Beside the Health Crisis, What Else the Asian Americans Have to Face During the COVID-19 Pandemic
By: Ophelia Xie
Tags: New York, Covid 19, Covid 19 Crisis, Asian American, Anti Asian Racism

Beside the Health Crisis, What Else the Asian Americans Have to Face During the COVID-19 Pandemic Ophelia Xie Jun 3, 2020·9 min read

New York City Chinatown has been fairly empty since Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the “stay-home” order. Some, who wore face masks, are afraid to go outside due to the increased anti-Asian harassment cases.

ZhenYu Zhou, a student at New York University, experienced the coronavirus outbreak in China, and returned to New York in late January. When he heard about the first confirmed case in Brooklyn in early March, he started to wear a face mask.

One day after class, Zhou saw a middle aged man staring and shouting at him on the R train from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Zhou did not catch the exact words from the man, but he recognized the man saying “Chinese” followed by an offensive slur. Zhou remained silent as he feared the man would come up and attack him. When the train arrived at the stop where Zhou usually gets off, he replied to the man with “I love you, too,” and walked out of the train as soon as the subway door opened.

“I was afraid that the man would follow me and hit me,” Zhou said. “So I walked fast, really fast, until I saw the subway door closed, and the man was still on the train.”

A few days later, Zhou found out about a man spitting on his friend’s face in the street.

Starting in March, the growing number of pandemic-related assaults against the Asian and Pacific Islander American community has them fearing for their safety.

Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans, such as the Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and Cambodian people, face the same threat as they share similar racial features. A 23-year-old Korean woman was punched in the chin by a woman who said, “Where is your fucking mask?” in midtown Manhattan, according to a report on ABC News on March 11.

A few days later, a 47-year-old Asian man was beaten by a man in front of his 10-year-old son in Queens. The New York police arrested the attacker, who referred the victims as “you f — king Chinese,” and asked where their masks were.

Prior to the pandemic, the New York State Hate Crime Task Force reported less than 15 anti-Asian hate crimes annually from 2014 to 2018, according to data collected by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS).

After hearing the assault of the 23-year-old Korean woman in Manhattan, Gov. Andrew Cuomo directed the New York State Police Hate Crimes Task Force to assist the city police department and investigate the incident.

The New York City Police Department released the city hate crimes report of the first quarter in 2020, showing they have investigated 11 pandemic-related bias attacks against Asians, and have arrested 9 anti-Asian attackers across the city.

“However, we also know there may be hate crimes that are not being reported,” the New York City Police Department Chief of Detectives, Rodney Harrison said in a tweet.

As of April 15, the Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council (A3PCON) received 250 reports of Coronavirus-related discrimination from Asian Americans in New York state and 1,497 nationwide.

A3PCON, an organization that advocates the rights for Asian and Pacific Islander American community in Los Angeles, established a “STOP AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) HATE” reporting center on Mar.19. Since the day it was established, the reporting center has tracked almost 1,500 coronavirus-related incidents targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders across the country in one month.

Incidents from California and New York, the two states with the largest Chinatowns, have made up 58 percent of all the reports.

“The volume of incident reports continues to be concerning. But, beyond the sheer numbers, we hear the impact of hate in the pain, humiliation, trepidation and fear in the voices of AAPIs today,” the Executive Director of A3PCON, Manjusha Kulkarni stated in the report. “This is a widespread problem with significant ramifications for our communities.”

The Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC), a New-York-based organization that provides social services to Chinese American, immigrant, and low-income communities, is also aware of the rising reports of the anti-Asian hate crimes.

“We have heard from our community of people experiencing incidents of violence that have not been reported due to fears of additional retaliation, people not having trust in the system to report, or facing language access barriers when they’re trying to report,” said Amy Torres, the Director of Policy and Advocacy at the CPC.

Torres said the over-the-phone interpretation services have hindered the victims of hate crimes to report the attacks they have been through.

“We’ve heard of people calling 311 in non-emergency situations asking for interpretation in Korean, but they got a Japanese interpreter instead,” Torres said.

Other than language barriers, some immigrants fear their immigration status or naturalization status may change if they call the emergency hotline for help, Torres said.

“Our community has always been seen as an outsider, and this is from the very beginning of Asian Americans coming to this country,” Torres added. “There’s a long legacy of using Asian Americans as a touchstone for setting off other incidents of hateful policy and discriminatory policy.”

The “Yellow Peril” period exercised an racial exclusion of East Asians throughout U.S. history in the 19th century, when Westerners felt threatened by the East Asian immigrants who offered to work for lower wages in the railroads compared to the Western workers. The threat later led to the Chinese Exclusion in 1882 that prohibited the Chinese immigrating to the U.S..

John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yeats wrote in The Margins that the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 is “a broader culture of political scapegoating” in U.S history.

“Reformers sought to assimilate new European immigrants into ‘American’ standards of living, blaming poor living conditions and crime on Old World cultures, not the poverty of the industrializing machine,” Yeats and Tchen wrote.

Today, Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., held President Donald Trump and his fellow officials accountable for bringing up the anti-Asian rhetoric in the nation by naming the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” and “Kung-flu,” rather than focusing on the precautions of the epidemic.

“I have repeatedly called on public officials — from the President to the top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives — to abstain from using derogatory language that demonizes Asian Americans,” Meng stated in a press release. “This must stop.”

After a few weeks of using the term “Chinese virus” in his public announcement, President Trump tweeted to call for protecting the Asian communities from the pandemic-related attacks, saying that “they are amazing people.” In a separate tweet, he said the spread of COVID-19 “is NOT their [the Asian Americans] fault.”

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. tried to promote tourism in Chinatown, San Francisco in February. Two months later, the president criticized Pelosi’s past visit to Chinatown, and said she should be “responsible for many deaths.”

Yeats and Tchen described how today’s U.S. political parties often target a minority group as the “easy-to-hate scapegoat” to calm the anxiety of the majority Americans when dealing with national dilemmas. Amid the pandemic crisis, the Chinese Americans have become the scapegoat of the virus outbreak in the U.S., resulting in the growing number of anti-Asian assaults.

Media have also played a role of escalating the anti-Asian discrimination within the country, Torres said.

“Whenever there have been COVID-19 reports, media outlets are using pictures of Chinatown, and that’s not where the first cases of COVID-19 happened in New York State,” Torres said.

The New York Post posted a photo of an Asian man wearing a mask in Queens to report the first New York confirmed case. The story itself reported a 30-year-old Manhattan woman got infected with coronavirus in Iran.

“It is causing people who already have hate in their hearts to feel emboldened,” Torres said. “They feel that if the President is saying it, and if they are seeing it in the news, it is okay for them to harm people, and they feel the bravery to act it out in public.”

Lisa Nishimura, a senior at John Jay College, has suffered from anxiety and severe chronic depression before the COVID-19 pandemic. She said maintaining her mental health amid the recent anti-Asian rhetoric is even more challenging.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty and also a lot of anxiety in terms of my health, my safety and being able to survive financially, mentally and physically,” Nishimura said.

“As an Asian Latinx woman, hearing stories like this has made me afraid to go outside my house at times when I need to get essential things such as food or medication,” Nishimura said. “I often find myself making up scenarios like what I would do to protect myself to de-escalate a situation if it gets to a violent turning point.”

The reported anti-Asian incidents include verbal harassment, shunning of Asian people or Asian businesses, and physical harassment, according to A3PCON. The physical assaults along with the motivation constitute the state definition of bias-motivated hate crimes.

After being verbally attacked in the subway and hearing about his friend being spitted on, Zhou became afraid of leaving the house during the pandemic.

“We can’t really prevent these discrimination,” Zhou said. “it is unrealistic to protect ourselves by bringing a knife outside. The best option for us is to stay at home, unfortunately.”

Some chose to protect themselves by purchasing weapons. A New York Times report revealed the gun market in Washington, D.C. and Maryland was flooded during the pandemic. A number of gun shop owners said they have seen a number of Chinese Americans coming in to buy guns for the first time.

When dealing with “uncomfortable” speech against the Asian community, Fan Xia, a Chinese international student at SUNY New Paltz, refused to remain silent. In late January, Xia was in New York worrying about her family during the epidemic outbreak in China. A few Chinese international students told Xia that they were offended by a professor’s speech about coronavirus during class.

Fearing other Chinese students might have also been offended by the professor’s comments, Fan Xia decided to tell the college president their feelings over that professor’s speech.

Xia recalled the first time she walked into the college president’s office, the president was not there. A staff member suggested Xia write to the president for a better response.

But other Chinese international students, including Xia’s friends, refused to put their names on the letter as they worried about causing too much attention. They discouraged her from writing it.

“And it made me even angrier,” Xia said.

A few days before Xia sent out the letter, the SUNY New Paltz President heard of her report from his staff. He sent out a campus-wide email to address Xia’s anger and worry.

“We want to express our support for our students who have been impacted by negative comments, or who are worried about loved ones at home,” the college president stated in the email.

Xia urged everyone to speak up if they face a similar situation.

“Everyone is born equal,” Xia stated in her social media. “It is your silence that provides a chance for someone to attack you.”

New York Attorney General Lettia James launched a hate crime hotline to combat the rise of the coronavirus-related harassment and discrimination in mid-March.

“No one should live in fear for their life because of who they are, what they look like, or where they come from.” James said in a statement.

“I’m urging all New Yorkers to come together, call virus the coronavirus, and report those who would use this uncertain time to make racist, xenophobic or biased attacks to the hotline,” Rep. Meng said in the press release.

Gov. Cuomo has invested $2 million to support the State Police Hate Crimes Task Force as the budget season ended on April 3, hoping to ease the rise of bias-motivated threats, harassment and violence throughout New York state.

“Violence is not an answer to violence. And I think what we really need, during the time of crisis, and in order to have community healing after the time of crisis, is open dialogue,” Torres said.

Torres said CPC and a few organizations also offer upstander training sessions to encourage the bystanders to “intervene and de-escalate” the harassment happening around them.

“We make sure that the perpetrator knows that people are watching, that they won’t get away with this type of behavior, and that the public will hold them accountable,” Torres said.