The Rise in Anti-Asian Hate in the Context of the Global Pandemic by Giles Xu

Most people are probably familiar with the recent Atlantic spa shooting, in which eight people have died, six of whom were Asian-American women. While many people are focusing on the event specifically, I think there is something more serious to discuss here; the often overlooked discrimination against the Asian community.

The sheriff’s deputy, who was excused from being the spokesman regarding the issue, defended the shooter as having a “really bad day”. His anti-Asian sentiment can be traced back to a racist post that he made about the Asian community a year preceding the event. Even with all this evidence about his incompetency to serve as an officer of justice, he was only dismissed from this case which is tantamount to an unspoken green pass for his behaviour as long as it does not draw any media attention.

Many democratic newspapers blame Trump’s insensitive comment of calling COVID the “Chinese-Virus”. This may have contributed largely to the increased rate of hate crimes being committed. Nevertheless, the expletives are far from the real issue here: the long-suppressed and ready to explode discrimination against the Asian community. People usually view the Asian community as the model minority and discriminate against them to a lesser degree in comparison to other groups. This is exactly one of the problems, there is black history month, indigenous recognition, etc. but Asians are rarely recognized or compensated for the discrimination they go through. For example, standardized test score requirements for college admissions are usually the highest among Asian students. It is preposterous that hard work was rewarded with raised bars. Many people argue that cheating is rampant in Asia, but they fail to realize that cheating is prevalent all over the world. The only difference is that any culture other than the mainstream one is being scrutinized for flaws.

While we are mourning for the death of the victims in the shooting, it is important to emphasize the underlying systematic racism against Asian that has been continued for decades.