新冠期间亚裔歧视现象的抬头

 

The Increase of 

Asian Discrimination 

During Covid-19

 
 
 
 
        Imagine that you were going about your day as a worker when suddenly, an order comes down from corporate, laying you off because of Covid-19. Suddenly, your life is turned upside-down and you now have to depend on unemployment to make a living. No doubt, you would be frustrated and upset about your new circumstance. Across America, many working-class citizens suffered similar consequences due to the onset of quarantine. As a result, many have looked to find a victim to blame for the dramatic recent changes and release their anger often in deconstructive ways, as the virus originated from China. Thus hate crimes have become much more prevalent, particularly against the Asian population. 
 

 

 

        On March 16th, 2020, several teens vandalized a store in Chinatown in San Francisco. Xenophobic crimes such as this showcase how anger towards the quarantine situation clashed with racist beliefs, resulting in property damage to undeserving victims. Similar hate crimes, particularly against the Asian-American population include the elderly being spat on, and physical assaults against children. (Hrw.org)

 

        In fact, this recent increase of hate crimes against Asians is only a small portion of the hate that Asians have received in America that has roots as far back as in the 19th century, when 19 Chinese residents were killed by a mob in Los Angeles, or the Japanese internment camps during the second world war. (Harvard News) The violence as a result of arbitrary differences in culture and skin color has been a constant problem, and instead of focusing on fear and xenophobia, we should attempt to tackle the root of the problem instead of finding blame.

 

        This increase in hate crimes, particularly against Asians, can be seen in the large spike in hate crimes in March, during the onset of the pandemic. After processing the public dataset from the NY police department for the past two years, we made two graphs pertaining to the number of local anti-Asian hate crimes. We noticed that the rate of felonies and misdemeanors skyrocketed at the beginning, and gradually went back down to a normal level as the situation began to normalize. The increase of Anti-Asian Offences during 2020 in Figure 1 is a stark contrast to the relative peace in 2019 seen in Figure 2 when there was only one offense in New York. Even after the major peak during the onset of the pandemic, there were still many occurrences of both felonies and misdemeanors against Asians, suggesting that this is an ongoing problem. Although this study only views the hate crimes in NY, this provides an insight into the increase of anti-Asian hate crimes and shows that the quarantine situation still has repercussions that reverberate far beyond March of 2020.

 

 

        The scale of hate crimes has also greatly increased, as can be seen in a survey performed by the University of Toronto has shown that 11% of respondents have been the target of some sort of discrimination since the start of the pandemic, and others have shown symptoms of anxiety, fear, and even depression. (utoronto.ca)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

-References-

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/12/covid-19-fueling-anti-asian-racism-and-xenophobia-worldwide

https://www.utoronto.ca/news/anxiety-over-covid-19-negatively-impacting-canadian-workers-u-t-study

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/03/a-long-history-of-bigotry-against-asian-americans/

创建时间：2021-10-28 12:52
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