The New York Times
A tense lunar new year for the bay area after attacks on Asian Americans
The videos are graphic and shocking. In January, a local television station showed footage of a young man running towards, then pushing violently to the ground, a man identified as Vicha Ratanapakdee, 84, who had gone for a morning walk in the neighborhood of Anza Vista, in San Francisco. He died later. Another video shows a 91-year-old man in Oakland’s Chinatown neighborhood being pushed back onto the sidewalk cement in an apparently unprovoked attack. Subscribe to the New York Times newsletter The Morning. The attacks quickly reinvigorated the indignation, fear and hurt that simmered in a wave of anti-Asian violence and persecution that community leaders say was spurred at the start of the pandemic by ex-President Donald Trump’s rhetoric. who insisted on calling the coronavirus “China’s virus” or “Kung flu”. Carl Chan, president of the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, has recorded more than 20 assaults in the past two weeks in Oakland’s Chinatown alone. Many were not reported, Chan said, in part because it may take hours for the police to arrive. “Our elderly people are afraid to walk the streets themselves,” said Chan. Instagram articles and slideshows using a now familiar palette of pastels and bold letters have proliferated since then, warning of the rise in anti-Asian violence with shocking statistics and calls to confront racism against Asians with the urgency that animated a broad support for the Black Lives Matter movement. The violence comes as the Chinese community on Friday marks the Lunar New Year, a quiet celebration after an overwhelming year for banquet halls, restaurants and businesses that would normally be thrilled with the joy of the holiday. The pandemic hit San Francisco’s Chinatown, the largest and oldest in America, particularly hard. The lack of tourists; the wave of violent attacks and thefts; and the pandemic-related racism against Americans of Asian origin combined to exacerbate the economic pain felt in Chinatown. A measure of this year’s tense and moderate Chinese New Year celebrations was a scene from a park in San Francisco’s Chinatown on Thursday afternoon. Will Lex Ham, an actor who lives in New York, was helping to lead a neighborhood security patrol, handing out whistles to residents, as well as a Chinese pamphlet entitled “How to Report a Hate Crime”. In recent weeks, outrage over the attacks has increased. In early February, not long after leaders in Oakland’s Chinatown, along with Mayor Libby Schaaf, gave a press conference asking for help after a series of recent attacks against elderly Asian Americans, actor Daniel Dae Kim retweeted the video of the attack in the 91-year-old man, saying that such crimes “were ignored and even excused”. He and actor Daniel Wu offered a $ 25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. The California Asian Pacific Islands Legislative Caucus issued a statement condemning “an increase in hate crimes against innocent Americans in the Pacific Islands and Asia”, describing it as “a national emergency”. But while researchers say the leaders’ fiery statements can exacerbate racist behavior, experts say it is difficult to quantify hatred. Racism incidents can take many forms – such as being spit or spat, or being denied a ride. Counting such incidents requires victims to tell authorities or another organization what happened, which can be difficult when they may feel ashamed or distrustful of those authorities. A widely cited statistic, identifying a 1,900% increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans, appears to come from the New York City Police Department, which said that in 2019, only one anti-Asian incident was reported, compared to 20 in the first half of 2020, according to The Queens Chronicle. Stop AAPI Hate, an initiative formed in March with the aim of tracking and responding to incidents of violence and discrimination against Asian Americans and the Pacific Islands, received more than 2,800 reports of racism and discrimination against Asian Americans from March 19 to 31 from December. Of these, the vast majority, about 71%, were incidents of verbal harassment. Physical aggressions represented 8.7%. Russell Jeung, chairman of the Department of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University and one of the leaders of Stop AAPI Hate, said that according to the organization’s data, people aged 60 and over were disproportionately targets of physical violence, as well as like women. Jeung said it is not clear whether the recent attacks in the bay area were racially motivated, but it is likely that older people walking alone through the neighborhoods to shop may seem vulnerable. And, especially on holidays, they may be carrying cash. “We tend to see small increases in crime during the Lunar New Year, because people are shopping,” said Jeung. In another widely publicized incident earlier this month, a 64-year-old woman of Vietnamese descent had just left a bank with more than $ 1,000 in cash for the holiday when her purse was stolen. What is clear, said Jeung, is that Asian-American communities are suffering. And even with President Joe Biden’s new recognition – who last month signed a memorandum instructing federal agencies to explore ways to combat racism and xenophobia against Asian Americans and the Pacific Islands in the United States – there is more work to do Be done. “The community is alarmed and upset, and we demand justice,” said Jeung. San Francisco is not the only area in the country that has seen an increase in hate crimes against Americans of Asian origin. New York City saw a large increase in hate crimes against Asians in 2020 and most of the increase was directly related to the pandemic, police said. There were at least 28 hate crimes against Asians reported to the New York police, and all but four involved the assumption that the victim had the coronavirus, the police said. The crimes included assault, vandalism, theft and harassment. In August, the sharp rise in prejudice crimes against Asians led the New York Police Department to form a special task force to investigate them. “It was a huge increase, so much so that people started talking about it and we needed to resolve the situation,” said Deputy Inspector Stewart Loo, director of the task force. But in 2021, some community organizers and advocacy groups, including the Stop AAPI Hate, said that Asian Americans should look beyond asking for a greater police presence in the neighborhoods to obtain this justice. “We recognize that policing has led to the criminalization of communities of color and mass incarceration,” said Jeung. “Why perpetuate a system that doesn’t work?” People arrested in both the Chinatown incident in Oakland and the fatal attack on Ratanapakdee are black, which, according to community organizers, has sparked some anti-black racism, particularly as outrage over the attacks has spread on social media. Lai Wa Wu, director of policies and alliances for the Chinese Progressive Association, based in San Francisco, said that although the ex-president’s influence was a new factor, tensions between communities of color were not new, nor were the systemic inequalities that perpetuate them. There are no shortcuts to a deep and sustainable cure, Wu said. Progress requires investment in neighborhoods; boost access to education, housing and food; and having “difficult and honest conversations”. However, she said: “It has been really encouraging, in a sense, to see the level of solidarity and the amount of support, not only from our own communities in the city and across the bay, but also from the black and brown communities” . Younger activists took advantage of social media to raise awareness and circulate calls for action, including fundraising campaigns and voluntary initiatives. Eda Yu, 25, a half Chinese and half Indonesian writer and journalist, and her partner, Myles Thompson, a black designer, saw the news of the attacks and acknowledged the strong emotions they aroused. The couple, she said, “wanted to come together and create a project that had roots in solidarity.” They made a slideshow on Instagram that they hoped would serve as a protest piece of art and a resource for those who want to help. The first image, said Yu, should look like a poster. “Please! Protect our elders,” he says. “Support our Chinatowns. Support our communities.” The rest includes a schedule of incidents and a list of community organizations working in Asian communities in the bay area. They listed the each organization and created a GoFundMe to donate to all organizations at once; they would split the money and one of their employers said they would match the contributions. The initial goal was to raise $ 5,000. In two days, they raised $ 50,000. ” It was crazy, “said Yu. The couple is working with the director of API Equality – Northern California to distribute the funds fairly and transparently. Esther Kim, 22, said that when she learned that about $ 10,000 in cash, tablets and computers were stolen from his family’s small Korean restaurant, The Crew, in San Francisco’s Sunset district, it looked like it could have been the last in a long line of devastating scams. going to the restaurant, which his family treated as a second home, irreplaceable documents – Kim’s diploma, his mother’s handwritten diaries, immigration paperwork, receipts – were also gone. Her mother, a cancer survivor, continued to cook and serve take-out food, although she was at risk of becoming ill with the virus. Kim said his parents are not native English speakers, so navigating applications for pandemic relief and other government programs was a challenge. The invasion came amid what she said was a flurry of burglaries or similar robberies in the neighborhood. “At Sunset, there are a lot of Chinese grandparents who run family restaurants that accept cash only,” she said. Kim said her friends had persuaded her to open a GoFundMe for the restaurant and that her family was delighted and grateful for the show of support. While concerned about the apparent increase in crimes against Asian Americans, she said her family saw the theft as an extension of greater suffering in the pandemic. “We don’t see theft as a form of Asian American violence – no one was hurt; everything was replaceable, ”said Kim. “But we are in the crossfire.” This article was originally published in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company