between
intent and impact. Also in these small group dialogues you'll be in groups of about four or
five people. So we invite you to make space and take space. So if you're a person that
generally dominates conversation, we invite you to be self aware enough to make space for
other voices to enter. And if you are a person that's generally reflective, we invite you to
take space and offer your best thinking to the group.
We also want to invite you to expect and accept non closure. We're going to have about 10
minutes to share and unpack in these small groups, which isn't nearly enough time to start
to unpack the richness of this dialogue, but please make sure that you're not going to
necessarily get to a closure. This is only a processing moment for our community here in this
group.
So the discussion prompts when to plant this seed, as we go to our community agreement
affirmation, is what resonated with you most in this moment? Obviously, so many points
were made by our three speakers who set the stage, but what is one thing that's really
resonating with you? That's sticking with you? That you're curious about? You're going to be
sharing that in dialogue, in your small groups in a moment. So I'm going to pause there and
just invite you all to reflect on the community agreements. Be prepared to share your
thoughts on what resonated with you. And I'm going to also invite Nyla to offer some further
context before you go into your groups.
And Nyla, just, I think you might be on mute cause we can't hear you, your audio.
Nyla: [00:55:50] Sorry. Can you hear me now?
Gabriel Tanglao: [00:55:52] Yes.
Nyla: [00:55:53] Okay. I just wanted to add onto what Gabriel said in terms of [inauble],
sorry about that, we will not be facilitating your breakout rooms so that, so we are trusting
that you will honor the community agreements and be respectful of each other. This is a bit
of a risk on our end to not be there. And we won't know what's being said. We will ask you,
give you an opportunity to sort of share out things that stand with you that stood out from
you or questions you have as a result of breakout rooms. But we just wanted to reiterate
that, when you speak in community, you will have most of those breakout rooms will be
private with just audience members.
Gabriel Tanglao: [00:56:38] Thank you. Nyla and just, again the community agreements. If
you need to feel free to take a screenshot or a picture, just so you have that present with
you. Again, these are going to only be about 10 minutes as we transition to the breakout
groups. But, please share your thinking and take some time to process a lot of the incredible
resources and wisdom that was shared earlier.
So what resonated most with you? And we're going to invite our wonderful tech folks to
begin to set up the breakout groups. Again, you'll be in groups of four to five.
Nyla: [00:57:17] In the chat bot.
Gabriel Tanglao: [00:57:21] Got it.
Nyla: [00:57:27] Okay. I see folks are coming back in.
Gabriel, do you need a signal when a startup, once everyone is back in.
Unknown Speaker: [00:57:40] This has been a really great webinar. I just want to thank you
guys in advance. I was just sharing with my breakout roommate that I have a niece that's
Cambodian and black. And she's been going through a lot of depression because of bullying
from a lot of school. Mainly her school is Caucasian. And she's been going through a lot of
depression because of teasing bullying. So this is very helpful for me. But she lives in the
state of Michigan and I live in Chicago.
Nyla: [00:58:08] Thank you for sharing. That's a really powerful, unfortunately we won't
have time for everyone to speak out verbally. There are some of the seats, some of the
discussions in a small breakout room, but, that was, thank you. And also, please remember
to complete the survey at the end of this.
Gabriel Tanglao: [00:58:26] Definitely. And I, I see that everybody has joined back in. So I
wanted to welcome everybody back from the small group breakout conversations. Hopefully
they were also rich dialogues.
What we're going to invite you to do. And I know that chat storm really fills the chat with a
lot of content, so it's difficult to navigate through it. But what we're going to invite you to do
is to just drop in the chat, something that resonated with you from that conversation. So it
could be something that you share. It could be something that someone else shared, or if
you have a curiosity and a question that is alive for you right now. Please share that in the
chat. And I'm going to lift some of those up before we go to our panelists and continue this
dialogue. So again, if there's something that resonated with you from the small group
conversation, whether it's a question, a thought or something that you heard from
someone. Please feel free to share that. And we're going to lift some of those statements
up.
I see Lily teaching children, the true history of our country early on. Some of this being used
as another way to divide us. Thank you, Susan, for sharing that. And Shea, it's great to have
these sessions. And they are, there are many layers to this. And a question that's being
raised as well, and we're gonna share and collect some of those questions to actually share
with the panelists. But just a couple of more things I want to lift up. I see I work in education
globally, why aren't these important topics we discussed part of the national curriculum?
Right. Thinking globally, but acting locally. So thank you for that.
And there was a group that discussed that hate sends a powerful message. Yeah. It's
definitely important to ground ourselves in the understanding of our history and at the root
of it, of hate can be used to continue power structures. And just something that Cindy is
mentioning, this was so informative and everyone brings good info to the table. So with that,
those are a couple of comments. But I want to leave enough space for the panelists. Feel
free to engage in the chat, continue to add any comments, thoughts, or questions. And
we're going to do our best to continue to lift those up.
And with that, we're going to transition to our panel. Which includes our incredible
presenters at the top of this, but also includes two incredible folks, Yan Yii and Fred. We're
actually gonna give you the stage first, before we go into the panel discussion to allow you
to share back some of the, either questions or thoughts of what resonated most with you
from the presentations.
And, I think fred, if you don't mind, we'll invite you to share first and then Yan Yii after Fred
shares, we'd love to hear your thoughts on any feedback from the presentations earlier. So
Fred, would you like to unmute yourself and share?
Fred Pinguel: [01:01:36] Sure. Thanks Gabriel and hi everyone again, my name's Fred I'm
with the Philadelphia student union and formerly the Philippino advocates for justice. So I'm
actually really happy to be here. I've learned a lot, through my fellow presenters. Because
my role is I'm not an educator, not formally. I work in the capacity typically to do leadership
development and youth organizing, inside schools and have had an opportunity to work with
an organiation, the organization I work with right now is predominantly black. And I worked
with them many years ago and also have worked in API server reading organization. So it's
been really great to just listen to the presenters and in the chat, just try to tease out some of
the nuances of this very complicated situation.
I think the only thing that I would want to add, is how important it is to just be very tender
and careful in addressing issues of bias incidents, with students and with young people.
Because especially in contexts that include a really diverse group of students, racially,
ethnically, immigration status there is in the desire to make sure that one group of young
people feel protected and taken care of, unfortunately, because of the way that, you know,
punitive systems exist in schools, that usually means that another group of young people
may be implicated, whether that's through school police, suspension, and other types of
punishment that we've seen and understand can really impact the experience of young
people and contributes to the school to prison pipeline.
So an example that I'll draw from specifically is that when I worked, a few years ago with the
Philadelphia student union, there was a bias violence incident, in one of our high schools
where some native born and African American students, get into a fight and attacked some,
immigrant API students. And that led into, that led to a lot of development for the young
people that were involved. But unfortunately, one of the immediate responses of the district
was to criminalize the young people who were, criminalized young people who are
involvedin this melee. And so, especially in this, in this current moment where we're all in
investigating the role of policing and the role of policing and maintaining white supremacy as
educators and as practitioners, it's just really important to think about our role in that,
when we're trying to address and protect young people, young API people from bias
violence.
Gabriel Tanglao: [01:04:26] Thank you so much, Fred. Yan did you want to unmute yourself
and share some of your thoughts? Reflect on either the presentation or some of the
comments that Fred shared?
Yan Yii: [01:04:38] Absolutely. Hi, my name's Yan Yii, I'm a fifth grade teacher in Canton,
Massachusetts. And I'm also the president of the Canton teacher's association. You know, all
of this just makes me think of a student I had last year who had come from China and did
not speak English very well. And at the beginning of the school year, he really experienced
the students being not so nice to him. And he couldn't even like his English was so limited he
couldn't even vocalize what it was that was bothering him. And he spent the rest of the year,
pretty much trying to be as not Asian as possible. Until I started bringing books into the
classroom, I really made it, important for him to celebrate who he is.
And I find that that's really what we see with a lot of our Asian Pacific Islander students is
this model minority myth where we tried to be as white as possible. And what we don't
understand and what John Cho said in this editorial was that we will only be as accepted
until there's some reason to not accept us. We will, we will. The closest we'll get to be at
being white as being white adjacent, but there will always be a ceiling that we cannot break
through.
So I'm looking at one of the comments and it said, you know, why do people say it's fine, it
doesn't bother me. And why do we need to not do that? It's because it's part of the model
minority myth. That you know, the women are to be demure. The men are asexual, they're
not viewed as being people that women would find attractive. That is all part of this model
minority myth to keep us down. And we need to help our students celebrate who they are.
Or they're going to start being as whitewashed as they possibly can, because they think that
it makes them more accepted among their peers.
Gabriel Tanglao: [01:06:39] Thank you so much for that. I wanted to make sure that folks
know, how this flow of the panel is going to go. And we're going to invite our panelists to
respond to some questions that Jessica is going to lift up that came from some of the chat.
And as co-moderators, what we're going to do is identify which of our wonderful panelists is
going to chime in to which questions based on the raise hand feature. So that's something
that we're going to be doing. But Jessica, I'd like to invite your voice into the space to lift up
any questions from our participants. And then our panelists who want to share.
Jessica: [01:07:17] Thank you, Gabriel. So it's awesome, the chat as pose a lot of very deep,
powerful questions. Let's jump right into it.
Why does the burden of educating with this kind of integrity fall on individual teachers
instead of being part of our national curriculum?
Gabriel Tanglao: [01:07:46] Noreen, we see your hand. If you'd like to chime in.
Noreen Rodriguez: [01:07:51] So I'll say the short version that, I could lecture on for much
longer than like the minute or two I'm going to give it. But the school systems weren't made
for us, they weren't made by people who look like us. And we weren't meant to succeed in
them, so they were never structured to attend to these issues. And it's frustrating, but that's
why we really have to kind of re-envision. And a lot of folks argued just straight up dismantle
of the current systems, because they're not meant to support us anyway. And that's, I'll
leave it at that. But if you want to learn more, I highly suggest that you read, We Want to Do
More Than Survive, a book by Dr. Bettina Love. It will lay it all out for you. And it's so
beautifully done.
Dr. Jason Oliver Chang: [01:08:30] I'd like to add something. Yeah so, you know, I think one
of the challenges is that there's a national story that needs to be retold. But then, you know,
politics are always local and, you know, there's a way that it's, that our own communities
need to recover their pasts and their stories.
And, you know, one way to do that might be to reimagine the structure in which we develop
curriculum. You know where does professional development come from? What are the roles
of parents in professional development for teachers? You know, when we think about what
needs to change, you know, I think it's more than just the outcome, but the process. And so I
think there's really both, you know, attention to a larger kind of shared national story, but
then also the complexity and diversity of our local context.
Nyla: [01:09:51] Thank you. I'm going to jumping in. Are there any other responses to that
question? And I'm jumping in because we're near the end of our time together, so we'll need
to wrap up soon and put the closing slides up in a few minutes, but we do have, we can
squeeze in at least one more question and thank you, Jason for your response and Noreen.
One that, there was a lot of earlier in their conversation and the chat box around the
question, I think it was one of the first questions posted. Is it offensive to ask where
someone is from, if I have a genuine interest in getting to know them? And there's a lot of
back and forth about that, would any of you care to respond to that question and debate?
Yan?
Yan Yii: [01:10:46] I hope it's okay. I would say it's all about the context and how you ask.
Cause I did, I was reading the chat earlier and I saw some people were saying, well, you
know, there's the stigma of where are you from, meaning you don't belong here. I think that
the hardest part is making that assumption about where someone's from. And, you know,
like, I think most especially East Asian people will get, are you Chinese? Let me say
something in Chinese. That's way more offensive to just be like Niihau. And you're like, well,
I actually don't speak Mandarin. So can you let, can we have a conversation about that?
I think you should be using it as an opportunity to educate people. And if they ask where
you're from, you could clarify that question, but it's much easier to say something like what's
your ethnic, you know, I'm so curious, what's your ethnicity. And, and don't pose it as an
accusation and more look at it as a learning opportunity. But I think that's what Brian was
trying to say earlier that he wanted it to be like, like he's, he's genuinely curious. I don't think
there's anything wrong with asking that question. I think it's how you ask and how you
phrase the question. And what you can offer to that conversation as well.
But I also think it's important to think about why when you ask it a non person of color,
what, where they're from that they'll say, well, I'm from Massachusetts and you know, what
you don't want to do is perpetuate that, yes, but where are you from. Right, and you're like.
And there's a great video of if you look it up on YouTube about microaggressions and it's an
Asian woman and they white male. And he keeps asking her where she's from, where's she
from? And she's like, do you mean before I was born? Whereas like, all you really have to do
is ask what is, what is your ethnicity, I'm so curious. and I'd like to learn more.
Fred Pinguel: [01:12:47] I also just want to add very quickly if people want to just, think
about, like, why are you asking where people are from like? are you is it a question that
everybody's answering at that time? Or is it like that, or is it particularly being addressed to
certain people who look a certain way? I think that that's really important to do that kind of
self criticism as well, because there is a tendency for, you know, and it's not, it's not
necessarily a bad intention, but if you find that you are more interested in this particular line
of questioning when addressing API folks, or maybe Latinex people or just people who look,
who aren't white, then I think that, that might be worthwhile to investigate as well.
Nyla: [01:13:44] Thank you.
Dr. Jason Oliver Chang: [01:13:45] One of the things, in the text box was out of the chat was
that you could ask someone their, you know, their relationship to that question. How have
they, have they been targeted by that question or hurt by it and identify with those
experiences. But I think, you know, just to echo what Fred is saying and really questioning
how is that questioning relevant? And what is the context for that? And then you're also,
you know, I think it's wise to develop a kind of repertoire of responses, you know. I can't
count the number of times I've been caught off guard and really wished I had a one liner
ready to go, to respond to things. But also, you know, I believe in using these things tactically
to reverse the power structure. And to ask white people where they're from.
Nyla: [01:14:50] Yan I see you have your hand.
Yan Yii: [01:14:59] Sorry, I forgot to put my hand down.
Nyla: [01:15:01] Oh, [ chuckles] and Noreen, did you have your, I saw you had your hand up.
Just took it down.
Noreen Rodriguez: [01:15:07] I think other folks covered it.
Nyla: [01:15:10] Okay. I think it's time for us to close up. It's, there's so much more we can
talk about this can go on for a lot longer. There's a lot of rich information shared and, thank
you all for joining us. Gabriel, is there anything you wanted to say before I close out?
Dr. Jason Oliver Chang: [01:15:28] Just the deep gratitude to all of our speakers today to
your organization and all the participants. I'm just glad to be part of the dialogue. So thank
you all.
Nyla: [01:15:40] Thank you. Can you go to the next slide? So, again, thank you all for joining
us today. this was an awesome conversation. We will have, there's been a number of
questions about whether or not this will be available for viewing after it's over. And we will
post it probably within, Kate, correct me if I'm wrong a week or so. So you can go back in and
see the slides and listen to the discussion. Again for reference and it will be posted on our
website.
Thank you so much again, to our co-sponsors and cohost at NEA. It's been a pleasure
working with you. This was our first partnership and I hope there are more to come. Thank
you, especially to my co-moderator Gabriel Tanglao. He was, you're awesome. And kind and
gentle and awesome, so I especially look forward to future opportunities to work with you.
Next slide. And thank you of course to our wonderful speakers who shared such rich and
important information, Dr. Jason Oliver Chang, Michelle Nutter, Fred Pinguel, Dr. Noreen
Rodriguez and Yan Yii. Thank you so much, again, and, hopefully we'll have schedule a
debrief after.
Before you leave, please, next slide. Before you go, please take a moment to complete our
survey, we depend on your responses to inform future online events. We are especially
interested in how you experienced the breakout session. So in the, there's no question in the
survey specifically to that, but if you can give us feedback on that experience and the open
ended questions, that will be great. You can access to survey to the link posted in the chat
box and, or you can use your camera, and take a picture of the QR code posted again.
Thank you so much. We will have, more events coming up, please stay tuned, check your
inbox, and you should be on our mailing list. And until next time.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
COVID-19, Racism and Xenophobia: A Discussion on How and Why the Pandemic is Affecting Asian Americans - MAEC, Inc.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately harming all people of color in the United States. For Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, one way this harm has manifested is in a rise in hate incidents. These incidents are fueled by both a long history of anti-Asian xenophobia and racism, and stigmatizing references to COVID-19 as a "Chinese [...]

# data[].attributes.body
As we, a school community and a nation as a whole, strive to combat hatred and bigotry, WHS continually works to create an inclusive and welcoming environment. In fact, in light of our work with the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) WHS has been designated a "No Place For Hate" school.  Despite this designation, we know that our work continues.  This padlet is meant to serve as a community resource page to help our community to more deeply understand how we can be allies in this vital work of standing up to discrimination against Asian-American individuals.  These resources include experiences (personal stories) to source materials (articles, studies, etc.).

The resources continue to the right.