asian american invisibility
Although exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Asian racism in the United States is not a new phenomenon. It has existed in different forms since the beginning of Asian immigration to North America. From the Yellow Peril narrative and immigration bans to more contemporary manifestations in the “model minority” myth and perpetual foreigner stereotypes, anti-Asian racism has underpinned American society for centuries (Chou 2014, 6). Anti-Asian sentiment is so deeply ingrained in the American consciousness, that most of the time, people blatantly ignore racism and discrimination against Asian Americans or completely disregard it / choose to invalidate it. Despite numerous accounts of anti-Asian hate, police seldom recognize it and prosecute it.
In Chapter 2 of Myth of the Model Minority Chou et al. (2014) argues that Asian American invisibility, which is largely due to the model minority myth, makes it difficult for people to see how and when Asian Americans are being discriminated against. Chou emphasizes that historically Asian American discrimination in the United States has gone unrecognized, and unprosecuted by the law (Chou 2014, 38).
In Chapter 2 of Hwang (2001)’s Anti-Asian Violence in North America: Asian American and Asian Canadian Reflections on Hate, Healing, and Resistance, Hwang addresses the relationship that anti-Asian violence has with Asian Americans. While external negligence of anti-Asian discrimination and racism lives in the American consciousness, this same mindset is internalized by many Asian Americans (Hwang 2001, 17). In Chapter 2 of “The Interrelationship between, anti-Asian Violence and Asian America”, Hwang et al. exemplifies the internalization of Asian invisibility through two main narratives. The first being the narrative of a Korean immigrant, named Sylvia. In her interview, she reflects that she originally tended to consistently brush off racism, and “never thought she experienced much racism in the ivory tower setting” (Hwang 2001, 20). She never made a big deal about it because she didn’t really understand it, and when her kids told her they were facing racism at school, she always told them to “‘just to work harder and prove to everyone else that they were superior’” (Hwang 2001, 20). This mindset seems to suggest that Asian Americans are both informing stereotypes and reinforcing externalized stereotypes about Asians. This is especially seen when Sylvia says that the “Asian work ethic [is] to work twice as hard when confronted with racist behavior” (Hwang 2001, 20). Sylvia did not believe she had experienced any racism, until she was physically assaulted because someone assumed that she was Chinese or belonged to Chinese descent.
After this incident, Sylvia, had a jarring change in her perspective. She was appalled that immediately after her assault, a nearby tourist couple asked if she spoke English, instead of trying to help her, which added literal insult to injury. Sylvia was faced with both verbal and physical discrimination and violence. As a premature resolution, there was little action from the police department in prosecuting and investigating the person who was responsible. She was essentially told that “the investigation was not worth [their] while [...] and [to] simply let old wounds heal” (Hwang 2001, 21). So after being told that “it was hopeless to pursue a random assault” Sylvia was forced to take matters into her own hands, and made efforts to put her story into the media. This is just one example of how violence against Asian Americans has failed to be recognized properly.
The second section of Chapter 2 highlights another narrative regarding anti-Anti Asian hate and Asian invisibility in the Sunset District of San Francisco. The main incident that is addressed, is the vandalism of several Asian-owned business storefronts. Swastikas had been engraved on their storefront windows. The business owners were not aware that this was a racially motivated crime and thought that they were just being vandalized like every other day. Furthermore, they did not report it because they did not understand the symbol’s significance.
After the press got involved, the police department failed to fully acknowledge that the crime was anti-Asian in nature and claimed that “[the] acts of vandalism were the acts of juveniles and therefore, should not be taken seriously” (Hwang 2001, 22). It was not until after “the acts were dismissed and somehow excused as childish pranks and [...] not worthy of community discussion and intervention” that the police revised their statement, and decided to look a bit further into the case (Hwang 2001, 22). After arresting some youth in the area, and claiming they were responsible for the vandalism, they rejected the idea that the vandalism could be considered a hate crime, because one of the suspects was Filipino, so the police concluded that it clearly was not a hate crime. Then weeks later, the police sent out a report saying that the juveniles had nothing to do with the swastikas, but it received little attention. One community member organized a volunteer clean-up day, and the community came out to help with cleanup of the graffiti and sweep the streets. Although this effort showed solidarity in the effect of showing that hate crimes are not to be tolerated in that area, little was done to address the underlying tensions that the community was having, which led to the existence of the targeted hate crimes. The community held a town hall, to address the underlying issues, but unfortunately a lot of the merchants, and the affected shop owners were not present at the meeting and able to speak up about their concerns. Hwang states that in a loosely controlled forum, the audience had come full circle in scape-goating the victims as the perpetrators (Hwang 2001, 24). The meeting became specifically focused on the crimes instead of hate, and community members expressed that they felt the “real problem contributing to the rise in crime was the fact that the community had changed so much that they did not feel that this was their community anymore” (Hwang 2001, 33). Hwang also argues that the changing character of the neighborhood that people were upset about was a euphemism for the rapid growth of the Asian American community in the Sunset district, which some say at the expense of the older Jewish Russian community.
Despite the historical lack of recognition of anti-Asian hate and violence, it seems that considering the pandemic, there are more reports of anti-Asian violence and hate incidents. However, it is too early to tell if these incidents are being investigated and prosecuted or not. According to the 2002 Audit of Violence against Asian Pacific Americans Tenth Annual Report, 275 bias-motivated hate crimes against Asian Pacific Americans were documented (NAPALC 2022). The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, as well as STOP AAPI Hate, find that underreporting is a serious problem regarding looking at whether or not Asian Americans are experiencing hate and anti-Asian bias and violence. NAPALC finds that there has been a decrease in bias-motivated hate crimes against Asian Pacific Americans, however it is unclear why. The study suggests that due to resources being devoted to anti- terrorism activities, less resources had been allotted to dealing with hate crimes. In light of the coronavirus pandemic, it is difficult to get a full perspective on how many hate crimes Asian Americans experience.
STOP AAPI has analyzed reports of hate incidents, however they do not differentiate between incidents and hate crimes. STOP AAPI (2021) reports that physical assault compromises the third large category of total reported incidents, at 16%. With the total number of incidents being 10,370, this would suggest that there have been at least 1,659 hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. And that is only accounting for the reported ones. With this context in mind, data from STOP AAPI Hate and the NAPALC suggests that hate crimes against Asian Americans have increased by more than 500% since 2002. STOP AAPI (2021) finds that the number of hate incidents reported [..] increased from 6,603 to 9,081 during April—June 2021.
In Chapter 2 of Myth of the Model Minority Chou et al. (2014) argues that Asian American invisibility, which is largely due to the model minority myth, makes it difficult for people to see how and when Asian Americans are being discriminated against. Chou emphasizes that historically Asian American discrimination in the United States has gone unrecognized, and unprosecuted by the law (Chou 2014, 38).
In Chapter 2 of Hwang (2001)’s Anti-Asian Violence in North America: Asian American and Asian Canadian Reflections on Hate, Healing, and Resistance, Hwang addresses the relationship that anti-Asian violence has with Asian Americans. While external negligence of anti-Asian discrimination and racism lives in the American consciousness, this same mindset is internalized by many Asian Americans (Hwang 2001, 17). In Chapter 2 of “The Interrelationship between, anti-Asian Violence and Asian America”, Hwang et al. exemplifies the internalization of Asian invisibility through two main narratives. The first being the narrative of a Korean immigrant, named Sylvia. In her interview, she reflects that she originally tended to consistently brush off racism, and “never thought she experienced much racism in the ivory tower setting” (Hwang 2001, 20). She never made a big deal about it because she didn’t really understand it, and when her kids told her they were facing racism at school, she always told them to “‘just to work harder and prove to everyone else that they were superior’” (Hwang 2001, 20). This mindset seems to suggest that Asian Americans are both informing stereotypes and reinforcing externalized stereotypes about Asians. This is especially seen when Sylvia says that the “Asian work ethic [is] to work twice as hard when confronted with racist behavior” (Hwang 2001, 20). Sylvia did not believe she had experienced any racism, until she was physically assaulted because someone assumed that she was Chinese or belonged to Chinese descent.
After this incident, Sylvia, had a jarring change in her perspective. She was appalled that immediately after her assault, a nearby tourist couple asked if she spoke English, instead of trying to help her, which added literal insult to injury. Sylvia was faced with both verbal and physical discrimination and violence. As a premature resolution, there was little action from the police department in prosecuting and investigating the person who was responsible. She was essentially told that “the investigation was not worth [their] while [...] and [to] simply let old wounds heal” (Hwang 2001, 21). So after being told that “it was hopeless to pursue a random assault” Sylvia was forced to take matters into her own hands, and made efforts to put her story into the media. This is just one example of how violence against Asian Americans has failed to be recognized properly.
The second section of Chapter 2 highlights another narrative regarding anti-Anti Asian hate and Asian invisibility in the Sunset District of San Francisco. The main incident that is addressed, is the vandalism of several Asian-owned business storefronts. Swastikas had been engraved on their storefront windows. The business owners were not aware that this was a racially motivated crime and thought that they were just being vandalized like every other day. Furthermore, they did not report it because they did not understand the symbol’s significance.
After the press got involved, the police department failed to fully acknowledge that the crime was anti-Asian in nature and claimed that “[the] acts of vandalism were the acts of juveniles and therefore, should not be taken seriously” (Hwang 2001, 22). It was not until after “the acts were dismissed and somehow excused as childish pranks and [...] not worthy of community discussion and intervention” that the police revised their statement, and decided to look a bit further into the case (Hwang 2001, 22). After arresting some youth in the area, and claiming they were responsible for the vandalism, they rejected the idea that the vandalism could be considered a hate crime, because one of the suspects was Filipino, so the police concluded that it clearly was not a hate crime. Then weeks later, the police sent out a report saying that the juveniles had nothing to do with the swastikas, but it received little attention. One community member organized a volunteer clean-up day, and the community came out to help with cleanup of the graffiti and sweep the streets. Although this effort showed solidarity in the effect of showing that hate crimes are not to be tolerated in that area, little was done to address the underlying tensions that the community was having, which led to the existence of the targeted hate crimes. The community held a town hall, to address the underlying issues, but unfortunately a lot of the merchants, and the affected shop owners were not present at the meeting and able to speak up about their concerns. Hwang states that in a loosely controlled forum, the audience had come full circle in scape-goating the victims as the perpetrators (Hwang 2001, 24). The meeting became specifically focused on the crimes instead of hate, and community members expressed that they felt the “real problem contributing to the rise in crime was the fact that the community had changed so much that they did not feel that this was their community anymore” (Hwang 2001, 33). Hwang also argues that the changing character of the neighborhood that people were upset about was a euphemism for the rapid growth of the Asian American community in the Sunset district, which some say at the expense of the older Jewish Russian community.
Despite the historical lack of recognition of anti-Asian hate and violence, it seems that considering the pandemic, there are more reports of anti-Asian violence and hate incidents. However, it is too early to tell if these incidents are being investigated and prosecuted or not. According to the 2002 Audit of Violence against Asian Pacific Americans Tenth Annual Report, 275 bias-motivated hate crimes against Asian Pacific Americans were documented (NAPALC 2022). The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, as well as STOP AAPI Hate, find that underreporting is a serious problem regarding looking at whether or not Asian Americans are experiencing hate and anti-Asian bias and violence. NAPALC finds that there has been a decrease in bias-motivated hate crimes against Asian Pacific Americans, however it is unclear why. The study suggests that due to resources being devoted to anti- terrorism activities, less resources had been allotted to dealing with hate crimes. In light of the coronavirus pandemic, it is difficult to get a full perspective on how many hate crimes Asian Americans experience.
STOP AAPI has analyzed reports of hate incidents, however they do not differentiate between incidents and hate crimes. STOP AAPI (2021) reports that physical assault compromises the third large category of total reported incidents, at 16%. With the total number of incidents being 10,370, this would suggest that there have been at least 1,659 hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. And that is only accounting for the reported ones. With this context in mind, data from STOP AAPI Hate and the NAPALC suggests that hate crimes against Asian Americans have increased by more than 500% since 2002. STOP AAPI (2021) finds that the number of hate incidents reported [..] increased from 6,603 to 9,081 during April—June 2021.