The recent coronavirus pandemic has set off an onslaught of attacks on members of the Asian American-Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. Donald Trump’s previous rhetoric was the impetus for these events, speaking of the coronavirus as “the China virus,” sparking anti-Asian hate on social media and in the streets. On March 16, 2021, 21 year old Robert Aaron Long killed eight people from three different spas in Atlanta. Most of the victims were Asian women. The victims of the shooting were 1. Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez, 33; 2. Paul Andre Michels, 54; 3. Xiaojie Tan, 49; 4. Daoyou Feng, 44; 5. Hyun Jung Grant, 51; 6. Soon C. Park, 74; 7. Suncha Kim, 69; 8. Yong A. Yue, 63; and a ninth person named Elcias R. Hernandez-Ortiz, 30, who was shot and injured in the attack but thankfully not killed. Four people were killed and one was injured at Young’s Asian Massage in Acworth, Georgia, while the remaining four were killed in Atlanta at Gold Spa and Aromatherapy Spa.

 

Long claimed he suffered from a sex addiction, from which he was being treated for at an evangelical treatment center, named HopeQuest, in Acworth, Georgia, and that the massage spas that he targeted were places of temptation for him that must be eliminated. After the attacks, Robert Long was arrested south of Atlanta as he was attempting to travel to Florida next and carry out more murders at spas there. In response to the tragic violence, President Joe Biden has advised that Congress pass the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act which would fast-track the federal government’s response to the increase in hate crimes seen during the pandemic, uphold government efforts to improve hate crime reporting, and make hate crime information accessible to Asian American communities. KTVU Fox 2 News reported that an 84-year old Thai man named Vicha Ratanapakdee was killed in an unprovoked attack in San Francisco by 19-year old Antoine Watson who knocked him to the ground using full body force on January 28, 2021.

 

Not only has the United States experienced a surge in violence against the AAPI community, there has been a sharp rise in anti-Asian hate crimes around the world as well. Canada has seen a rise in crime against Asian Americans with over 600 reported incidents of anti-Asian racism, being higher than the United States. Most incidents involved some sort of verbal harassment (racial slurs, threats, swearing), with women being impacted the most, making up 60% of all incidents reported. Almost 30% of incidents were assaults (targeted coughing, spitting, physical violence). The New Zealand Human Rights Commission reported that 54% of Chinese participants faced discrimination since the start of the pandemic and 55% of Māori respondents reported discrimination since the beginning of the pandemic. Police data from the United Kingdom described a 300% rise in hate crimes aimed at Chinese, East, and South East Asians (ESEA) in Quarter 1 of 2020 as opposed to the same time period in 2018 and 2019. Chinese delivery workers revealed accounts of being spat at and attacked while ESEA nurses faced racist abuse from patients. People of ESEA descent were also victims of violent and racially aggravated street attacks. Australia has also seen its share of hate with 377 reports of COVID-19 related racism received between April and June of 2020. More than 500 incidents were noted, with 40% being casual racist slurs and 11-12% involving physical intimidation.

 

Stop AAPI Hate (https://stopaapihate.org) was created by the Asian American Pacific Planning and Policy Council, Chinese for Affirmative Action, and Asian American Studies Department of San Francisco State University to monitor and respond to incidents of hate, discrimination, and violence against AAPI in the United States, in response to the shocking rise in xenophobia and prejudice resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The organization recorded 2,808 accounts of anti-Asian hate incidents between March 19, 2020 and December 31, 2020 in the United States. Elderly Asian Americans (over 60 years old) reported 126 accounts of anti-Asian hate incidents, making up 7.3% of the 2,808 incidents reported. Most of the incidents reported against the elderly (67.5%) consisted of verbal harassment. The majority of incidents reported were of verbal harassment (70.9%), with women being targeted more than twice as often as men. Chinese people made up the majority (40.7%) of various Asian American ethnic groups targeted.

 

Racism, hate, and xenophobia has reared its ugly head within the last two years and the effects have been seen in multiple communities of minorities in the United States. From the 2019 El Paso, Texas shooting that killed twenty people and wounded more than two dozen to the 2020 controversial death of George Floyd, communities of color share the burden of being victims of violence due to unjust hate. There was even an upsurge in anti-Muslim hate crimes and Islamophobia after the events of September 11, 2001 and during Donald Trump’s tenure as president. The most recent accounts of violence against the AAPI community are another example of how an entire community of people can be targeted as a result of tragic and unfortunate acts and events that cannot be tied to every single individual in that community. The United States has a history of scapegoating groups of people and making them responsible for the acts of a few or events that have nothing to do with them as individuals. Hopefully the efforts of groups like Stop AAPI Hate will result in decreased experiences of bigotry and violence against members of the AAPI community. However, I hope this article serves to highlight the collective plight that communities of color share in our experience as American minorities so we can generate more compassion and empathy amongst one another and become the force of solidarity and unification against the common enemy of hatred and intolerance that this country so desperately needs to move forward as one whole people.