A Brief History of Anti-Asian Hate

Covid has sparked a flame of uncertainty in all of us. That constant feeling of unease and anxiety has been destroying this past year. However, those feelings have unfairly been taken out on Asian Americans.

There has been a steady rise in Asian hate crimes since the coronavirus. Since the coronavirus originated from China, many Americans have used that as an excuse to assault and discriminate against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

One of the most recent is the shooting at a nail salon in Atlanta. A white man named Robert Aaron Long is the suspect and has been charged with murder. Eight women were killed in total, with four women at the first spa - Hyun Jung Grant, Soon Chung Park, Suncha Kim, and Yong Ae Yu. Four more were killed in Cherokee County, Xiaojie Tan, Dayou Feng, Delaina Ashley Yaun, and Paul Andre Michals.

In addition to the Atlanta shooting, there have been many other Asian Hate Crimes including, an 89-year-old Chinese woman who was set on fire in New York, a 61-year-old Filipino American whose face was slashed with a box cutter in a New York Subway, and “a grieving family who received a hateful letter on the day of their father's funeral, telling them to ‘pack [their] bags and go back to your country where you belong’”. According to Stop AAPI Hate, an organization dedicated to stopping hate against Asian American and Pacific Islanders, there have been 3,795 incidents from March 19, 2020, to Feb. 28, 2021. Stop AAPI has said that that amount is "only a fraction of the number of hate incidents that actually occur, but it does show how vulnerable Asian Americans are to discrimination and the types of discrimination they face."

Discrimination against Asian Americans isn’t new. In response to the influx of Chinese immigrants in the 1800s, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned Chinese immigration for nearly 10 years. In addition, it also declared people of Chinese descent ineligible for obtaining citizenship through naturalization. In 1902, Chinese immigration was made permanently illegal. Only after the Magnuson Act in 1943 were Chinese immigrants able to become citizens.

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an order that incarcerated thousands of Japanese Americans and put them in internment camps during world war II. The reason for this was suspicions of espionage since Japan was one of the Axis Powers during WWII, even though there were no laws imposed on Americans of Italian and German descent.

The Chinese massacre of 1871 is yet another example. In a conflict between two rival Chinese gang leaders, a white man was accidentally shot when he tried to intervene. In response, a mob of 500 white men began shooting and killing every Chinese man they could find, regardless of their involvement in the shooting. They ended up killing 17 Chinese men, only one of which was actually involved in the previous incident. Several men were convicted for the massacre, but only one man served time.

Now, we have a new chapter in Asian violence, the Atlanta shootings, and the surge of hate crimes against Asian Americans due to the coronavirus. These aren’t the first, and they most likely won’t be the last. However, Americans can try and bridge the gap of racial differences between Asian Americans. Hopefully one day we will be able to ensure true equality between all the citizens of the United States of America.