A Surge of Violent Crime Against Asian Americans Sparks Fear of Renewed Racism
Similar episodes and rising tensions have been reported in Chicago’s Asian American communities since the pandemic’s early days. Like members of the Asian American community, I’ve seen this before.
I remember when Vincent Chin in Detroit was killed in a 1982 hate crime by two white autoworkers who blamed Asians for the loss of their auto factory jobs to Japanese competitors. Adding to the senselessness of the racial attack, Chin was Chinese American. The defendants pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to three years probation and a $3,000 fine. Neither spent a day in jail.
Chin’s death had a galvanizing impact on civil rights activism that reminded me of the energizing effects that Emmett Till’s racist murder in 1955 had on the civil rights movement and Matthew Shepard, killed in Wyoming in 1998, had in energizing the LGBT rights movements.
Every Chinese American I’ve talked to recently cited former President Donald Trump’s insistence on calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus” or the “Kung-Flu” as problematic. But others have done the same, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who in March called it “the Chinese coronavirus.”
One leading group, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, has begun to offer “bystander intervention” and conflict de-escalation training to help all of us become advocates for Asians and other targets of discrimination.
Andy Kang, AAAJ’s executive director in Chicago, recounted recent meetings he had with Muslim community leaders who reminded him that we should not expect this current racist wave to blow over soon.
“Twenty years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, they told me, they’re still getting anti-Muslim hate incidents directly related to that single event,” he said. “It’s not the next year or two but more like a decade, at least, that we can expect this problem to still be with us.”
Indeed, the most hopeful thought I have was given by Amanda Gorman in her wonderful presidential inauguration poem. “Somehow,” she said, “we’ve weathered and witnessed. A nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished …” Yes, we still have a lot of work to do.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
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