Hate Talk Escalates to Violence: #USvsHate Condemns the Spike in Anti-Asian Racism
Author: Minhtuyen Mai, Mica Pollock, Mariko Yoshisato and #USvsHate team
#USvsHate. “Hate Talk Escalates to Violence: #USvsHate Condemns the Spike in Anti-Asian Racism.” Medium, NWP Write Now, 29 Mar. 2021, writenow.nwp.org/hate-talk-escalates-to-violence-usvshate-condemns-the-spike-in-anti-asian-racism-ea04fbf4ebc4.
The news of yesterday’s violence shook us to our core — and it’s part of a wave of incidents that demand our attention and explicit rejection.
On March 16, another young white man murdered people, mostly Asian women, in a spree of shootings across spas in Atlanta, Georgia. We don’t have time to debate this individual’s “intentions.” We all need to condemn and refuse a broad national pattern of spiking anti-Asian violence. Reports on specific anti-Asian hate crimes tripled from 49 to 122 last year, according to The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at CSU San Bernardino. Stop AAPI Hate has reported that Asian Americans have been targets of over 3,800 hate incidents nationwide over the past year, with over 1,600 in California.
Analysts link this spike both to centuries of anti-Asian racism framing Asian Americans as the perpetual foreigner, and to more recent bigotry falsely blaming Asians and Asian Americans for the COVID-19 pandemic. Other deep strains perpetuate a myth that Asian Americans are the “model minority,” ignoring needs specifically from low-income and refugee communities. Anti-Asian bigotry has most recently been repeated by adults at the highest levels of power. And the nation’s youth are listening.
But the nation’s youth are also resisting this wave of hate. Young people have been lifting their voices in #USvsHate and sounding the alarm since last spring. They knew that anti-Asian rhetoric would spiral into violence, and it has. And they’ve spoken up loudly against this.
Here are a few examples in chronological order.
At UC San Diego, undergraduate student Aimee Lin offered this perspective a year ago, at the start of the pandemic in winter 2020. Her message was selected as a contest winner of #USvsHate in higher education:
“With all the news that is circulating about the novel Coronavirus, it is easy for people to fall back into blaming others for ‘causing’ this disease. The virus was not caused by Chinese people or any person of Asian descent. Viruses exist in nature, constantly evolving and mutating so this virus outbreak was simply an act of nature. News outlets report on the rising cases of Coronavirus but what they aren’t reporting, and what is growing even more rapid than the virus itself, is the hate that is spreading. Original artwork is by Luca D’Urbino from the article in The Economist.”
Tenth grader Niall created this winning anti-hate message in spring 2020. From New Jersey, Niall explained:
“I chose this because I saw a video of an Asian man getting abused for being Asian. People were yelling at him BECAUSE of this pandemic and I found it absolutely unfair and absolutely disgusting. I don’t think added incidents of racism will change the course of this pandemic. It only makes matters worse, so I thought it had to be put out there and designed my message to show that!”
Eleventh grader Anya explained some of the powerful thinking behind her powerful spoken word message, made in spring 2020:
“The Coronavirus pandemic is reminding the Asian American community that their belonging is conditional. One moment we were Americans, the next we were contagious foreigners. Asian Americans have tirelessly persisted through oppression for years in the forms of alienization, otherization, discrimination, and racism, yet our struggle is overlooked and not acknowledged. Damaging stereotypes such as the model minority myth have caused Asian American struggles to be invalidated and unnoticed. Chinese Americans have historically struggled for their place in society ever since the Chinese Exclusion Act which was written to prevent Chinese Americans from succeeding. The anti-Chinese hate sentiment has since then continued to grow and is still reflected in modern day society. Because Asians are socially viewed as a “fake” minority, due to the model minority myth, the racism the community is currently facing is downplayed and not taken seriously. Growing up as a mixed Chinese and White individual, I have been able to see both sides of the community. The Chinese in my blood will always be seen as impurifying my Whiteness and our society has stripped me of having a mixed identity. As a mixed White and Chinese American, I have seen how ignorantly embedded Asian American hate is in our society and its values.”
And finally, tenth grader Olivia produced her message (above) in our own region of San Diego just recently, in winter 2020. Her message sought to highlight the hate she’s experienced as an Asian American regarding the COVID-19 pandemic — and the awareness she wants others to have regarding anti-Asian racism and xenophobia. She writes,
”I chose this specific anti-hate message because I’m an Asian, who is not Chinese but has been accused of having the virus just because I am Asian. This experience has shown me how dull people’s minds can be and I feel like I should encourage people to understand how stereotyping Asians is racist. Degrading Asians because of their race is wrong and no one would want it done to them.”
There are more examples of youth voices on our #USvsHate Winning Messages page.
We stand in solidarity with all the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in this nation as they heal from this trauma. And more than that, we proactively reject hate and racism.
In #USvsHate, we’re clear that if we don’t proactively refuse hate with young people of all ages in schools — from pre-Kindergarten through higher education — young people will be radicalized by it outside of school. Hate targeting any group eventually threatens us all. Most recently, we’ve seen white young adults target and shoot Latinx people in Texas, Black people and allies in Wisconsin, and Jews in San Diego. Hate talk escalates to violence.
This nation continues to normalize behavior that treats groups as inferior and unwelcome. At #USvsHate, we insist instead that all be treated as equally valuable. We seek to drown out hate with a wave of anti-hate activity. Join us.
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Check out this lesson from our #USvsHate LESSONS PAGE for the deeper history:
The Legacies of Chinese Exclusion (Facing History)
- Level: 9 and up, also a good read for educators
- Time Required: multiple lessons included, ideally taught in sequence
- Materials: film links and handouts included
- Highlight: Helps explore universal themes of identity and belonging through particular histories of racism. May 2018 marks the 136th anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first law to restrict US immigration on the basis of race. How has the history of Chinese exclusion shaped enduring attitudes about difference, citizenship, and American identity? What can antiracist inclusion look like today?
Learning for Justice has more resources on addressing anti-Asian bias.
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