COVID-19 and Asian Cultures

Confronting Racism and Supporting Asian American Communities in the Wake of COVID-19 [External link]

Long before health officials had confirmed the first cases of COVID-19 in the United States, acts of discrimination and xenophobia against Asian Americans were rising rapidly. As the number of confirmed cases increase exponentially, racist hate crimes targeting Asian Americans are also on the rise, escalated by racist language used by public officials and members of the media when discussing COVID-19.

Historical Essay on America: Chinese as Medical Scapegoats 1870-1900 [External link]

Chinese and Chinese-Americans in San Francisco were scapegoated for all epidemic outbreaks throughout the mid-late 19th and early 20th century. To white San Franciscans, Chinatown represented a dangerous space of emergence for both disease and immorality, and the neighborhood was consequently targeted by health officials. Public health was also utilized as a reason to restrict Chinese immigration.

How the Coronavirus is Surfacing America’s Deep-Seated Anti-Asian Biases [External link]

Harassment toward Asian Americans has spiked in 2020: According to Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that’s been tracking these reports,over 2,800 incidents were documented in 2020. And more recently, a wave of violent attacks against elderly people has renewed focus on this issue.

700 Anti-Asian Hate Incidents Reported in the Bay Area During the Pandemic [External link]

A tally released in February, 2021 from the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center — a project based out of San Francisco State University that asks members of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities across the nation to self-report acts of hate and discrimination — found that there have been at least 2,808 incidents of anti-Asian hate in the U.S. since the pandemic began.
Scroll to Top