Anti-Asian Racism in the Age of Coronavirus

I cannot begin to list the many atrocities, racist attacks, and other hate crimes that have befallen the Asian American community as a direct result of misplaced coronavirus fears. While microaggressions, stereotypes, and assumptions are an unfortunate part of living in a sometimes ignorant society, racism never fails to rear its ugly head whenever it gets a chance.

ABC News has made a video compiling some of these incidents in the following video: Asians facing discrimination, violence amid coronavirus outbreak.

Human Rights Watch has written this article detailing Anti-Asian Racism globally and in the USA due to COVID-19.

And Asian adoptees are not immune to this.

The Chinese adoptee community is in an uproar right now. Not only because of the racial injustice that is going on in the world, but because of the murder of one of our own.

Johanne Zhangjia Ihle-Hansen.

May you rest in peace.

We stand with you against hate and violence and racism.

We mourn your loss.

The report here from June 2020, step-brother murders his Chinese adopted sister in Norway, is that her neo-Nazi step-brother murdered her due to unfounded fears that she had the coronavirus because she was Asian. He murdered her in her family home, where she was supposed to be safe. (Then he proceeded to attack a mosque, but he failed to kill anyone.)

Still fresh in my mind is the Texas hate crime from April 2020, reported here, where other people of Chinese descent were stabbed in a store because of coronavirus fears. A man with a knife went into the store, specifically intending to kill Chinese people. He stabbed three members of a Chinese family: including a two-year-old and a six-year-old.

While I know my family and many other families are anti-racist, once in a while, I will hear stories of adoptees whose relatives are pro-hate and pro-racist. For transracial adoptees, already navigating the divide between who we are and how people see us, it can be incredibly painful for our own family members to spew hatred, or in the worst cases, decide that we are vermin to be murdered because of our differences. When we are with our parents, there will be some racist people who believe we do not belong together because I am not white, but for the most part, there isn't a problem. When I step outside the house alone, however, the world will see me as Asian or Asian American. We are just as vulnerable to racist attacks as any other Asian person. No one deserves to be targeted because of their race, religion, skin color, or...ANY "REASON." PERIOD.

Anti-Asian sentiment in the USA (and elsewhere) isn't new.

I wish I could simply regurgitate everything I learned from the PBS Asian Americans special they released for AAPI Month. My family and I watched it together and it was very eye opening for me to see how deep Asian American roots are in the USA. The murder of Vincent Chin in 1982, not too long ago, was not the first, nor the last, racially motivated murder in America. His story, here, was featured on Asian Americans by PBS. During a period of anti-Japanese sentiment, this man was brutally murdered by two white men who had mistaken him for being Japanese. He was killed in the street after having just celebrated his own bachelor's party. His fiancee was left heartbroken. Chin was Chinese, not Japanese, but that part isn't the point. The two white men never saw a second of jail time. They were not charged because they were white. But Chin's murder ignited a movement for change.

I see so many terrible parallels between Vincent Chin and George Floyd and every single person who has been murdered because of HATE. 

I believe these global protests to end racial injustice are a direct result of the world also realizing that we've been here before, and we need the status-quo to change. In the midst of this, my family and I are also very proud of our city of Philadelphia for their incredibly powerful peaceful protests, and of their protest on the Philadelphia Art Museum Steps, where protesters lay on the ground for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. This clip has been circulating over the local news stations, even during commercial breaks. It means that people are not unmoved by what happened and people are not blind to injustice. It gives me a little hope for humanity.

These protesters are from all walks of life: different ages, different races, different backgrounds, different religions, etc. etc.  My parents are white and I am Asian American and we are a family. We stand against racism and hate in all forms.

The only way we beat racism and bigotry and hate is together. That is my personal belief.