THE hate crimes being experienced by Asian natives in the Western world especially in the United States, are no different from the racial discrimination that resurfaced after the killing of black American George Floyd by a policeman in Minnesota last year or for that matter from the slave trade in the 16th century, which Americans are now downplaying to earn for themselves a humane image in history.
The hate crimes against Asians began because of the careless/thoughtless rhetoric of former President Donald Trump, who labelled the coronavirus pandemic as Wuhan (or China) virus, implying that it was made in the laboratories of China.
Understandably, because the virus hit hard on the United States, United Kingdom and other white-dominated countries like Australia, the hate would be directed at the Chinese and Chinese-looking people, but which today is already spreading towards other native Asians (Filipinos, Vietnamese, and others).
The New York police department's counterterrorism bureau said it was "monitoring the shooting of Asian Americans in Georgia" and deploying officers "to our great Asian communities across the city out of an abundance of caution," though it added there was no known link to the city.
The shootings come as reports of attacks against Asian-Americans, primarily elders, have spiked in recent months— fueled during the COVID-19 pandemic, activists believe, by talk of the "Chinese virus" by former president Donald Trump and others.
The USA Today reported that many Asian women are now living in fear and they have been doing so long before the shootings Tuesday night at the Atlanta-area spas that killed 8 people, six of them women of Asian descent.
Jennifer Chung, a Korean- American living in Atlanta, said she felt "numb" when she heard the news since four of the victims were women of Korean descent.
Chung, a singer, was bombarded with comments about her identity and appearance when she started posting videos to YouTube in 2007.
"There were a lot of messages and scary videos people would send me that had nothing to do with me personally, per se, but attacking me as an Asian or bringing up things that had to do with how I look, how I sounded," she explained.
Christine Liwag Dixon, 31, a Filipino-American living in the New York-metro area, said the killings on Tuesday left her "shocked but not surprised,” as she spent the last year “afraid to leave my house in this wave of violence against Asians, which seems like almost every day there’s a new incident, but this one was just so horrifying and so violent.”
Liwag herself was victimized in this racial discrimination. She recalled a specific incident when she was walking to get into an Uber and a crowd of college-aged men cornered her on the street and used racial slurs and sexually inappropriate language.
“I was very scared for my safety,” she said.
Experts say witnessing violence – or personally experiencing violence or harassment – can lead to trauma, which can cause a range of debilitating mental and physical health effects. For Asian women, the trauma is complex as it is often layered with racism, sexism and hyper-sexualization.
Michi Fu, a professor and licensed psychologist who specializes in cross-cultural and international mental health, said racial discrimination and hate incidents can be "very confusing and isolating. Even if I have personally not suffered an attack, just witnessing something on TV where I can relate to the person the incident occurred to, it can be just as traumatic. It doesn’t have to be me working at a (spa) in Atlanta… I can experience what we call vicarious traumatization.”
Fu explained someone who experiences trauma can suffer from a range of issues, including diagnosable mental illnesses like anxiety, depression, and post- traumatic stress disorder as well as physiological issues such as prolonged lack of sleep, eating issues and high blood pressure.
"As minorities, we understand the perspective that is put upon us when white supremacy is the framework of how everything's built. So, it's a shared trauma and it's a shared burden."
From March 2020 to February 2021, Stop AAPI Hate, a group that tracks discrimination and xenophobia against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, received 3,800 reports of anti-Asian hate, with women reporting hate incidents 2.3 times more than men, USA Today reported.
But hate crimes are now spreading in other white nations like UK, Australia and the New Zealand.
A man was recently filmed going on a racist tirade against an Asian-New Zealander family inside a coffee shop in Auckland.
Siblings Fiona Yang, 18, and Felix, 21, both born and raised in Auckland, were ordering food with their mother at the Humble Villager café in Epsom when they were suddenly targeted by another customer, reports NewsHub.
The man reportedly arrived in the line behind the family at around 11 a.m. and asked if he could order ahead of them because he was in a hurry. When Felix declined the request, the man became agitated and started complaining that the "bloody Chinese" always order slowly.
According to Felix, the man was condescending so he responded by pointing out that he’s being racist, but the man just went on to “ramble about other things. The man went on to order normally but then he approached the family again and told them to "go back to China." He came over to the table [to tell us to go back to China] and then he took our order number, because he wanted to confuse the kitchen staff - which he did," Felix narrated.
Humble Villager café manager Ellen Zhang, who took the family’s order at the time, shared that the man later berated the family, claiming that white people were in New Zealand first and "opened the door" to Asian people. The family could no longer take the abuse, with their mother reacting to the man’s claim saying, “the Māori were here first.” The man then came up to the family and spewed more racist claims. "You don't know New Zealand's history very well; the Māoris ate the Morioris, who were here first."While this claim has long been debunked as a myth, it has persisted for generations in New Zealand. Having had enough of the man’s actions, Zhang and another staffer told the man to leave, which he did after being repeatedly asked to go.
The role of racism
In a statement Wednesday, Asian American Advancing Justice, a non-profit legal aid and civil rights organization, said the broader context of the recent shootings "cannot be ignored."
"The shootings happened under the trauma of increasing violence against Asian Americans nationwide, fueled by white supremacy and systemic racism," the statement said.
Georgia law enforcement indicated the crime was motivated by sex, not race. But Elizabeth Kim, the chief operating officer of Restore NYC, a nonprofit that works to provide housing and economic solutions for survivors of trafficking, said such determinations are premature.
“It’s not an either-or proposition. The racism and the misogyny and the violence are very much intertwined," she said. "I wouldn’t say we should pivot to say it is a crime only in sexual nature and not of a racial nature and vice-verse.”
I was wrong in thinking that racism had stopped and that humankind is exerting every effort to build a just, humane and democratic society.
But with this reality, we are now back to the days of slavery and discrimination of the 16th century.