Anti-Asian hate crimes increased 149% between 2019 and 2020 in 16 of America’s largest cities. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified many issues, and prejudice against people of Asian descent is no exception with politicians using harmful terms such as the “China virus.”
Due to various recent acts of violence against Asians, including the murder of six Asian women in Atlanta, #StopAsianHate began trending on various social media platforms. However, this fight is not anything new.
Racism and prejudice in any form should be concerning to all of us, and we should all be working to eradicate it in our own lives and communities.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC) is one organization that has numerous resources relating to the reporting of hate incidents and educating about anti-Asian racism and bystander intervention. Hollaback!, an organization dedicated to ending harassment in all forms, created a bystander intervention guide.
In an article written by Jeremy Lin, a nine-year NBA basketball veteran, with Patricia Sun, CEO of JLIN Marketing, Lin writes, “…we have to keep on pushing and not lose hope. Hope that we can all set aside our egos for a moment to see where we might have casually dehumanized someone else. Hope that we would listen when a group of people share their pain and seek to empathize before we dismiss. Hope that we would each, whatever our race, one day be able to be known in the fullness of who we are.”
We must continue to hope, and we must continue to act.
Stay safe and stay positive,
Amy Enberg
Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Compass
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