How to Support AAPI Organizations and Practice Allyship in New York City
On April 22nd, the U.S. Senate passed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, a bill aimed towards addressing the recent surge in discrimination and hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders throughout the country.. A study from California State University at San Bernardino found that New York City saw the largest increase in anti-AAPI crimes in the last year, from 3 such reported incidents in 2019 to 28 in 2020- an over 800% surge.
In March, a public housing worker was officially suspended for sending a slur-ridden letter to three Vietnamese tenants living in Manhattan. The letter was an official copy sent from the Department of Housing and Preservation, with an anti-Asian slur in the letter in lieu of the tenant’s actual names.
Social justice advocates and concerned New Yorkers are demanding answers for how this racist letter managed to go unedited through a large city bureaucracy- additionally, the residents in question who received the letter are demanding to find out who else may have seen it before it was delivered to them. On a wider scale, New Yorkers have also witnessed multiple hate crimes on AAPI citizens on social media, but few of these cases receive wider media attention. The recent uptick in hate crimes and discrimination against AAPI Americans has exposed a blind spot on how we approach racial and social justice, and how racist perceptions of Asian Americans speak to a larger failure to address a systemic racial hierarchy that harms people of color across the country.
A Surge in Hate Crimes During the Coronavirus Pandemic
The bill recently passed in the Senate was named so because of the racist association between Asian Americans and the spread of COVID-19, a lie perpetrated by former President Trump and prominent Republicans looking to shift the blame for botching the handling of the pandemic away from the Trump Administration and onto China. The result of this fear-mongering led to an increase in microaggressions and verbal attacks against Asian Americans, as well as violent hate crimes.
Hyeouk Chris Hahm, a professor at the Boston University School of Social Work, conducted a study that involved examining the wellbeing of 212 Asian American young adults- Hahm found that nearly for 70% of those in the study, “either they or their family members were exposed to some violence or microaggression.” This included mockingly referring to the coronavirus as the “Wuhan Virus”, “Kung Flu”, or a number of racist nicknames the Trump Administration associated with the virus to connect it to China.
In response to anti-Asian discrimination caused by misinformation and racist propaganda spread during the Pandemic, the Senate moved to expedite the process through which the Justice Department processes hate crimes, as well as establishing communications with local law enforcement and city governments to assess how to more easily identify hate crimes.
The “Model Minority” Myth
The Federal Government believes that municipalities need a better grasp on how to identify and raise awareness of hate crimes, particularly those against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Likewise, many AAPI advocates, including Jo-Ann Yoo, Executive Director of the Asian American Federation, have emphasized many local officials are not moving quickly enough to identify the rising occurrences of hate crimes against AAPI residents.
A report from the New York Times found that local activists believe that hate crimes against AAPI New Yorkers are underreported. In February, an unidentified 36 year old man of Asian descent was stabbed in Lower Manhattan. The perpetrator was charged, but not with a hate crime. There are a number of reasons as to why hate crimes against AAPI New Yorkers may go unreported- for example, New York City is home to an estimated 3.1 immigrants, many of whom are first generation. First generation immigrants, as well as undocumented immigrants, about 560,000 of whom are estimated to live in New York City, are hesitant about approaching the police.
A larger obstacle, however, in the process of properly identifying discrimination and hate crimes against Asian Americans is the “model minority” dilemma; the perception that Asian Americans are generally more well off, smarter, more productive and therefore, more integrated into American society than other minority groups in the country completely ignores a long history of violent anti-Asian discrimination in the United States and leaves modern Asian Americans in an invisible middle ground between an ethnic group that still faces systemic oppression and an un-oppressed, privileged population unaffected by white supremacy.
According to Hyeouk Chris Hahm, the myth of the model minority often affects Asian Americans’ propensity to seek help, whether against outright discrimination or even mental health treatment. She also argues that the idea of Asian Americans as model minorities comes into contradiction with the intersectional nature of social justice- to quote from the same profile on Hahm from BU Today:
“Hahm is convinced that the model minority stereotype can create a harmful dynamic in the broader context of other ethnic groups. It doesn’t just set Asian Americans apart from other groups, she says, it also can place them at odds with other groups… They worry about the shootings of Asian women in Atlanta, which is potentially a hate crime, but there is a feeling that Asian Americans are left alone to deal with these problems.’”
How to Support the AAPI Community
The recent bill passed by the Senate is a necessary jumpstart to state and local officials in processing and recognizing hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. However, a community-based effort is also necessary to take on the systemic forces that put AAPI New Yorkers in a vulnerable and often invisible position.
There are several existing organizations, such as Mekong NYC, which organizes on behalf of the East Asian community in the Bronx and the South Asian Council for Social Services, which helps underserved AAPI New Yorkers find access to healthcare and daily meals. Below are a number of organizations that you can donate to or volunteer on behalf of.
Donate or Volunteer:
South Asian Council for Social Services
The Korean Community Services of NYC
As a citizen of New York, it is important to be an active ally to AAPI New Yorkers. If you are witness to what you believe to be a hate crime or discrimination against an AAPI New Yorker, film or document it so that local officials will have an easier time establishing a racialized motive and be able to properly classify the attack as a hate crime.
