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I don’t want to spoil the party, but amid the hopeful signs that we might — just might — be turning the corner on the coronavirus pandemic, let us not overlook how much COVID-19-related racial rhetoric has fueled a pandemic of hate crimes too.

With a guarded sense of relief, I welcomed the news that Oakland, Calif., police arrested a suspect in connection with the brutal and cowardly attack of a 91-year-old man in that city’s Chinatown.

And, as an African American, I also was particularly appalled to see in viral video of the incident that the man who walked up behind the elderly victim, pushed him to the ground and kept on walking was a Black man. I didn’t need to be reminded that racism is not a malady for whites only, but it’s the truth. The truth may not always set us free, but it’s the best place to start.

That’s why a wide range of Asian American activists, Hollywood stars and allies have been trying to draw attention to the reported surge in violent attacks and everyday insults aimed at Asian Americans since the COVID-19 rise.

“Crime against Asian Americans was not nonexistent before but it was more random, not tied to a national trend,” Mabel Menard, a Chinese American and president of Chicago’s chapter of OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, told me. “In a way, COVID gives people (a sense of) permission to act out their prejudices.

“Throughout history there’s always a group that gets blamed for everything bad and right now it seems we’re the target. With COVID, they’re blaming China and by proxy blaming Asian Americans. Less noticed is how a lot of Asians have come down with COVID too.”

Among other episodes caught on camera in less than a week, an elderly Thai man was attacked and later died in San Francisco, a Vietnamese woman was assaulted and robbed of $1,000 in San Jose, and a Filipino man was attacked with a box cutter on a New York City subway.

Although racial motives to these crimes were not explicit enough to lead to hate crime charges, the apparent surge in such cases during these pandemic times has raised understandable alarm, particularly among Asian Americans.

Such was the case in Chicago, when hundreds of members of the Chinese American community turned out in December to mourn the death of Shuai Guan, a 33-year-old father, who was killed in a failed carjacking attempt.

In an attempt to measure and analyze episodes of hate, violence, harassment and discrimination, a joint effort by the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, Chinese for Affirmative Action and the Asian American Studies Department of San Francisco State University last March launched the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center, referring to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. By October, the organization’s most recent update, they received 2,583 reports nationwide.

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