The Anti-Asian Hate Crime

LEARN #1 | AMERICAN RACISM IN THE TIME OF PLAGUES

“The United States has a long history of blaming Asian immigrants for outbreaks of disease. Every time, democracy and public health suffer.”

Andrew Lanham, a J.D. candidate at the University of Michigan Law School and a Ph.D. candidate in English at Yale University, wrote an article for Boston Review and traced the historical past of blaming racial minorities for ongoing social crisis in America. The association of a group of people to a disease is as political as medical.

It has to be noted that this article focused on the pathologization of Chinese Americans, yet the Asian community is an umbrella term for people from diverse national origins. Therefore, this article should only serve as a lens, through which certain aspects of current anti-Asian hatred can be understood, but not be viewed as a comprehensive review of racist past of America.

LEARN #2 | FETISHIZED ASIAN WOMEN

Fetishization of women started as early as from the Page Act of 1875, which "systematically prevented Chinese women from immigrating to the US, under the pretense that they were prostitutes."

“American service members, while abroad for US military activities (including the Philippine-American War, World War II and the Vietnam War), have a history of soliciting sex workers and patronizing industries that encouraged sex trafficking... denigrating stereotypes of Asian women as sexual deviants, which were memorialized on screen.”

The article, Fetishized, sexualized and marginalized, Asian women are uniquely vulnerable to violence, from CNN briefly outlined how perceptions of Asian women as submissive and erotic are constructed in the US and eventually served as an excuse for mass killing today.

LEARN #3 | EVANGELICALISM AND RACISM

“Evangelical purity culture is, of course, grounded in the specifically American inflection of white supremacism, with the sexualization of brown and especially Black bodies... White supremacy holds Asians in a weird light, complimenting them on being the ‘good minority,’ while also devaluing women into sex objects who exist for their pleasure."

Chrissy Stroop is a Senior Research Associate with the University of Innsbruck’s Postsecular Conflicts project. As an ex-evangelical writer, speaker, and advocate, she wrote an article for Religion Dispatches and addressed the relationship between evangelicalism and anti-asian sentiment.

ACT | STOP AAPI HATE

Our communities stand united against racism. Hate against Asian American Pacific Islander communities has risen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through this website, you can report hate crimes against the Asian community in 12 languages.

GIVE | COMMUNITY ACTION FUND

CommUNITY Action Fund is raising $1 MILLION to give back to local and national community organizations that are providing pivotal services and programs for our community. This includes programs related to mental health, better protections for our elderly, AAPI representation, solidarity-building and more.