Anti-Asian Hate Crimes Increase, Must Stop

On March 16, eight people were killed in Atlanta by an angry man wielding a gun. Six of those people were of Asian descent. This is not a coincidence. 

Experts have been warning the public of this grim reality since the early 1980s but it appears that in the past year, we have taken these warnings with a grain of salt and thrown them over our shoulders. About 40 years ago, the national director of the Japanese American Citizens League Ron Wakabayashi asked members of the civil rights group to send in every newspaper clipping they found that described an anti-Asian hate crime. 

By the end of the social experiment, Wakabayashi had a collection of nearly one thousand newspaper clippings. 

 “Hate crimes were just surfacing as a concept,” Wakabayashi recounted. As a concept, the idea of Asian Americans being targeted for their racial background was relatively new, especially to white Americans, who had previously been living comfortably in perfect ignorance. But now, they were being forced to open their eyes not only to the privilege they were so happily living with, but also to the disadvantage their peers were living with because of their ignorance. It made a lot of people uncomfortable, to say the least. Enough so for them to turn a blind eye and let an epidemic plague our country for decades. Now, the children and grandchildren of these people are watching the consequences of this ignorance take place in real time. Only this time, nobody can afford to be silent.

In March and April of 2020 alone, there were more anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States than in the previous four years combined. Let that sink in. In the span of two months, more people were abused and discriminated against for the color of their skin than the previous four years combined. All of this came in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, an international catastrophe that the ignorant have unsurprisingly pinned on China. Wuhan, China, to be exact. All because Covid was discovered in a Chinese lab. Since then, Asian people have become the personal punching bag of bigots all around the world who can not accept that they may also have a hand in the spread of Covid-19. After all, they are the ones who refuse to wear a mask. 

Racism, unfortunately, has become a staple in the American experience. People and families who have lived here for generations, people who were born on American soil, are now being treated as second class citizens by their neighbors and no amount of excuses can justify the collective trauma this has undoubtedly caused for the Asian community. Nor can any amount of excuses allow us to look past the behavior of our peers who are actively harming the Asian community. 

It is time that we as a nation stop tolerating hate and allowing it to hide behind the guise of an opinion or a political stance. Hate is hate, no matter how much red, white and blue you paint over it.