August 20, 2020- During a sophomore zoom course in Orange County, California, one child said, “I don’t like China or the Chinese because they’re quarantined.”
A Chinese-American woman in elegance heard those words, and then scribbled a handwritten note that her mother posted on Facebook. “It made me unhappy because he’s my friend and I’m Chinese. When you say you don’t like Chinese, you say you don’t love me. I didn’t release this virus. Thank you for being my friend.”
Children have escaped the racism faced by Asian-born Americans since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The Anti-Defamation League has made this and other incidents public on its website. Before schools closed, Asian-American academics were mocked and intimidated by their classmates who accused them of the disease. Now, as schools begin to reopen, academics and advocacy teams hope to fight the stigma and scapegoats related to coronaviruses on campus.
“We’re probably involved in student harassment and how much it can increase dramatically,” says Rita Pin Ahrens, executive director of OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates in Washington, D.C.
In schools, only scholars brausly said they liked the Chinese, but there were also physical attacks. Before Los Angeles public schools closed campuses in mid-March, San Fernando Valley thugs accused a 16-year-old Asian boy of having coronaviruses just because of his race. He was beaten violently enough to send him to the emergency room. At a news convention broadcast by CBSN Los Angeles, Debra Duardo, the superintendent of Los Angeles County schools, warned of the climate of fear. “We will tolerate any kind of intimidation,” he said.
Limin Li, 17, a student in Brooklyn, New York, asked his classmates, “Do you need to move to a rainy market in combination and get a crown?” They think they’re funny,” he says. But in his opinion, “they were micro-aggressions.”
Even after the migration of online elegance, hateful incidents persisted. In April, unknown intruders interrupted the Chinese elegance of a high school held in Zoom in Newton, MA. They bombed the teacher, Lan Lan Sheng Chen, and the academics with several minutes of racist photographs and slurs.
Racism in schools reflects a broader social challenge of coronavirus-related racism that opposes Asians. Russell Jeung, PhD, professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, helped publish “Stop AAPI Hate,” a report to track anti-Asian incidents in the United States. The acronym means Asian-American Pacific Islander.
From March 19 to July 15, they had won 2,373 self-reported incidents, according to spokesman Nicholas Turton. Jeung called the numbers the tip of an iceberg.
Media reports have described others of Asian descent by coughing or spitting, pushing or hitting. In March, a boy from Sam’s Club in Midland, Texas, devised a Burmese circle of relatives spreading the coronavirus and hit it with a knife. A shop worker fought the attacker, saving the circle of family members from life-threatening injuries. The pandemic has revealed chronic currents of racism, according to some experts. “The AAPI network has faced this perpetual stereotype of foreigners: that we don’t belong in this country,” says Pin Ahrens. “It is a constant struggle for our network to be welcomed in this country.”
Given the hostile climate, the Anti-Defamation League has developed an online lesson plan against prejudice, “Coronavirus and Infectious Racism,” for high school and senior students.
“Our anti-prejudice education aims to fight against all prejudice bureaucracy,” says Annie Ortega-Long, los Angeles’ director of regional workplace education for the Anti-Defamation League. “But if we find that there is a genuine desire to deal with something specific, such as targeting other people of Asian or Asian descent, we will focus more on that.”
The stated goal of the lesson plan: “Expand your knowledge of how the coronavirus pandemic increases racism as opposed to others of Chinese or Asian descent and what you can do about it.” He teaches academic concepts such as racism, prejudice and scapegoat. This also explains why the World Health Organization uses the formal and impartial so-called “COVID-19” for the disease and why terms such as “kung flu” and “Chinese virus” can generate an anti-Asian bias. It teaches academics the importance of being allies when they are harassed by Asian peers.
In a video included in the course plan, a high-level school student of Asian-American descent states: “It turns out that since the start of the coronavirus epidemic, schools have been a Petri dish for racism. It’s harmful to normalize behavior like this for other people my age.”
In addition to the “Coronavirus and Infectious Racism” course plan, the ADL plans to provide more anti-prejudice education during the next school year. Whether on campus or online, the organization will work with K-12 students as a component of its “No Place for Hate” school program, says Megan Nevels, deputy director of education who oversees the Los Angeles area initiative. “No Place for Hate” provides instructor education and guidance to academics in developing campaign plans against prejudice adapted to their school’s problems; for example, a student posting a racist message that is going viral.
“Students are very aware of the problems,” Nevels says. “They are very aware of what is happening on their campus, things that teachers are not aware of.”
In the last school year, 1,600 schools across the country participated in the program, Ortega-Long said. In Los Angeles, interest has increased for “There is no place for hate,” according to Nevels. “We are seeing a massive build-up in this region. Currently, schools are detecting that they have coronavirus, the Black Lives Matter movement, and they must be proactive in resolving their disorders on their campuses.”
While Los Angeles will host online courses for now only, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced plans for public schools to conduct hybrid courses on the user and remotely starting septal from September. The city’s Ministry of Education and the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes have published an online COVID-19 anti-bias consultant for educators. It includes many resources and lesson plans, adding “Asian American Stereotypes,” “The Legacy of Chinese Exclusion and Japanese Internment,” “Fighting Online Hate” and “Speak! It responds to bigotry.”
The consultant encourages teachers to incorporate classes into their curriculum. “As educators, we are guilty of creating inclusive spaces for all of our students. As always, it is our duty to exercise empathy and consideration with others who can recognize the price of diversity,” he says.
Bullying or harassment of Asian academics because of their race is just a school problem, but it violates their civil rights, says Jeff Forte, JD, an education lawyer in Shelton, CT. “Parents of Asian descent want to perceive that if their child is bullied at school, they have rights.”
It suggests that parents record any evidence of bullying. “To inde facto on the express facts, the witnesses, the photos, if there has been defamation or written slander, if there has been physical contact that has shown marks or mistreatment.” Parents will then need to file a formal bullying report with the school district, preferably within 24 hours of the incident, Forte said. School districts will need to investigate the incident, provide parents with written results, and then establish safety measures if bullying is confirmed.
In New York, the nonprofit Apex for Youth worked to prepare teens for coronavirus-related racism, said Yaya Yuan, director of education and mentoring programs. Apex for Youth enrolls disadvantaged students, mainly Americans of Chinese origin, with mentors.
In February, when COVID-19 cases began to increase, mentors began to wonder how to respond to anti-Asian racism, adding street harassment and insults. Apex for Youth interviewed a hundred of its high school and higher academics and discovered that part was concerned or involved with anti-Asian racism, and 15% had already experienced an incident, according to Yuan. Many parents were afraid to let their children pass out in public, not only because of the virus, but also because of concern for their physical safety.
While top families faced currency difficulties similar to those of the pandemic, they did not allow their children to remove food boxes or lunch bags from loose systems, Yuan said. “His parents were not going to take credit for these systems because it meant queuing, it meant walking down the street and potentially exposing him not only to the virus, but also to racist comments and violence.”
For other young people and adults, Yuan’s organization has created “Talking About Racism to Young Asian-Americans,” a virtual resource guide. It was about physical and online security and how to respond to racism, but only if the framework makes it safe. A word of advice, for example: “Does the user speak for lack of data or malice? Sometimes sharing facts can open others to a new way of thinking. If you communicate about a position of hate, it makes more sense just go away.
Apex for Youth also allowed academics to express their percentage reports with racism, adding sponsorship of a Zoom convention in May for Asian teens in New York. Some academics left with “action plans” to raise awareness and advocacy through social media, said Shi Yan Liu, 16, a Chinese-American student in Brooklyn who helped organize the convention for her peers.
Like them, he was alarmed through media reports that Asian-born Americans had been attacked against the city’s public transportation system, he said. Although she herself has not experienced racist incidents because she takes refuge in a safe haven in her home, occasional visits to the store make her uncomfortable. “When I pass out, I’m a little paranoid about other people chasing me and my parents. I wonder if they’re chasing us because we’re Asian or if they think we have a coronavirus or maybe they’re just chasing us.”
She is also involved in what will happen when in-person schooling resumes. While Liu says she did not witness racism opposed to Asian academics before the pandemic, she is involved in the next school year, especially after a racist incident at her school in January 2020. A stika, as well as a call to kill all the Jews, were scribbled on a ladder, and a racist slur opposed to that of other black people discovered on the wall of a toilet. Some photographs were posted on social media.
“I’m just afraid that because of this pandemic, there may be more incidents where they target the Asian community,” Liu says.
Although scholars sometimes get along, she says, “I feel like there’s someone who doesn’t have good compatibility and makes the decision that doing something like this would get attention.”
Apex for Youth seeks to help teens like Liu perceive that anti-Asian racism is not about them personally, but it is a component of an older and broader social challenge of racism, Yuan said. “Once the George Floyd Uprising and the Black Lives Matter Uprising began to happen, we also held workshops on Asian-American solidarity with the black network and how it relates to what we’re doing through COVID,” he says.
The Black Lives Matter motion is giving hope, says Li, who participated in a virtual Major Apex for Youth over the protests. “We talked about the Black Lives Matter motion and what it’s like for us to stand in solidarity with other people of color,” he says.
Before its closure, the scholars asked him, “Are you from Wuhan? Do you eat bats?
“I didn’t know how to get rid of them, so I laughed at them. I think that’s the case with a lot of students, because we don’t know how to oppose these problems. That puts me in a very sensitive and uncomfortable situation.
As Asians, he says, “We grew up in an environment where we are told to remain silent. We have been portrayed as comfortable and weak. When faced with disorders such as bullying and microagreression, we are taught to remain silent and speak for ourselves.”
But anti-Asian racism has led to those messages, she says. Like some of his Asian-American friends, he also uses social media, especially Instagram, to combat racism.
At the start of the pandemic, many of his classmates mocked and blamed Asians online, he said. But he’s seen a replacement between them since Floyd’s death and protests. “Now that there’s a total movement for Black Lives Matter, I feel like other people have more knowledge and enlightenment,” he says.
“You can’t isolate a safe organization from people. You can’t say you’re not racist if Black Lives Matter, but you’re a racist as opposed to some other kind of race.”
Annie Ortega-Long, Director of Education, Los Angeles Regional Office, Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Megan Nevels, Assistant Director of Education, Los Angeles Regional Office, Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Nicholas Turton, spokesman for Stop AAPI Hate.
Yaya Yuan, Director of Education and Tutoring Programs, Apex for Youth, New York.
Shi Yan Liu, top student, Brooklyn, NY.
Limin Li, top student, Brooklyn, NY.
Rita Pin Ahrens, Executive Director, OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, Washington, D.C.
Jeff Forte, JD, special education attorney, Shelton, CT.
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