California has committed $ 1.4 million to help Asian Americans report hate incidents and track attacks after a series of cases – including the murder of an 84-year-old man – has rocked the country in recent weeks.
Governor Gavin Newsom signed the AB85 pandemic budget bill, which includes $ 1.4 million for researchers at the Center for Asian American Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles and the Stop AAPI Hate website, in law at Tuesday.
California’s move to fund Asia-led community initiatives is markedly different from responses elsewhere in the country, such as New York City’s promise to increase policing.
The Stop AAPI Hate website was launched almost a year ago by a coalition of advocacy groups that the COVID-19 pandemic and its suspicious origins in Wuhan, China, led to a new outbreak of anti-Asian attacks and discrimination in the U.S.
The site tracks hate incidents and helps Asian Americans report them in a dozen languages. He recorded nearly 3,000 hate incidents in 2020 alone, although lawmakers believe this is a small fraction of the total, as many victims in Asian-American communities may not report due to the distrust of the government and the police.
“I think it’s only about a tenth, or even less, of the actual hate crimes that are taking place, because most people don’t even know that the site exists or don’t even know how to report a hate crime properly,” California member Phil Ting, who helped draft this piece of legislation, told ABC News.
“We have seen a huge increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans since the pandemic began,” said Ting. “I know that people are upset and angry and are looking for people to blame and, unfortunately, some people are blaming the wrong individuals and are blaming Asian Americans.”
“They are being attacked and murdered. They are being spit out,” he added. “It’s been awful.”
Ting said the emphasis on helping reporting and data collection can help galvanize more action to combat hate crimes.
“Unless you have data, it is difficult to say that it is a problem,” he said. “We all know that there are individual acts of racism. Unless you can prove that it is more common than a corner incident or a store incident, it is very difficult to justify a larger response.”
Ting deplored former President Donald Trump’s use of “China virus” or “Kung flu”, saying that these words of the highest government power are directly linked to the increase in anti-Asian racism.
“When you see an increase in hate speech, and I consider that speech, there is always an increase in hate crimes that comes with it,” said Ting. “Because it’s okay to say hateful things to Asian Americans who have nothing to do with this virus, and then it’s okay to attack Asian Americans.”
“The reason we are taking a firm stand on this is because hate crimes are not an attack on an individual, they are actually an attack on a community,” he said. “They were really made to put fear in a general community.”
Ting pleaded with victims to report the incidents on the Stop AAPI Hate website, which is trying to break some of the language barriers and other factors that can lead people not to report hate crimes, even if they have occurred several times.
“They just try to shrug their shoulders and just say, ‘Hey, this is just something I have to deal with and I’m going to move on’, although it is quite traumatic,” said Ting of many in the AAPI community. “I think in most cases, we just have people who would like to forget about the whole situation that happened and move on and do nothing. And I think that’s really why we are asking our community to please report it.”
Richard Pan, president of the Asian Pacific Islands Legislative Council of California, noted in a statement praising the new legislation that anti-Asian racism in the U.S. did not start with the coronavirus pandemic.
Pan cited a long legacy of xenophobia in the United States, from the China Exclusion Act of 1882 to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.
“I am grateful that California will fund data collection and research at UCLA to address racism and hatred against the API community,” added Pan.
The Stop AAPI Hate Coalition told ABC News that it learned last year that it is “absolutely critical” to invest in documenting, tracking and analyzing attacks in order to draw attention to the crisis.
“Funding allocated to Stop AAPI Hate will support the coalition’s efforts to address the devastating impact of anti-Asian hatred, including incident tracking and documentation to proactively prevent future incidents from occurring,” the coalition said in a statement. .
“The funding will also allow the coalition to expand the resources it can offer directly to members and families of the affected community, as well as to establish new partnerships with organizations, companies and governments to develop lasting policies and community solutions to hatred and violence,” he added. the statement.