May 28, 2020 11:37 PM
(This post was last modified: May 29, 2020 04:13 PM by C C.)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52714804
EXCERPTS: Attacks on East Asian people living in the US have shot up during the pandemic, revealing an uncomfortable truth about American identity. [...] Authorities in New York City and Los Angeles say that hate incidents against people of Asian descent have increased, while a reporting centre run by advocacy groups and San Francisco State University says it received over 1,700 reports of coronavirus-related discrimination from at least 45 US states since it launched in March. Police in at least 13 states, including Texas, Washington, New Jersey, Minnesota and New Mexico, have also responded to reported hate incidents.
Critics say those at the very top have made things worse - both President Donald Trump, and Democratic hopeful Joe Biden have been accused of fuelling anti-Asian sentiment to varying degrees with language they've used while talking about China's role in the outbreak. And for many Asian Americans, it can feel as though, in addition to being targeted, their identity as Americans is being attacked.
[...] Statistics on Anti-Asian incidents in the US:
• One third of people surveyed said they had witnessed someone blaming Asian people for the pandemic
• 1,710 incidents reported to STOP AAPI HATE - 15% of those cases involved physical assault or being coughed on or spat at
• More than 100 individual incidents reported in the media
• 133 incidents of anti-Asian discrimination recorded by the New York City Commission on Human Rights - compared to 11 in the same period last year. The commission has intervened in 91 cases.
• 14 Asian-bias hate crimes investigated by police in New York
• More than 100 alleged hate incidents reported to civic groups and police departments in Los Angeles
• Six reports of bias incidents reported to police in Seattle
• There has been a surge in anti-Asian hate on extremist web communities
(Sources: Ipsos, STOP AAPI HATE, New York City Commission on Human Rights, New York City Police, Los Angeles County Commission on Human Rights, Seattle Police, Network Contagion Research Institute, BBC research)
[...] The virus originated from Wuhan, China, and much of President Trump's rhetoric has focused on what he calls the country's failings to contain the outbreak. Earlier this year, he regularly referred to the coronavirus as the "Chinese virus" - a term that critics said did not distinguish between China, the Chinese government, and people of Chinese ethnicity. He later called for Asian Americans to be protected, saying "the spreading of the virus is not their fault in any way shape or form". But that hasn't stopped Chinese Americans from being blamed - or other East Asians from being targeted.
Prof Jeung says about 40% of the reports he received were from ethnic Chinese people - but a majority of cases were from people of other East Asian ethnicities. "That's an example of racial profiling - that 'if he looks Chinese, he gets attacked'."
[...] Prof Jeung says face masks can be a lose-lose situation for Asians when it comes to discrimination, because "if they wear a mask, they are suspected of being infected - and if they don't wear a mask, they're suspected of being infected but negligent".
It's not just in the US either - there have been several high profile cases of physical attacks against East Asians in the UK and in Canada. Vancouver's police department has said that 20 anti-Asian hate crimes have been reported in 2020 so far.
Meanwhile, in China, there has been discrimination of African residents - with reports of people being forced into quarantine, and a McDonald's barring African people from entering. Many say they have been singled out for multiple Covid-19 tests, or been evicted, following online rumours that two Nigerians who had tested positive for the virus escaped. "I think it is very consistent with past times of crisis, where typically one group is scapegoated," says Carmelyn P. Malalis, head of the New York City Commission on Human Rights. She cites the HIV/Aids crisis and Ebola as past examples.
In the US, there has been "underlying anti-Asian discrimination" even before the pandemic, but little awareness of it, because there are typically lower levels of reporting, and "people often think of racism as a black-white thing, not realising that racism exists in many forms," she adds.
Asians in the US come from a wide range of ethnicities, countries and backgrounds, and often have different political beliefs and identities. Some 20 million US residents - or about 6% of the US population - are Asian, according to census data. The figure includes Asian Americans, as well as people from South and East Asia living, studying or working in the US.
Image copyright Kimberly Ha. Some Asian residents, such as Bhutanese Americans, are more likely to be immigrants born abroad, while others, such as Japanese Americans, are most likely to come from families that have been in the US for generations.
About three million tourists from China alone visit the US each year. But race-based prejudice against Asians in the US is indiscriminate, whether one identifies as Asian American, hopes to become American, or is simply visiting. Asian Americans have described some common experiences - including that they've been seen as "perpetual foreigners" even before the pandemic.
"Race, like many social categories, [is a] thing that says you're part of this category [that is] plainly visible for everybody to see," says Debbie Ma, a psychology professor at California State University, Northridge. "Because of that," she adds, "it's very easy to quickly label and assign stereotypes and associations with those categories" - that an East Asian person is foreign, even if they are not, for example.
A 2008 study she co-authored found that respondents - US university participants of various racial backgrounds and ages - were more likely to implicitly think of Kate Winslet, the English actress, as "American", than Lucy Liu, the New York-born star of Chinese heritage.
Matt (not his real name) says he is regularly told "you speak great English", and asked where he is actually from, even when he explains he was born in the US. Meanwhile, Prof Jeung says: "Even though my family's been in the US for five generations, I'm still seen as a foreigner." (MORE - details)
EXCERPTS: Attacks on East Asian people living in the US have shot up during the pandemic, revealing an uncomfortable truth about American identity. [...] Authorities in New York City and Los Angeles say that hate incidents against people of Asian descent have increased, while a reporting centre run by advocacy groups and San Francisco State University says it received over 1,700 reports of coronavirus-related discrimination from at least 45 US states since it launched in March. Police in at least 13 states, including Texas, Washington, New Jersey, Minnesota and New Mexico, have also responded to reported hate incidents.
Critics say those at the very top have made things worse - both President Donald Trump, and Democratic hopeful Joe Biden have been accused of fuelling anti-Asian sentiment to varying degrees with language they've used while talking about China's role in the outbreak. And for many Asian Americans, it can feel as though, in addition to being targeted, their identity as Americans is being attacked.
[...] Statistics on Anti-Asian incidents in the US:
• One third of people surveyed said they had witnessed someone blaming Asian people for the pandemic
• 1,710 incidents reported to STOP AAPI HATE - 15% of those cases involved physical assault or being coughed on or spat at
• More than 100 individual incidents reported in the media
• 133 incidents of anti-Asian discrimination recorded by the New York City Commission on Human Rights - compared to 11 in the same period last year. The commission has intervened in 91 cases.
• 14 Asian-bias hate crimes investigated by police in New York
• More than 100 alleged hate incidents reported to civic groups and police departments in Los Angeles
• Six reports of bias incidents reported to police in Seattle
• There has been a surge in anti-Asian hate on extremist web communities
(Sources: Ipsos, STOP AAPI HATE, New York City Commission on Human Rights, New York City Police, Los Angeles County Commission on Human Rights, Seattle Police, Network Contagion Research Institute, BBC research)
[...] The virus originated from Wuhan, China, and much of President Trump's rhetoric has focused on what he calls the country's failings to contain the outbreak. Earlier this year, he regularly referred to the coronavirus as the "Chinese virus" - a term that critics said did not distinguish between China, the Chinese government, and people of Chinese ethnicity. He later called for Asian Americans to be protected, saying "the spreading of the virus is not their fault in any way shape or form". But that hasn't stopped Chinese Americans from being blamed - or other East Asians from being targeted.
Prof Jeung says about 40% of the reports he received were from ethnic Chinese people - but a majority of cases were from people of other East Asian ethnicities. "That's an example of racial profiling - that 'if he looks Chinese, he gets attacked'."
[...] Prof Jeung says face masks can be a lose-lose situation for Asians when it comes to discrimination, because "if they wear a mask, they are suspected of being infected - and if they don't wear a mask, they're suspected of being infected but negligent".
It's not just in the US either - there have been several high profile cases of physical attacks against East Asians in the UK and in Canada. Vancouver's police department has said that 20 anti-Asian hate crimes have been reported in 2020 so far.
Meanwhile, in China, there has been discrimination of African residents - with reports of people being forced into quarantine, and a McDonald's barring African people from entering. Many say they have been singled out for multiple Covid-19 tests, or been evicted, following online rumours that two Nigerians who had tested positive for the virus escaped. "I think it is very consistent with past times of crisis, where typically one group is scapegoated," says Carmelyn P. Malalis, head of the New York City Commission on Human Rights. She cites the HIV/Aids crisis and Ebola as past examples.
In the US, there has been "underlying anti-Asian discrimination" even before the pandemic, but little awareness of it, because there are typically lower levels of reporting, and "people often think of racism as a black-white thing, not realising that racism exists in many forms," she adds.
Asians in the US come from a wide range of ethnicities, countries and backgrounds, and often have different political beliefs and identities. Some 20 million US residents - or about 6% of the US population - are Asian, according to census data. The figure includes Asian Americans, as well as people from South and East Asia living, studying or working in the US.
Image copyright Kimberly Ha. Some Asian residents, such as Bhutanese Americans, are more likely to be immigrants born abroad, while others, such as Japanese Americans, are most likely to come from families that have been in the US for generations.
About three million tourists from China alone visit the US each year. But race-based prejudice against Asians in the US is indiscriminate, whether one identifies as Asian American, hopes to become American, or is simply visiting. Asian Americans have described some common experiences - including that they've been seen as "perpetual foreigners" even before the pandemic.
"Race, like many social categories, [is a] thing that says you're part of this category [that is] plainly visible for everybody to see," says Debbie Ma, a psychology professor at California State University, Northridge. "Because of that," she adds, "it's very easy to quickly label and assign stereotypes and associations with those categories" - that an East Asian person is foreign, even if they are not, for example.
A 2008 study she co-authored found that respondents - US university participants of various racial backgrounds and ages - were more likely to implicitly think of Kate Winslet, the English actress, as "American", than Lucy Liu, the New York-born star of Chinese heritage.
Matt (not his real name) says he is regularly told "you speak great English", and asked where he is actually from, even when he explains he was born in the US. Meanwhile, Prof Jeung says: "Even though my family's been in the US for five generations, I'm still seen as a foreigner." (MORE - details)