Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, anti-Asian hate crimes and violence have spiked across the United States.
Those who follow Asian American news outlets have been aware of this trend for months now. Reports of Asians being verbally harassed, spit on, beaten and killed have become routine since the summer.
While the perpetrators of these crimes are individually responsible for their actions, there’s a more interesting, underlying question: Where is the impetus to commit such transgressions coming from?
Some blame politicians — namely, former President Donald Trump — for hate-mongering and using phrases such as “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.”
This is not the first time Trump has made racist comments toward Asians. During his 2016 campaign, he impersonated Asian negotiators by saying “we want deal” in an Asian accent.
Racism never got old for Trump, and apparently the trope of blaming foreigners for bringing diseases has not gotten old for many Americans either. The only problem is that Asian Americans are just that: Americans.
The current situation proves the prevalence of the idea that Asians are perpetual foreigners in this country. Whether we are born here or not, we are more foreign than our white counterparts.
However, the trouble with talking about discrimination against Asian Americans is that many think acts of anti-Asian racism are just blips on the radar rather than products of decades and centuries of systemic racism.
Anti-Asian immigration laws that were on the books until the mid-1960s are not relics of the past. Those laws have an impact on people today, the same way Jim Crow laws do — though to differing degrees. The passage of time does not automatically eliminate the pernicious effects of racist laws, even if some members of a community are able to overcome racism and achieve financial success.
Part of the reason some might think Asians do not experience tangible racism is because Asian Americans, on average, earn higher incomes than every other racial group in the United States, including white people.
But this statistic doesn’t match up with reality. A higher average household income covers up the fact that Asian seniors are more likely to live in poverty than the average senior American.
This fact makes attacks on elderly Asian Americans, who are less able to defend themselves, even more wrong and disturbing. The last thing an old, impoverished person needs is an injury that not only causes them trauma, but also requires them to pay a large health insurance deductible.
However, these vicious attacks — which include elderly people being shoved to the pavement — have brought about solutions that do not involve increased policing. In parts of the United States, people are volunteering to escort elderly Asians to protect them from harm.
I expect that elders with an escort will be safe, seeing as the cowards who perpetrate these crimes seem to prefer attacking the vulnerable.
I will not demand people become one of these escorts. I realize people have different priorities, and volunteering to be someone’s protection, especially when that person is a target, can pose a threat to one’s own safety.
However, I ask for people to open their minds. I ask that people question why Asian Americans are seen as perpetual foreigners in this country and ask themselves if they see an Asian person born in the United States as less American than a white person born here.
I ask for people to think of anti-Asian discrimination not as an anomaly but as a pattern.
This spike in hate crimes cannot be solved until the root — anti-Asian racism — is recognized for the systemic problem that it is. These crimes start from prejudice, and prejudice cannot entirely be pinned on the hateful rhetoric of irresponsible politicians.
The same prejudice that limits an Asian American person’s ability to buy a home in this country also causes someone to injure an elderly Asian so badly that they need stitches. The two forms of racism are not coincidental — they are connected.
