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.
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.
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.
The novel coronavirus pandemic has Americans across the country fearful for their personal health and well-being, but for Asian Americans, the virus has stirred up another threat: a wave of verbal and physical attacks.
Article about a study that backs up what has already been documented anecdotally in the last few months: The coronavirus pandemic has coincided with a surge in Sinophobic, or anti-Chinese, sentiments – especially online.
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.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a rise of anti-Asian hate incidents that has led to fewer customers for Asian-run businesses and a surge in violence as well. But this is just another chapter in a long timeline of anti-Asian bigotry that spans centuries of U.S. history.