April 24, 2020

SAN FRANCISCO —Since its official launch on March 19, 2020, the STOP AAPI HATE reporting center has received almost 1,500 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.

Data from the first month of STOP AAPI HATE can be found in the April 23rd report, linked here. The following patterns emerged over the course of one month:

● STOP AAPI HATE received 1,497 reports1 in its first four weeks.
● Incidents from California and New York constituted over 58% of all reports.
● Civil rights violations involving workplace discrimination and being barred from businesses and transportation or refused service made up almost ten percent of all incident reports.
● Forty-four percent of incidents took place at private businesses.
● AAPI women were harassed 2.3 times more than AAPI men.
● Nine percent of respondents were AAPI seniors (over the age of 60).
● Reports came from 45 states across the nation and Washington DC.
● Even as shelter-in-place policies were implemented across much of the country and AAPIs interacted less with others, the rate of acts of racism remains alarming.

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 now 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 data reveals three trends. First, the high number of hate incidents, especially assaults, reflects the impact of China-bashing by politicians. Second, high proportions of vulnerable populations–children, youth, elderly and limited-English speaking communities–are sadly impacted. Finally, combining cases of workplace discrimination and being barred from businesses indicates that Asian Americans’ civil rights are being violated.” said Russell Jeung, Ph.D., chair and professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University.

“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.” stated Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON). She added, “This is a widespread problem with significant ramifications for our communities.”

“Even with the high number of reports we have received, we know this is just a snapshot of what AAPI’s are experiencing on a daily basis and we can expect the situation to worsen as the antiChina, anti-Chinese rhetoric becomes normalized,” said Cynthia Choi co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA). She further noted, “We know too well how this will all play out – fear mongering and xenophobia will lead to more attacks against AAPIs.”