LA EDIC AAPI Statement

University of Southern Indiana College of Liberal Arts
Equity Diversity and Inclusion Committee

Statement on COVID-19 & Anti-Asian Violence
October 2021

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread globally in March 2020, Anti-Asian sentiment, violence, and bigotry rose dramatically. It soon became clear that terminology like “Chinese Virus” or “China Virus” and “Kung-Flu” created destructive repercussions. As the New York Times reported on February 21, 2021, popular rhetoric in the news and on social media helped inflame hostilities by exposing beliefs connected to “this country’s long history of systemic and cultural racism against people of Asian descent.” In a study published in early March 2021 by the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center, over 3,795 incidents occurred from March 19, 2020-February 28, 2021. These included: verbal harassment (68.1%), shunning (20.5%), physical assaults (11.1%), civil rights violations (8.5%), and online harassment (6.8%). Additionally, a Pew Research Center survey found that 31% of Asian Americans reported experiencing racial slurs or racist jokes since the pandemic began, reporting that “a majority of Asian adults (58%) say it is more common for people to express racist or racially insensitive views about people who are Asian than it was before the coronavirus outbreak.”

These are not isolated incidents, but part of a disturbing trend connected to identifiable sources in public discourse. In addition, a disproportionate number of these incidents are directed specifically toward the elderly. Physical violence targeting elderly Asian Americans has roots in xenophobic language and beliefs within American society that connect to deeper histories of racism and discrimination against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Fears of a so-called “Yellow Peril” have sources in the late 19th century as Anglo-Americans sought to dehumanize and exclude Asians from the United States. Attacks against Chinese and Chinese Americans in the American West included lynchings, arson, discriminatory laws, and frequent practices of humiliation that became ingrained in American culture. Specific examples are all too easy to find:

• A March 3, 2021Yale Insights column by Michael W. Kraus details that San Francisco public health officials “blamed Chinese Americans for an outbreak of smallpox and fumigated Chinatown by force, with no impact on the actual outbreak. In 1900, a bubonic plague outbreak in Honolulu led health officials to set fire to 41 buildings specific to Chinatown.”

• Laws and regulations sought to limit immigration rights as well as economic opportunities, culminating in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.

• As one teaching resource via theUniversity of Illinois notes, popular culture also played a role as novels perpetuated the “Yellow Peril” myth by portraying Chinese characters that “were outwardly quiet and submissive but were inwardly sinister and cunning… Chinese immigrants were part of a secret plan to invade and take over the government of the United States replacing American culture with that of the Chinese.”

• Justifications for violence and discrimination also came in the form of beliefs that Chinese immigrants were an “inherently diseased and pestilent race” and that “disease was metaphor for all ways Chinese and other Asians were believed to be infecting and decimating America,” as University of Nevada Las Vegas Asian American Studies Programhas reported.

• AsPBS News Hour reported in April, 2020,  a result of American imperial expansion into the Philippines manifested racist depictions of Filipinos, including such notions that tropical diseases “festered” in “native bodies,” a way that colonial officials and doctors “justified continued U.S. colonial rule in the islands.”

• Fears of immigrant descendant groups acting as enemies of the state reemerged during WWII as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signedExecutive Order 9066 to incarcerate and place in internment camps any people under suspicion of acting against the United States. Most internees were of Japanese descent and were naturalized citizens or second and third generation Americans. Between 110,000 to 120,000 internees were relocated to camps until their release in January 1945. As a PBS documentary, Children of the Camps, illustrates, although losses for those detained amounted to a sum of $200-400million, it was not until the Ford administration in 1976 that an apology was made and not until 1988 that the survivors of the internment camps were paid a sum of $20,000 each.

• In the cold war, American intervention into Asian countries led to a diaspora of refugees, including a significant number of Vietnamese people fleeing from the fall ofSaigon in 1975. American popular culture responded to the trauma of the conflict in Vietnam by focusing on the losses of American soldiers and vilifying the Vietnamese people, including their former allies in South Vietnam, by depicting the Vietnamese as devoid of humanity in countless films.

• As aCNN op-ed in March, 2021 reports, Asian women are frequently stereotyped in American popular culture as “hypersexualized dragon ladies and young brides to be sold.” The March, 2021 murder of six Asian women in Atlanta is directly linked to a history of white supremacy, misogyny, and gender-based violence of Asian women.  

Education about this history is key to understanding the current environment and working towards a better community. As Learning for Justice explains, in order “to educate folks around racism associated with the coronavirus, we need to understand not only the virus but also the racism.” Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies, Jason Oliver Chang has also compiled a resource syllabus Treating Yellow Peril: Resources to Address Coronavirus Racism.  American History Professor Steph Hinnershitz has also organized resources for teachers interested in understanding the long history of Anti-Asian violence and bias, noting, “Asian American history is the history of the United States. Relegating it to a special field of study separate from the larger narrative of this country is a contributing factor to the violence that threatens so many today. Reading and learning is one small step that Americans can take to understanding the roots of this dangerous and dehumanizing trend.” Additional ways to respond to the current climate of AAPI discrimination can be found via the Asian Americans Advancing Justice group who recommend reporting incidents, engaging in bystander intervention trainings, and suggest resources to follow in order to become knowledgeable about the issues facing the community.

LA EDIC recognizes the fundamental contributions of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to the building of American society both historically and currently, and vows solidarity with our AAPI sisters and brothers. We hope and believe that we express the dominant view of the College of Liberal Arts and of the University of Southern Indiana community when we profess the following commitments:

1. As we do with our support of the Black community, we acknowledge the complicity of white supremacist ideologies in the oppression of AAPI people in America and our own community. We support all efforts to expose and dismantle such ideologies.
2. We specifically decry the public discourse of Asian blame in the current global pandemic, acknowledging that such discourse has no basis in fact but rather draws on a history of racist narratives regarding the Asian “other,” as well as recent fearmongering at the highest levels of public office.
3. We support increased education and awareness of the history of anti-AAPI discrimination, racially-targeted legislation from the Chinese Exclusion Act, to Executive Order 9066, to the incidents of violence in the 21st century. We believe that only by acknowledging our historical and current undesirable actions can we move forward in a positive manner.

Taking Action to understand the current environment and work towards a better community we ask that our community members:

• Acknowledge anti-Asian bias. While the prejudice and stereotypes toward AAPIs may vary due to circumstance or historical context (e.g., negative due to association with Covid-19, positive as a “model minority”), they are nonetheless dangerous because they serve to justify a system that maintains them as “others” who are thought of as separate and distinct from the White majority. This disregards their experiences and voice in society and opens the door to discrimination based on their group membership. 

• We may not hear about hate crimes against Asian Americans. As the Huffington Post has reported a “...crisis level of anti-Asian violence…seldom…breaks through into mainstream discourse.” This may be due to minimized reporting based on cultural expectations. For example, Asian Americans stated:
  • "We are used to minimizing our own pain because we don't want to rock the boat." and “Sometimes I wonder if the Asian-American experience is what it’s like when you’re thinking about everyone else, but nobody else is thinking about you.”

• Be an advocate. We need to create stronger norms in schools, work places, and in society that are supportive of AAPI individuals and communities. Speak out, confront others, and call out racism where you see it.  
• Donate to and support organizations that support AAPI communities.   
• Educate yourself on history of anti-Asian racism and xenophobia.

• Increase hope, curiosity, humility, persistence, and imagination by being aware and reflective.

• If you are a Bystander, don’t do nothing! Do something! Oppose normalizing acts of racism by speaking up: “if you’re not confronting, you’re enabling.”

• Move forward while gathering information and insight into the experiences of others.
  • Foster empathy
• Learn from mistakes by accepting feedback and adjusting based on new information and insight.