By Randall Yip, AsAmNews Executive Editor
A breakdown of two years of anti-Asian hate incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate found two-thirds involve harassment, including verbal or written hate speech or inappropriate gestures.
The report titled Two Years and Thousands of Voices also reveals most of the incidents are non-criminal.
“The trends have been really consistent as Americans continue to be subjected to racism, primarily in the form of harassment,” said Russell Jeung, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and a professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University said to AsAmNews. That’s traumatizing, isolating and clearly racist.”
Many of those AAPI targeted crossed multiple identities including female, non-binary, LGBTQ and the elderly.
Jeung emphasized during his interview with AsAmNews the solutions Stop AAPI Hate is advocating.
“One is educational equity and promoting Asian American narrative in our curriculum. Secondly is expanding civil rights protections and addressing harassment, like our California and thirdly, promoting community safety that works in a multiracial, multi-faceted manner. We think these are approaches that get to the roots of racism, the historic and institutional nature of racism.”
The organization is advocating in the California legislature several bills as part of its No Place for Hate agenda.
One bill calls for better tracking of harassment on public transit and to identify solutions for street harassment.
Another would expand civil right protections in businesses and a third would classify street harassment as a public health issue.
In a one-year period from March 19, 2020 to March 31, 2022, Stop AAPI Hate received nearly 11,500 reports of anit-Asian hate.
While women were the primary targets of this hate, there is much concern as well for both the elderly and children.
One in three parents who participated in a survey conducted by Edelman Data and Intelligence say they are concerned about their children being a victim of anti-AAPI hate, discrimination in unsupervised area and on the way to school.
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