On March 16, a series of mass shootings in Atlanta tragically killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women. The incident sparked a wave of outrage and attention to the rise of violence against people of Asian ancestry, ranging from verbal attacks to physical assault, since the outbreak of COVID-19. The New York Police Department reported that in 2020, anti-Asian hate crime increased nearly ninefold. A similar trend was found in the United Kingdom, where hate crimes against East and South East Asian communities reportedly increased by 300%. In times of national crises, systematic prejudices erupt, especially when those sentiments are normalized through scapegoating.

Exactly a year before the Atlanta shooting, former U.S. president Donald Trump blamed the Chinese for the pandemic and called COVID-19 the “Kung flu” at the Tulsa rally. When a prominent politician uses racist language and legitimizes bias, people are made to feel that their bigotry is justified. As Brendan Lantz — a criminology scholar at Florida State University who researches hate and bias crimes — said, “hate crime reflects the power dynamics of a society.” The recent surge in violence against Asians has deeper roots than COVID-19. It stems from a long history of institutionalized racism against Asians in America.

One of the worst lynchings in U.S. history was the 1871 Chinese Massacre, where a mob attacked and murdered 19 people of Chinese background in Los Angeles. Despite the egregious nature of the crime, local newspapers did not cover it, and all charges were dropped on a technicality. The first federal restrictive immigration law in the U.S. was the Page Act, introduced in 1875 to “end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women”. The law imprinted a misogynistic and hypersexualized view of Asian women. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act suspended Chinese immigration for ten years and declared Chinese immigrants ineligible for naturalization. Even though Chinese composed only 0.002% of the U.S. population at that time, many Americans attributed declining wages and economic downturn to the influx of Chinese workers.  During World War II, more than 120,000 people of Japanese origin were forcibly relocated and incarcerated. Asians in America have often been oppressed and ostracized as perpetual foreigners.

Under the false myth of the “model minority” that does not protest, accepts their status, and works hard, the voices of many Asians have been silenced. Asian, a term that is used by the U.S. Census Bureau to refer to “people having origins of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent”, is one of the most polarized groups. Categorizing Asians as one monolithic group can be misleading because the experiences of Asians of different ethnic and socioeconomic groups vary drastically. Yet, racial discrimination affects all Asians, and a united front is needed to fight against hatred and ignorance. 

The tragic shooting in Atlanta and the recent rise in violence against Asians has shown the world how prejudice against marginalized groups can quickly turn into hate crimes once it becomes politically convenient to justify discrimination. In order to reduce racial tensions, parameters and punishments for hate crimes must be re-evaluated, and the public should become more aware and avoidant of microaggressions. Model minority is a concept developed to perpetuate racial hierarchy by aggravating tensions between minority groups. Stereotyping, even positive ones, should be abandoned because it denigrates the success of hardworking individuals and silences the voice of those struggling. Casual and overtly racist jokes about Asians are prevalent in Hollywood, and many think that it is okay to say them because Asians are not really an “oppressed minority”. The truth is, Asians are indeed an oppressed minority group, and racist jokes are simply not funny. Asians are the most rapidly growing minority group in the U.S., as many immigrate in search of the American dream. But America today is far from the land of the free of their imagination. All movements aimed at racial justice, including the “Stop the Asian Hate” and “Black Lives Matter” movements must go on, and they should not end as virtue signaling on social media. As global citizens, we must educate ourselves on the history of racial discrimination and seek ways to build not a color blind, but a color brave society. We have to acknowledge that racial disparity impacts our experiences and become open to having candid conversations about race.