Last month in California, a Japanese merchant discovered a note on the door of his special kitchen utensils containing racial slurs and a bomb threat.
The message included the lines: “This is America!We don’t want anything you sell” and “Go back to Japan, monkey!”
Police are investigating hate crimes.
Professor Russell Jeung, chair of the Department of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, is tracking the rise of racism similar to the pandemic. He helped create an initiative called Stop AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) Hate in March. The site records self-reported racist incidents and had collected more than 2,000 testimonies as of early June.
Jeung says there are 3 major types of incidents: verbal harassment, physical assault and civil rights violations, adding discrimination in service or denial of service in hotels and restaurants.
The website’s team noticed an avalanche of reports after U. S. President Donald Trump began employing the term “Chinese virus. “Trump tweeted that Asian Americans are not to blame for the virus, but recently described it as a “kung flu. “Trump seeks to divert attention from his handling of the pandemic.
Jeung says other people have begun to associate the virus with ethnic Chinese and worries that as businesses reopen in the U. S. it will become more likely to reopen. As more Asian Americans become targets.
“People are angry now that they’ve been in lockdown for so long, that the pandemic is still raging, and that Trump is still mocking Asians,” she said.
“I know that a giant component of the Asian-American network is afraid to go back to general interactions with the network. People are worried about sending their young people back to school. “
Anti-Asian sentiment is deeply rooted in American history, and experts see a parallel with the “yellow peril” ideology that led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. During World War II, Japanese-Americans were forced into internment camps. The September 11 terrorist attacks were harassed by both South Asian Americans and American Muslims.
“If you take a look at American history, ever since Asian Americans came here, there have been failures of xenophobia and systemic racism, and in times of crisis, those failures erupt like an earthquake,” Tajima-Peña said. . Professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Professor Tajima-Peña, who is also a filmmaker, says the existing environment is reminiscent of the events surrounding an infamous murder in 1982.
Vincent Chin was a 27-year-old Chinese-American who was beaten to death by two white autoworkers in Detroit, Michigan. At the time, the good fortune of Japanese automakers was blamed for the decline of the American auto industry. Japanese, accused of stealing local jobs and fatally attacked with a baseball bat. His attackers negotiated the fees and were sentenced to 3 years of probation and a $3,000 fine. The lenient sentence sparked a protest movement among Asian Americans.
Tajima-Peña, an Oscar nominee for her documentary on Chin’s murder, says racism “is ongoing in America. It’s ingrained in society. “
Jeung says many Asian-American communities are disproportionately affected, such as those working in meatpacking plants and other seniors living in nursing homes, but find themselves racially profiled as threats, fostering an understanding that didn’t exist before.
“Asian Americans can recognize that other teams also present themselves as threats and dangers, and that’s why we stand in solidarity to address that,” he said.
Jeung says the Black Lives Matter motion has brought the racism factor to the forefront and Asian Americans are trying to figure out what their role is.
“Are they part of the challenge or part of the solution?They will have to confront their own racism, but they will also have to work to dismantle a racist system. “
Some young Asian-Americans have created a social media campaign called “Wash the Hate,” designed to raise awareness about the virus and the intolerance it fosters. It features videos of other people washing their hands while sharing private stories about the effect. of the coronavirus in their lives. It attracted help from Asian-American actors and fashion moguls.
Professor Tajima-Peña says the coronavirus is something of a turning point in race relations and believes it will affect the November vote.
She says it’s now transparent to just hunt on the streets. “You see young Asian Americans marching alongside African-Americans, Latinos and young white Americans. You see this diversity of young Americans who are angry and need justice and equality. “
“Everything that’s happening right now with Asians for Black Lives Matter and fighting anti-Asian sentiment and attacks on Asians with the coronavirus, it angers other people, it makes other people move, it energizes other people. And that’s fine to push the elections forward,” he said.