YAPPIE EXCLUSIVE—Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) advocacy groups and researchers have received over 2,000 individual reports of coronavirus-related harassment and discrimination since late February, according to a tally provided to The Yappie by Marita Etcubañez, the director of strategic initiatives at Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC in Washington.
A trio of websites maintained by AAJC, OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON), and Chinese for Affirmative Action (CAA) received at least 2,120 reports of hate incidents ranging from verbal harassment to vandalism to physical assaults. The news site NextShark, which created its own form, collected roughly 100 additional reports, Editor-in-Chief Waylae Gregoire told The Yappie on Thursday.
A majority of the incidents were documented as panic over the coronavirus exploded in the U.S., with CAA and A3PCON’s Stop AAPI Hate tracker collecting 1,700 reports in a six-week period beginning on March 19.
The numbers provided by the groups show the disturbing consequences of anti-Asian sentiment but represent only a fraction of the COVID-19 related discrimination playing out across the country, since hate incidents are often underreported by Asian Americans. An April survey conducted by Ipsos for the Center for Public Integrity found more than 30% of Americans have witnessed someone blaming Asian people for the coronavirus pandemic; 60% of Asian Americans “told Ipsos they’ve seen the same behavior.”
Desperate calls for action
AAPI groups have been pressing President Donald Trump to step up after the FBI warned of a potential surge in hate crimes in a March intelligence report, which cited the stabbing of a Hmong American family in Midland, Texas. The Center for Public Integrity also found that the Trump administration’s efforts to prevent backlash against Asian Americans “[pale] in comparison to actions taken during the SARS outbreak and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.”
180 civil rights organizations urged the White House to establish a task force “to investigate and protect the civil rights of AAPIs” and more than a dozen Democratic senators have sent letters to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the federal agency charged with advising the President and Congress on civil rights enforcement, agreed to the senators’ demands to issue guidance to federal agencies on preventing and addressing anti-Asian racism and xenophobia last month.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice insists that it will not tolerate any hate-motivated acts of violence.
“The Justice Department will prosecute hate crimes and violations of anti-discrimination laws against Asian Americans, Asians, and others to the fullest extent of the law,” Assistant Attorney General of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division Eric Dreiband wrote in a Washington Examiner op-ed.
