From 2019 to 2020, the US experienced an increase in hate crimes targeting Asians by 145 per cent, according to the Center for Hate and Extremism. An increasing number of Asian Americans have begun acquiring guns for self-defence and as the nation with a population of 333 million is already struggling with its existing gun control issue, this further increases the risk of attacks within targeted communities. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, rates of anti-Asian hate have soared in the country, with the most recent attacks being the California shootings at the Star Ballroom Dance Student in Monterey Park and two farms in the coastal community of Half Moon Bay during the Lunar New Year. Within a span of just three days, these two mass shootings resulted in 18 deaths. These events have raised two concerning questions: what makes Asian Americans a target for assault and why is there such poor media coverage of these hate crimes?

The anti-Asian sentiment traces back to the 19th century when the US experienced a sudden large-scale immigration of Chinese labourers. Some were forced migrants fleeing war, disease and persecution, while others viewed America as the land of economic opportunity -  the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848, also known as the “California Gold Rush”, spurred a wave of migration. Soon after, these Chinese miners were seen as a threat to the American west and their livelihoods, leading to events like the Rocks Springs massacre on 2 September 1885. 150 white miners had killed at least 28 of their Chinese coworkers, driving the rest out of the town. They feared that Chinese immigrants would take over American land and disrupt traditional western values. The concept of the ‘Yellow Peril’, which described the increasing paranoia the western world had about Chinese immigrants, inspired the implementation of American immigration policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The act was the first and only law ever passed to stop all members of an ethnic group from immigrating into the country. 

There are also clear intersections between racism and misogyny against Asian women which are frequently overlooked. On 16 March 2021, a shooting spree at three different spas resulted in the deaths of six women of Asian descent. The mass shooting sparked much scepticism about the proclaimed motive behind the attack - law enforcement officials said: “the perpetrator was a sex addict and was seeking to eliminate the temptation that these outlets represented,” therefore, it was not a racially motivated attack. Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociology professor at Biola University, said: “removing racism from the conversation ignores the history of hypersexualisation and fetishization of Asian women”. 

Asian women have been stereotyped as prostitutes since even before the implementation of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The country introduced the Page Act of 1875 to “end the danger of cheap Chinese labour and immoral Chinese women”. “Immoral”, in this context, refers to women perceived as prostitutes and considered temptations for white men. In the 18th and 19th centuries, “dragon ladies” applied to the stereotype of Asian women being deceitful, domineering and often sexually alluring in a derogatory manner. “Lotus blossoms” on the other hand, objectified and hyper-sexualised women, depicting them as easily disposable. During the age of the Chinese Exclusion Act, western views believed that Chinese women brought prostitution. This view would be reflected in mainstream media, where film directors would use promiscuous images to exploit and degrade these women.

Surveys and past research have consistently shown that Asian victims are less likely to report victimisation to the police. With this in mind, current official statistics of hate crimes against Asian Americans may be a significant underrepresentation of the actual figure. John C Yang, the president of Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), said: “there's no uniform database for collecting anti-Asian attacks; most of the data that we have is based on self-reporting from a website called Stop AAPI Hate. But these are only voluntary, and only as good as the outreach that can be done by us as nonprofit organisations.” The lack of trust in law enforcement combined with language barriers, especially among immigrant communities, explains why the reporting of these attacks is so low. AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islanders) immigrant communities feel discouraged to seek help from their local government, often due to poor support provisions, with the poor assistance being primarily due to the fact that many do not believe that the issue of anti-Asian racism exists, further trivialising the discrimination these groups face.

During the period following 11 September 2001, over 500 hate crimes were reported against south Asian Americans, as they became scapegoats for the 9/11 attacks. South Asian Americans were viewed as a foreign threat, especially if they wore visible markers of culture and ancestral identity; these previous acts of racial profiling and discrimination have heavily influenced the present resurgence of xenophobia. At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Donald Trump referred to the virus as the “Chinese Virus” in a Tweet, proving that the culture of racism could also be deployed politically and illustrated the scope of influence those in power had in spreading anti-Asian views. The country saw an immediate spike of racist prejudice against all types of Asian Americans, even Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. 

According to an analysis conducted by the US Census Bureau’s experimental Household Pulse Survey, “non-Hispanic Asian households were twice as likely as non-Hispanic white populations to report not having enough to eat amid the pandemic because they were afraid to go or didn’t want to go out to buy food,”. The cause of Covid-19 had become synonymous with east Asians; as a result, many would have somewhat starved than leave the safety of their home, where they could face unexpected physical or verbal abuse. 

On 19 March 2020, Three groups created the Stop AAPI Hate campaign in response to this alarming escalation in xenophobia and bigotry: the AAPI Equity Alliance, the Chinese for Affirmative Action and the Asian American Studies Department of San Francisco State University. They set their mission to “advance equity, justice, and power by dismantling systemic racism and building a multiracial movement to end anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander hate” by providing an accessible way of self-reporting incidents while galvanising public awareness. Within the first week of launching their official website, there were an average of approximately 100 self-reported hate incidents, with Asian-American women reporting 2.3 times more than men. It has become a valuable resource for Asian Americans, especially as they are among the least likely to report hate crimes.

History has proven that American society continues to scapegoat minorities of all kinds, from race to religion to sexual orientation. It is crucial to acknowledge and address the systematic racism against Asians in America, or else these violent attacks – both physical and verbal – will continue.