It took the mass murder of six Asian women in Atlanta
last week to draw national attention to what Asian
Americans have been warning about since the wake
of the pandemic: anti-Asian violence. The incident reflects an under-recognized history of anti-Asian violence and discrimination in this country that dates
back more than 150 years. This needs to change.
Asian Americans must become central to the discourse
on race in America. For the country to “care” about the
outcry by Asian Americans, the public needs to understand how America got to this point.
This moment of crisis has been building over the past
pandemic year. Many consider the recent anti-Asian
violence and harassment a consequence of the former Trump administration’s “China virus” and “Kung
flu” rhetoric. Research shows that
Americans exposed to such racist
rhetoric are more likely to perceive Asian Americans as foreign
and un-American, which can stoke
greater hostility toward Asians. An
AAPI Data survey conducted just
after the Atlanta shooting shows
that 71% of Asian American adults
worry about COVID-19–related
hate crimes, harassment, and discrimination, 21% of whom worry
very often. The survey data also
suggest that upwards of 2 million
Asian American adults have experienced anti-Asian hate incidents since the onset of
COVID-19: 1 in 8 Asian American adults in 2020, and 1
in 10 in the first quarter of 2021.
U.S. history is fraught with anti-Asian violence, misogyny, nativist discrimination, and legal exclusion, all of
which are often absent in textbooks and university curricula. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act emerged from the
earlier Page Act, which excluded presumed immoral Chinese women from immigrating. Without their wives, male
Chinese laborers who helped build the transcontinental
railroad segregated into tight-knit bachelor communities
that became the precursors of today’s Chinatowns. Legal
exclusion was coupled with violence. One of the largest
mass lynchings in American history took place in Los
Angeles in 1871, when 19 Chinese residents—10% of the
city’s Chinese population—were killed by a white mob. In
the Rock Springs Massacre of 1885, white miners killed
28 Chinese workers, wounded 15, and expelled hundreds
more before setting their living quarters on fire.
The nativist prejudice that white settlers imparted, and
the legal exclusion that Chinese endured, engineered theery conditions that would shape societal perceptions of
the Chinese in the 19th century as economic threats, clannish, untrustworthy, foreign, and immoral. These views
would continue to mark Chinese Americans and evolve
into the racial stereotypes of Asian Americans today—
untrustworthy, passive, demure, hypersexual, and America’s insidious “model minority.”
Academia has not been immune to the effects of this
history on institutional racism, bias, exclusion, and violence. COVID-19–related anti-Asian messages and harassment have been reported on college campuses across
the country. Chinese American scientists have come under federal scrutiny for their associations with China
under the 2018 China Initiative, which may jeopardize
U.S.–Chinese scientific collaborations. And despite being the group most likely to attend
college, Asian Americans make up
a mere 2% of college presidents.
Asian Americans are the least likely
among all women to be promoted to
leadership positions and make up
less than 1% of top earners at those
universities engaging in the highest
level of research activity. Anti-Asian
bias also affects students. In one
study, researchers sent emails with
names signaling race and gender
to 6548 professors, posing as prospective PhD students. Professors
were the least likely to respond to
those who had Chinese and Indian names.
If universities and precollege schools fail to teach the
history of Asian Americans in their curricula, we can expect bias and exclusion to perpetuate in our institutions.
Asian American student activists in the 1960s understood
this. They coined the term “Asian American” as a unifying
political, pan-ethnic identity to advocate for Asian American Studies and build coalitions with African Americans,
Latino/as, and women. Many Americans are unaware of
this history, including Asian Americans, most of whom
are immigrants who arrived after 1965. Today, Asian
Americans encompass more than two dozen national
origin groups with vastly different migration histories,
languages, and socioeconomic statuses. Yet during the
pandemic, they have shared a common fear of harassment, discrimination, and anti-Asian violence.
Violence and bigotry against Asian Americans have
finally received national attention. We must make Asian
Americans central to the country’s discussions of race,
and reckon with the history of Asian America.
–Jennifer Lee and Tiffany J. Huang