Rising Against AAPI Hate: Asian American Pacific Islander community
responds to latest attacks
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Esther Schrader | Read the full piece here
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Friend,
Asian Americans have faced an unrelenting barrage of hate since the
COVID-19 pandemic began. Horrific attacks on elderly people, women and
Asian-owned businesses have traumatized communities suffering under a
drumbeat of taunts, harassment and threats.
But a movement is rising in response, and it's personal. Asian
American leaders working to end discrimination and societal inequity
are exposing the hatred by speaking out forcefully about its roots,
creating new ways of tracking racialized attacks and discrimination
and directing concerted efforts to aid victims.
As members of a community that has endured generations of racist
rhetoric, often in pained silence, they are also telling their own
stories. Their hope is that by sharing how their own experiences
shaped their consciousness of racism and led them to chart paths to
help stamp it out, they will increase understanding of a problem with
deep roots in our society.
One such leader is Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern
Poverty Law Center.
The storied organization is a catalyst for racial justice in the South
and beyond to advance the human rights of all people. The SPLC is
responding quickly to this new threat, working with AAPI communities
and organizations, adding its legal and organizing weight to their
efforts to stem the tide of racial hate.
"People are starting to recognize the political power and
opportunity that the Asian American and Pacific Islander community
has," Huang said. "The AAPI community has, to a really
impressive and significant extent, organized to respond to this
crisis. But this crisis is part of a larger challenge of white
supremacy, which is raising its head at this moment. And we're
only going to be effective at countering it in the AAPI community if
we are aligned with all of the other communities who are under threat.
That means creating programs that actually focus on community
resilience and prevention, helping children and families understand
how our civic processes can help them and helping people understand
why hate is so harmful."
In recent interviews, Huang, along with John C. Yang, president and
executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice - AAJC
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, decried the steep rise in hate crimes and bias incidents against
AAPI communities but emphasized the significant ways those communities
have organized, in many ways for the first time, to respond to the
crisis. Across the country, community groups are delivering groceries
to elderly Asian Americans, volunteering to accompany them on errands
to ensure their safety and creating neighborhood watch systems and
support groups.
The efforts come from every quarter of the community. As a case in
point, on March 25 a coalition of Asian American theater artists and
musicians established a fund to disburse car service or taxi fare to
AAPI artists who feel unsafe on New York subways. More lastingly,
Asian American leaders are encouraging political awareness and
engagement in civic life, establishing hotlines and sophisticated
databases to report hate incidents and crimes, and reaching outside
their communities to educate society at large.
Horrific attacks
Just how harmful the hate has become is startling. In January,
Michelle Go
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, a 40-year-old woman, was pushed in front of a New York subway train
to her death. In March, a 67-year-old Asian woman was punched more
than 125 times
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in Yonkers, New York. Earlier the same month, a man punched and
elbowed seven Asian women in the face in a matter of two hours in
Manhattan. And a month earlier, 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee
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was followed into her New York apartment and killed.
The SPLC, the nation's leading organization in monitoring hate
groups, does not track individual acts of hate. But it has given
advice and guidance to organizations that do. One, the Stop AAPI Hate
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coalition, documented almost 11,000 hate incidents against people
identifying as Asian American and Pacific Islander from March 19,
2020, to December 31, 2021.
Another report
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, from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health
Disparities, a division of the National Institutes of Health, found
that members of minority groups were more likely to report instances
of being harassed or threatened than white people during the pandemic
and situations in which other people treated them as though they might
be carrying the disease. People of Asian ethnicity reported the
highest rates of being taunted by racist comments, insults, threats
and name-calling related to COVID-19.
The report found that 30% of that group had experienced such
discrimination, while 44% had seen people act fearful around them.
Huang called the series of comments
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directed against China by former President Donald Trump after the
COVID-19 virus emerged "a very clear instigating factor in the
rise of hate and violence directed against the AAPI community."
"All of those attempts to stigmatize an entire nation and people
for the pandemic that was spreading across the world were embraced by
a lot of his followers and a lot of others who have just been deeply
hurt or concerned by the pandemic," Huang said. "So,
nobody was surprised when these incidents started increasing."
READ MORE
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
The SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond,
working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy,
strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of
all people.
Friend, will you make a gift to help the SPLC fight for
justice and equity in courts and combat white supremacy?
DONATE
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