Friend, 

The United States has a long and shameful history of violence and discrimination against Asian Americans.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first major U.S. law restricting immigration, was enacted amid concerns about maintaining white “racial purity” and a period of falling wages blamed on Chinese workers. It followed the Page Act, which largely prevented immigration by Chinese women, who were stereotyped as lewd, promiscuous and disease-ridden. 

These anti-Chinese tropes led to brutal attacks. In 1885, white coal miners in Rock Springs in the Wyoming territory killed 28 Chinese people, injured 15 others and expelled hundreds more from their homes. It wasn’t the only such massacre.

And during World War II, 120,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated in primitive, remote “relocation centers” in the West, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.

“[T]he stereotypes of Asians that emerged from the history are familiar – that Asians are foreigners, economic threats, disease carriers, and that Asian women are promiscuous and hyper-sexual,” says Dr. Jennifer Lee, the Julian Clarence Levi Professor of Social Sciences at Columbia University.

Today, we’re seeing a new wave of violence and hate incidents directed at the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.

Since early 2020, the website Stop AAPI Hate has documented more than 4,000 self-reported anti-Asian hate incidents. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. AAPI Data, where Lee is a senior researcher, estimates from its survey results that more than 2 million Asian American adults – one in eight – have experienced a hate incident since the onset of COVID-19.

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In solidarity,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center

Editor’s note: Dr. Jennifer Lee, the Julian Clarence Levi Professor of Social Sciences at Columbia University, recently spoke to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog about the rising violence and hate incidents targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders during the COVID-19 pandemic. The full interview can be read here.