An Asian-American resident walking their dog in Santa Clara was approached by a stranger who kicked the dog, spat on the owner and told the victim to, “Take your disease that’s ruining our country and go home.”
In San Jose, an Asian-American family was yelled at by a neighbor who started a physical altercation after using racial epithets. And in San Francisco, a man elbowed an Asian-American customer in the back at a hardware store, telling the victim to, “go back to China,” and accusing them of “bringing that Chinese virus over here.”
Those are some of the 832 incidents of hate, harassment and discrimination against Asian-American and Pacific Islander Californians reported in the past 13 weeks to Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition of advocacy organizations formed to track racism against those communities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Wednesday, organizers shared their statewide findings, which included 81 incidents of physical assaults and 64 civil rights violations, such as workplace discrimination and barring Asian-Americans from entering an establishment.
Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco) said the incidents that have been reported are just the tip of the iceberg.
“We know that at this difficult time for all of our communities, there is not just a pandemic of health, but there’s a pandemic of hate that is attacking our [Asian-American and Pacific Islander] communities around the country,” Chiu said. “There is not just a virus known as COVID-19, there’s a virus of racism.”
Chiu drew a line between the incidents reported during the pandemic and the long history of anti-Asian-American racism in California and the U.S., including the Chinese Exclusion Act, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American autoworker in Michigan in 1982 by two white men who blamed Chin for the success of the Japanese auto industry.
Chiu also pointed at high-profile racist attacks in the Bay Area, including videos of an older Asian-American man being assaulted in San Francisco’s Bayview district while he was out collecting cans.
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Many of the speakers at the news conference also linked the uptick in anti-Asian-American incidents to President Donald Trump, who has been criticized for using racist terms for the coronavirus, including referring to it as “Kung Flu” at his recent campaign rally in Tulsa.
“We have a president that seems to have given a green light to the racists to come out of the woodwork to start attacking Asian-Americans, as well as all other people of color,” said Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance). “This simply is not acceptable.”
Slightly more than 40 percent of the incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate in California took place inside businesses, and more than 20 percent took place on a public street or sidewalk. Women were more likely to be targeted — about 62 percent of the incidents that included the victim’s gender were reported by women.
Cynthia Choi, the co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, called on Gov. Gavin Newsom to create a racial equity task force around COVID-19 and fund increased tracking of hate crimes against Asian-Americans.
“There’s no way that we can respond unless we understand the nature and the magnitude and extent of this,” she said.
