We Need to Talk About Asian Hate

Since the start of the pandemic, there was an alarming rise in violent attacks and abuse against the Asian community. Wrongly, some people blame Asians for the spread of Covid-19 and our current situation.

From verbal to physical harassment, there have been a large number of hate crimes against Asian people reported recently across the globe. The advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate received more than 3,800 reports of hate incidents directed at Asian Americans in the United States only last year. Women accounted for more than half of those reports, an estimate of 68%.

Verbal harassment and shunning are the most common forms of discrimination, respectively with 68% and20.5%. Physical violence represents11.1% of all incidents. Surprisingly, over a third of these incidents happened in the business environment. Only in 2021, 503 incidents were reported.

Source: BBC

If you haven’t heard about them, some of the recent incidents reported in the media include:

• An elderly Thai immigrant died after being violently shoved to the ground
• A 91-year-old senior was shoved to the pavement from behind.
• An 89-year-old Chinese woman was slapped and set on fire
• A 61-year-old Filipino was cut in the face with a box cutter.
• Asian American restaurant employees in New York City told the New York Times they now always go home early for fear of violence and harassment.
• An Asian American family was verbally attacked with racist slurs by a Trump-supporting tech executive.
• Several Asian Americans reported they had rocks thrown at their houses.

…and many more.

Even though it got worse during the pandemic, Asian-hate is historic and it exists in our society for a while. Asians are often victims of a set of stereotypes, such as:

• Asians “work hard without complaint”
• Asians are good at math
• Asians all “look the same”
• Asian men are often “effeminate or asexual”
• Asian women are hypersexualised

Asians suffer from the “model minority” stereotype, meaning that Asians are a high-achieving racial minority that has entered our society through hard work and obedience. Richard Lee, a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, says that:

“Elevating Asian Americans as a model minority essentially absolved white systems from taking real accountability for the inequities they’ve created.”

So What You Can Do?

We all can do our part to stop Asian hate and mitigate the consequences of this harmful behaviour.

• Raise awareness of anti-Asian incidents.
• Speak up when you hear microaggressions and address racist jokes or behaviour with your friends, family and coworkers.
• Diversify your network with more Asian people
• Study, get informed and understand the origins and differences within the Asia community