The US Media Doesn’t Care About the Hate Crimes on Asians in America
“What is going on in the US?” my Singaporean friend inquires as she takes a bite out of her chicken rice. We sit cross-legged, facing the canal at Boat Quay.
I show her the scroll of updates on NextShark, a media platform for Asian American news. It has been really the only source of news of these happenings recently. That, and from my friends living in the Bay Area. The posts make me feel sick to my stomach as we click into each one, showing videos of offenders violently shoving their victims to the ground and I suck in my breathe at that mid-second before their heads smash into the pavement. Other videos show victims being robbed during Lunar New Year as they leave the ATM machines. Many of these attacks are happening in the Bay Area, specifically San Francisco and Oakland.
Her jaw drops and she says, “That’s fucking terrible.”
She says it reminds her of the case in London last February at the height of covid, where a Singaporean student had been jumped by a group of teenagers which was “unprovoked and racially motivated.”
I swipe to read further into the stories. Photos show blood covering their faces. Multiple stitches and black bruises ensue. I notice the archetype of victims becoming a trend: it is the Asian elderly and the most vulnerable. Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, was on a walk in the San Francisco neighborhoods when he was violently shoved from behind, and he was found on the street and sustained brain hemorrhaging.
Of the more than 2,800 anti-Asian attacks reported nationally between March 19 and Dec. 31 last year, 7.3% involved victims aged 60 and above, according to Stop AAPI Hate.
It hasn’t helped that Trump called covid-19 the “Chinese virus” in his last year of presidency, using dangerous language to perpetuate and fuel anti-Chinese sentiments across the country. “It’s racist and it creates xenophobia,” Harvey Dong, a lecturer in Asian American and Asian diaspora studies with the University of California at Berkeley, told The Post. “It’s a very dangerous situation.”
I’m flabbergasted to see the attacks on Asians increase, while mainstream media outlets in the US stay silent.
NextShark, a media platform for Asian American news, is reporting on these attacks each day. It has kept our communities in the loop and their teams are working tirelessly to deliver information. Many of these are tip-offs or shared by the online communities. These attacks have been happening to anyone who looks of Asian descent — Thai, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Singaporean, etc. The attacks are racially motivated and run hand-in-hand with verbal insults like “go back to your country,” “covid bitch” or “you chink.”
While the help of on-ground local reporters, such as vocal Dion Lim, an anchor from ABC 7, the stories have begun to circulate wider and farther from beyond our local communities, but I can’t help but notice that mainstream media outlets are quiet and so are many of our leaders in the US.
From the Asian American and Black community, I’ve seen strength of both communities come together to denounce these attacks publicly, and patrol the neighborhoods in Oakland and San Francisco. The strength of the people comes together, and that’s what we need more than ever in these times.
My father came to the US for his MBA in Texas and brought over my pregnant mother in pursuit for the American dream. When I was 6, my family moved into a new house on Talisman Street, the neighborhood kids next door lit a bag of feces on fire in front of our house. It didn’t happen to any other family on the block. Why were we targeted?
At Jefferson Middle School in Torrance, a boy threw his gum in my hair in class and called me a “chink.” Out of anger, I grabbed a pair of scissors and cut my hair off, and threw all of it into his backpack. That was the first racial slur I experienced. Why did he hate me so much?
In a previous role, a female colleague pointed out how gross that our sales gong had the word “Wuhan City” on it, and she sent the green sick face emoji 🤢 on Slack to the entire team. I called her out on it, and my colleagues tried to calm me down, saying she just didn’t know better. Why didn’t she know better?
I’ve been lucky to be protected most of my life without direct racial assaults or abuse, but I’ve experienced small moments of racial micro-aggressions that made me wonder why Asians were often so easily picked on and used as scapegoats. I’ve often lived in predominantly diverse cities in the US all my life and counted it as a blessing to have been in such a cultural melting pot.
As I see these hate crimes increase, I’m shocked to continue hearing about new attacks each day while across the world, but there’s not been enough coverage and not enough people know that it’s happening. The Asian American community is reeling and we are hurting — and we need help.
Living and working in Singapore has meant I’ve become part of the majority population. There is no fear that someone will come from behind and shove me to the ground because of what I look like. But as I sit here on another continent watching these attacks unfold in my home country against my own community, I cannot help but feel helpless.
The US media isn’t talking about it enough, so we need to. “We” meaning us as Asians, our allies, and whatever platform we can use to bring these hate crimes to light.
I’m full of rage. I’m terrified for my parents because they might become a statistic overnight. But I’m also devastated.
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Asian American community has been terrified by the alarming surge in anti-Asian bigotry across our nation,” Rep. Judy Chu of California said.
I’m proud to be both Asian and American. The United States will always be my home. I was named after a kind Russian woman from my father’s MBA program in Texas who was intelligent and sharp. I was taught to have a backbone by Ms. Williams, an African American woman who led kindergarten choir. She saw that I was cripplingly shy and she brought me out of my shell. I studied International Business at SFSU with a program that welcomed foreigners from all over the world, teaching me how to think with an open mind and welcoming everyone of all backgrounds. That is the America I know — diverse and kind.
This indecency happening in the US is wrong. I am using my platform to denounce and speak on these issues to highlight the ongoing hate crimes happening back in my home country. I hope the mainstream media (in the US and worldwide), our communities, and allies continue to circulate and condemn these hate crimes and actions being done to our fellow Asians in the US.
Michelle Kim wrote a very good piece on On Anti-Asian Hate Crimes: Who Is Our Real Enemy?
She says to “Acknowledge, amplify, and denounce the ongoing anti-Asian hate crimes. Say it in your own words. Say this is not okay. Say you condemn it. Say you believe it is wrong. Say it personally and organizationally. Make space for our pain because there is always enough space for all of us — all of our pain, healing, and liberation can coexist without diminishing the other.”
- Please consider supporting NextShark with donations for their ongoing journalism efforts and reportings. Share, circulate, and report anything you hear or see to them.
- Report all hate incidents here at Stop AAPI Hate and consider donating to their efforts.
