SAN FRANCISCO—Since its official launch on March 19, 2020, the STOP AAPI HATE reporting center has received over 1700 reports of coronavirus discrimination from Asian Americans across the country. The reporting center was founded by the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning
Council (A3PCON), Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) and San Francisco State University’s Asian American Studies Department.
The following patterns emerged over the course of six weeks:
- STOP AAPI HATE received 1710 incident reports
- Nine out of ten respondents believed that they were targeted because of their race
- Thirty-seven percent of incidents took place at public venues, including streets, parks and transit
- Reports came from 45 states across the nation and Washington DC.
We encourage individuals who have experienced hate as a result of COVID-19 to continue to report at www.a3pcon.org/stopaapihate. The incident report form is available in twelve languages, including English, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Khmer, Hmong, Hindi, Punjabi, Thai and Tagalog. The lead organizations are
working with public, private and other community-based organizations to provide resources for impacted individuals and to advocate for policies and programs dedicated to curtailing racial profiling.
The following incidents were emblematic of the over 1700 reported to Stop AAPI Hate:
- Professor sent an email to all of his students in the English class and called the COVID 19 the “Wuhan virus.”• We were holding a public webinar in Chinese on COVID-19 and families. In the last minutes, we were zoom-bombed by a group and participants were exposed to racist and vulgar images, curses, harassment and name-calling.
- A couple walked by our street with a white dog in tow and the male took out a marker and tagged my parents’ car with the word COVID 19 on the driver side door.
- I was walking my dog at night and a car swerved toward me on the sidewalk, two guys started shouting, “Trump 2020, Die Chink Die!”
- White man in his 50s, approximately 6 feet tall, dragged an elderly Asian man out of the store by the arm and proceeded to shove him outside the store, causing the elderly man to fall on his head and back. Victim was a 92-year old Asian man.
“The steady pace of incidents of anti-AAPI hate being reported from across the country, unfortunately, tracks with the recent IPSOS poll which found that 30% of all Americans witnessed someone blaming Asian Americans for COVID-19 and 60% of Asian Americans witnessed this behavior,” said Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of Asian Pacific Policy and
Planning Council (A3PCON). “This scapegoating of AAPIs is leading to harassment, civil rights violations and in some cases, acts of physical violence against our communities.”
“What concerns me is the open hostility and animus that our community is encountering and with concerted efforts to blame China and the Chinese government, Asian Americans will be subjected to more hate,” states Cynthia Choi, Co-Executive Director of Chinese for Affirmative
Action (CAA). “This new wave of racism is reminder of our conditional status and the need to challenge racism and inequality that has been exposed as a result of this pandemic.”
Russell Jeung, Ph.D., chair and professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, added, “The incidents reflect a disturbing trend, that Americans are blaming Asian Americans for a biological virus. Instead, we need to hold our American government accountable to controlling the disease and to safeguarding our public health. Both the virus and
racism are dangerous threats to the Asian American community.”
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The Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON) is a coalition of more than forty community-based organizations that serve and represent the 1.5 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the greater Los
Angeles area, with a particular focus on low-income, immigrant, refugee and other vulnerable populations.
Chinese for Affirmative Action was founded in 1969 to protect the civil and political rights of Chinese Americans and to advance multiracial democracy in the United States. Today, CAA is a progressive voice in and on behalf of the broader Asian American and Pacific Islander community. We advocate for systemic change that protects immigrant rights, promotes language diversity, and remedies racial and social injustice.
