While there has been a significant increase in hate crimes towards members of the AAPI community since COVID, there does not seem to be a significant increase in news coverage towards these violent attacks against an entire community. The increase in hate crimes has been occurring for over a year and the momentum does not seem to be slowing down. Many Asian Americans have taken action such as forming volunteer patrol groups around Chinatown or areas where attacks occurred to protect Asians (especially elders), actors offering $25,000 for catching a suspect, and Asian Americans raising awareness of the matter through social media. Attacks have escalated from yelling racial slurs, to violently attacking elders, to a mass shooting that has killed eight people — six of whom were Asian women.
While the community has risen, there seems to be a lack of or less mainstream news coverage. From major news podcasts to national nightly news, there does not seem to be much attention given to the matter. Although I have not been following the nightly news every day, coverage on Tiger Woods’ car crash was covered for multiple days while the news of increased Asian hate crime never appeared. Aside from online news articles it seems the mainstream media just does not seem as concerned about the issue. I think this can relate back to systemic injustice because as whole Asian Americans have had less presence in various types of media as other ethnicities or minority groups. We can often be “silent” or thought of as the minority group that quietly does their work and lives their lives. Actors have stated how it was much harder to find acting jobs because they were Asian American. As a result, we do not usually have a presence in television or films, news coverage, or other major mediums. This should not be an excuse, however, to not report on a wider scale the widespread racism against a certain group of people.
Verbal attacks against Asian Americans often revolve around calling us degrading names and telling us to “go back to China”, which reveals how people who do not look a certain way will not even be thought of as citizens of America when they might have been born and lived here their whole lives. It also reveals their ignorance in the different cultures and countries of Asia by assuming everyone with Asian ethnicity is from China. Asian Americans can struggle with the feeling of belonging or balancing two different cultures and countries. Deming from The Leavers struggles to connect Deming Guo with Daniel Wilkinson, and experiences instances of systemic injustice in the way his adopted parents want to erase his previous identity and experiences.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-muddled-history-of-anti-asian-violence
https://time.com/5938482/asian-american-attacks/
As being Asian my self this movement really resonates with me, this is pure racism and since it’s against Asian people I believe that people downplay it, I’m glad you did your showcase about this thank you for sharing.
Great topic as it is a hot topic in today’s news. Sadly this was noticed at a smaller scale well before the publicity it is getting now by the major news chains. This had been an issue in San Francisco for quite some time now and is clear and unacceptable racism within a free country. Hopefully now with the awareness being spread on the topic this can come to an end by bystanders standing up and those committing these acts to be properly trialed and convicted.