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. 

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.  

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.

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.  

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.  

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.  

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
• Behind the Shield
• 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.)
• We Still Haven’t Learned From This 

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.