Hate speech in the country is becoming more and more evident. Hate attacks against the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community are on the rise in the United States. The Stop AAPI Hate initiative recorded more than 11,000 incidents of hate towards these communities.
Hate crimes, said Becky L. Monroe, deputy director of Strategic Initiatives and External Affairs, at a press conference hosted by Ethnic Media Servicesare considered by the California Department of Civil Rights (CRD) to be "a criminal act committed because of disability, gender, national origin, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or because of a person's association with another person or group of persons.
He further noted that the CRD considers "an expression or action that may be motivated by race, color, disability, religion, sexual origin and orientation or gender and which may or may not violate the law" as a hate incident.
According to federal data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's annual Hate Crimes Statistics Act report, the number of hate crimes against the AAPI community increased more than 73 percent from 2008 to 2020.
In addition to this, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) indicated that this year the number of hate crimes exceeds 200,000 per year, which has worried members of this community and activists. "There is no doubt that the numbers are misreported," Monroe acknowledged.
Brian Levin, a criminologist and civil rights attorney, noted that hate crimes increase at election times because "there is a relationship to politics," he said.
He also noted that according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism (CSHE), hate crimes against the Latino community increased by 41 percent, while those directed at the African-American community increased by 46 percent.
"Most hate crimes are committed by white men," Monroe noted. While Levin, added that a large number of the incident reports included hateful, racist and xenophobic rhetoric used by former U.S. President Donald Trump.
Manjusha P. Kulkarni, executive director of the Asia Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON), noted that most acts of hate against the AAPI community occur in public places such as parks or businesses, 61 percent of these have been against women, 9.9 percent against children under the age of 17 and 7 percent against older adults.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Chinese discourses gained strength worldwide, blaming China for the pandemic derived from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which caused an increase in attacks against this sector, disrupting and affecting their daily lives due to fear and concern, as incidents occurred even in schools.
"Many acts that happen in schools are hate incidents" and can become crimes, Monroe pointed out. As a result of the pandemic, a large number of Asian school children were physically and verbally attacked under the slogan "go back to your country".
Likewise, Kulkarni noted that 63 percent of attacks are in the form of verbal harassment, while 16.2 percent are physical attacks. "Most of these are traumatic and disruptive, but they are not hate crimes," he said.
Thus, since they are not considered as such, the solutions for these incidents are not reduced to law enforcement alone.
Derived from this problem and thanks to the coalition of organizations such as the Department of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, Chinese for Affirmative Action and AAPI Equity Alliance - formerly Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council - Stop AAPI Hate was born, which seeks to track and respond to incidents of hate against these communities.
This organization seeks, among other things, to advocate for local, state and national policies that protect the rights of AAPI communities.
In addition, the California Department of Social Services and the Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Affairs (CDSS and CAPIAA) announced that the Stop the Hate program would make $20 million available in fiscal year 2021-22 for the support and care of victims of hate crimes and incidents, as well as hate crime prevention.
"We hope that legislators will look at this issue and determine what we need in terms of government responses because community organizations cannot do this alone," Kulkarni said.
Healing and fighting hatred
"My grandmother had a tube down her throat so she could breathe, she had blood everywhere and we found her in the middle of a slide, she had been molested by a 17-year-old boy who is now being charged with murder," recounted Sasanna Yee, a conscious movement instructor and community wellness activist in San Francisco.
In the wake of this event, Yee created the Move the Chi for Multiracial Solidarity initiative, which seeks to foster unity and collective action against all forms of hatred and violence through a healing practice that originated in China.
"My grandmother has started a knowledge in me to be able to go beyond cultural barriers," she said.
"How do we create a world that is more humane?" questioned Yee, while noting that each of us has the power to transform circumstances.
At the end of the meeting, the experts agreed on the need for communities to join forces to fight against hate attacks and thus achieve a fairer country for all. They also called for the reporting of hate incidents and crimes, noting that the numbers "are higher than we imagine".
They also pointed out the importance of having spaces to understand the type of hatred towards this sector through education, the implementation of civil rights laws and the visibility of this problem with the help of the media, policy makers and leaders.
In case you suffer any incident or hate crime, you can report it through https://stopaapihate.org/reportincident/If you need immediate assistance, call 911.
This publication was supported in whole or in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library.
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