Friend,
From their very first moments on U.S. soil,
Asian American and Pacific Islander
(AAPI) immigrants have been followed by cruel stereotypes,
threats and discrimination. Not long after they began arriving
in the U.S., racist policies such as the Page Act, which
targeted Chinese women as "lewd and immoral," and
the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 were passed. Later,
the Immigration Act of 1917, which created the "Asiatic
Zone of Barred Citizenship," entirely excluded immigrants from
numerous countries from the Middle East to the Pacific Islands.
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After the Civil War, anti-Asian hate became a cultural norm as phrases
like "yellow peril" or "dusky peril" cropped
up to disparage Asian immigrants - and newspapers,
including the popular New York Daily
Tribune, stereotyped Asian people as unclean, unintelligent
and morally inferior to white people. This language
ultimately served to justify a national movement to discourage
immigration from Asia.
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The Chinese Exclusion Act lasted for 60 years and remains the only
U.S. law passed to prevent immigration and citizenship on the sole
basis of race. At Angel Island, a West Coast immigrant
detention center, Chinese immigrants were subjected
to humiliating exams and interrogations that often resulted
in deportation. The Act had a devastating impact as Chinese
immigration to the U.S fell from 39,500 people in 1882
to just 10 in 1887.
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AAPI people in the U.S. have felt the consequences of anti-immigration
rhetoric for more than a century. Shortly after the Chinese Exclusion
Act became law, San Francisco opened its first segregated public
school to enforce mandatory segregation for Chinese and
Japanese students. In a culmination of extreme racial prejudice, the
U.S. carried out one of its most grievous human rights violations in
1942 when President Roosevelt ordered people of Japanese descent,
including U.S. citizens, to be forcibly removed from their homes
and held in prison-like internment camps after the
Pearl Harbor attack.
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Many attacks on AAPI immigrants hinged on the common yet unfounded
claim that immigrants take jobs that would normally be held by white
people. Fears about job losses prompted the Immigration Act
of 1924, which strictly limited immigrants of certain ethnic groups,
including Asians. Out of fear that their business would be
undermined by Vietnamese fishermen, a group of white fishermen in
Texas invited the Ku Klux Klan to use violence and intimidation
tactics against the Vietnamese and their families. In
1981, an SPLC suit stopped the Klan's terror
campaign and shut down their paramilitary bases. The next
year, Vincent Chen, a young foreman at Chrysler, was
murdered by two white men who believed Asian workers were hurting
white auto jobs. Chen's killing and the
initially lenient sentencing of his attackers sparked
protests that led to the first federal civil rights trial for an Asian
American.
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Today, it is clear that the consequences of historic attacks on Asian
immigrants persist. In a recent report, STOP AAPI
HATE documented 3,795 hate incidents between March 2020
and February 2021. The majority targeted AAPI
women. Hate incidents are historically underreported, so this
data likely does not capture the true scale of hate attacks. There are
currently over 1.7 million undocumented Asian immigrants in the U.S.,
and AAPI immigrants are deported at a rate three times
higher than immigrants as a whole.
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In the wake of the attack that killed eight Asian women in
the Atlanta area in March, a national movement arose to recognize
and amplify the discrimination and violence that our AAPI family,
friends and neighbors face. Every day, especially during
Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we are reminded of the need to
continue learning more about the history and contributions of AAPI
immigrants. We must work towards justice for our
AAPI family members, friends and neighbors.
The SPLC's Learning for Justice, an initiative that helps teach
K-12 students about race, gender, class and more, has a number of
resources to help caregivers and educators navigate and fight
anti-Asian hate and bias. All resources in the list below are free and
we encourage you to share them.
* Celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
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* Behind the Shield
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* After Atlanta: Teaching About Asian American Identity and
History (This article recommends a number of resources to
learn more about Asian American history and identity and to
share with young people.)
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* We Still Haven't Learned From This
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Sincerely,
The Southern Poverty Law Center
If you, or anyone you know, would like to safely report an incident of
hate to the Southern Poverty Law Center, please do so
here.
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