How Did Asian Americans Respond to Negative Stereotypes and Hate Crimes?

Mental health care among marginalized populations in the United States

The Name of Hate

Honoring Asian diversity by collecting Asian subpopulation data in health research.

Between Empirical Data and Anti-BlacknessA Critical Perspective on Anti-Asian Hate Crimes and Hate Incidents Janelle Wong (bio) and Rossina Zamora Liu (bio) After a US president (with connections to white nationalists), raised the specter of Yellow Peril and white shooters engaged in mass killings of Asian Americans in Atlanta and Indianapolis in the spring of 2021, white violence toward Asian Americans was difficult to ignore. Yet one leading story of anti-Asian violence in the wake of the pandemic is of an Asian American senior, often termed an "elder" in reporting, or young woman brutally beaten by a person who "appears to be Black." This story and others like it have circulated throughout the Asian American community via viral videos. The story has been the subject of calls for attention to "Black-Asian conflict" in the recent past.1 In March 2021, for example, Vox reporters noted that "Many of the attacks that have gained widespread attention have featured Black assailants, and have threatened to inflame tensions between Asian Americans and Black Americans."2 In April of 2021, a story by an NBC local affiliate in Seattle observed that "There have also been widely circulated videos that show Black men attacking Asian Americans."3 Meanwhile, survey and crime data suggest a different trend. Empirical data, for instance, shows that, compared to their share of the population, Asian American elders (over age 65) are underrepresented among victims of Asian American hate crimes and hate incidents. While women are more likely to report a hate incident to the StopAAPIHate reporting site, multiple sources of data show that men are as likely or more likely to experience a hate incident than women. Further, the vast majority of violence against Asian Americans [End Page 387] consists not of physical assaults but of verbal harassment and "shunning." The data also shows that Black offenders make up a minority of offenders. And, comparatively, Black Americans are up to ten times more likely to report being the victim of a hate crime than Asian Americans, and this pattern persists even in places like California, where Asian Americans comprise nearly double the population of Black Americans.4 This is true despite the fact that people of all racial backgrounds indicate that they are reluctant to report hate crimes. The point here is not to minimize the disturbing incidents, crimes, and even killings that have been widely circulated as part of anti-Asian hate media coverage; rather, placing these incidents in a broader context allows them to be better understood and ultimately addressed by well-informed policy. As two Asian American women and non-Black educators of Color, we seek to better understand the disconnection between the empirical data and the many Black-Asian conflict narratives of anti-Asian violence. We note that, despite a wealth of compelling empirical data, the media arc of anti-Asian violence—historically a symptom of white supremacy—quickly turned from the China-focused rhetoric of a white president and the heinous actions of white mass shooters to a focus on Black individuals physically assaulting Asian American elders. What is disturbing about this second narrative, which we describe as the "Black-on-Asian crime" narrative, is that it eclipses systematic racism captured by data, while gaining a widely accepted place in the discourse of Black aggression as a root cause of anti-Asian violence. The Black-on-Asian crime narrative has not only (re)ignited the Black-Asian conflict trope but seems to have also illuminated an undercurrent of anti-Blackness in narratives of Asian American victimization and perceptions of safety. In this paper, we present data regularly ignored in widely circulating Black-on-Asian crime narratives around anti-Asian violence, followed by a theoretically grounded reflection on the gap between empirical data and viral videos that emphasize Asian American vulnerability against the threat of Black violence. To be clear, we acknowledge that the anti-Asian incidents shown on viral videos are not only real and abhorrent but they have understandably elicited anger and fear in our community. What we hope to illustrate is the way in which these incidents have become prominent in discourses around anti-Asian violence, even though...

<i>Special Report:</i> Asian American Hate Incidents—A Co-occurring Epidemic During COVID-19

In the United States, the dominant approach to responding to various forms of interpersonal violence, such as intimate violence or bias attacks, supports and expands the state apparatus of incarceration. For communities of color and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer) communities who are already at risk for institutional violence, solutions that are built on a foundation of criminalization become a source of violence as they intensify policing mechanisms. These uneasy dynamics can be examined through a closer look at legislation intended to protect survivors of intimate violence and hate crimes. Analyzing the emergence of legislative responses to violence that is committed against people who are marginalized because of their race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability provides an insight into systematized sociopolitical institutions, such as the state incarceration apparatus. Legislation that addresses “violence against women” and “hate crimes” are used both against and in “protection of” Asian American communities and offer illustrative examples of the relationship between individualized violence and state violence. In this Article, we examine how these legislative acts exclude, neglect, and punish survivors who deviate from the parameters of the “model minority victim.” Next, we examine the impact of these different legal remedies -- how they expand state criminalization of immigrant communities and perpetuate negative stereotypes of people of color, and how they rely on the criminal-legal infrastructure in the United States for “safety” and “punishment” and serve to build the perpetually expanding prison system. Finally, we examine the potential for transformative justice strategies as a response to individualized violence that do not rely on the state. We look at the ways in which state-based responses to violence contribute to race-based discrimination and fail to encourage solidarity among people of color. Instead, we propose a shift away from state-based responses to community-based responses that identify all forms of violence whether personal, political, state, or systemic.

Asian Masculinities and Parodic Possibility in Odaiko Solos and Filmic Representations Paul J. Yoon (bio) The racial self-imagination for the Asian American male has always obtained some relation to representations of Asian male bodies from or in Asia. Perhaps it is more accurate to state that while pernicious stereotypes of the Asian male body in the American context abound, establishing positive performed or mediated Asian male body types requires looking (often literally) to Asia. In stating this I do not mean that negative stereotypes from Asia are absent, only that positive stereotypes typically flow from Asia into the Asian American imagination and not the other way around. Whether it’s the kung fu master, samurai, yakuza, Ultraman, or ruthless Korean gangpae, these Asian male bodies are agentic and powerful, all of which are traits recognizably aligned with (at the very least) Western notions of masculinity that are typically constructed as “good.” And yet, being stereotypes, these images are themselves troubled. What Asian American boy hasn’t faced this playground taunt: “How come you don’t know kung fu? You’re Oriental aren’t you?” usually followed by a mocking imitation of Bruce Lee’s falsetto “WHA-PA!” Inasmuch as the Asian/Asian American male is politically emasculated and excluded from the national discourse (Lowe 1996) or, as David Eng argues, “racially castrated” (2001), social iterability is limited to a two-dimensional choice between a math whiz or the kung fu master. That an Asian American man confronts or submits to constructions that are not of his doing is not a situation unique to him, or to any single group for that matter. Many within cultural studies take it for granted that we are, all of us, inserted into a world that is (obviously) not of our own creation, but, more importantly, one to which we must, at least in part, conform in order to be seen or, as in the case of musicians, heard. The latter is the Hegelian demand that our existence as socially viable entities arrives only through socially prescribed channels of recognition. We are all socially iterable in some way, even if that is in comprehensive opposition to standing definitions of what passes for “human” (or “male” or “female” or “sexual” or any other category you can imagine) since being the opposite is still being defined in relation to a presumed standard. The question is what do we do with normative points of recognition when they do not allow us to be fully “ourselves”? As Judith Butler describes (2004), one’s existence [End Page 100] rests on preexisting norms that allow one’s self to be “seen.” My ability to do anything is rooted in conditions that are, paradoxically, not of my own doing. At the same time, Butler does not believe that we are condemned into a Sisyphean feedback loop that continually reestablishes a presumed normativity. Agency within structure is not found in a naïve denial of this condition or a return to an equally naïve free monad. Our ability to alter social iterability presents itself precisely because we must repeat these structures. Performativity of race or gender (or any other social position) is reified through repeat performances. However, this is a temporary reification that is subject to alteration or “contamination.” It is precisely at the point of performance that we can try something new or signify (Gates 1989) on the norms that are given to us with the hopeful, perhaps quixotic, goal of expanding the boundaries of social iterability. This article concerns the intersection of male bodies in musical performance and film and the way performers have shaped and have been shaped by the images and constructions of masculinity that have traveled back and forth between Asia and the United States. Specifically, I discuss Asian and Asian American male bodies playing the odaiko, but also how the odaiko solo is itself impacted by or analogous to filmic representations of Asian male bodies. To paraphrase author Maxine Hong Kingston (1975), how can you separate what is traditionally Chinese or Japanese from what are the movies, performance, or theater? This question recognizes a heteroglossia (Bakhtin 1981) where both mediated representations and tradition are inseparably...

COVID-19, originally reported in China, has brought an increase in anti-Asian and Asian American hate incidents and crimes in the United States. However, research on hate incidents and crimes are relatively new in the field of geography. To provide better ways to investigate hate crime incidents against Asians and Asian Americans during COVID-19, this article draws on various research methods from existing studies on hate crimes. Geographers have focused attention on minority groups linked to different geographic scales, and non-geographic studies have focused mainly on psychological symptoms and impacts on health. Even though existing studies have helped broaden the knowledge of the subject, the geographic aspects of the issue require further examination. This article suggests that geographers should pay more attention to four aspects of research in hate crimes and incidents for future research: avoiding oversimplified concepts, reconsidering relational aspects within the local community, identifying intersectionality and everydayness of people, and engaging more with the practice of the law enforcement and the local communities.

Hate crimes and psychiatric emergency department visits among Asian Americans.

Since the mass outbreak of COVID-19 in late December 2019 in Wuhan, China, racist attacks, harassment, and hate speech towards people of Asian descent have drastically increased in the United States and many other parts of the world. Drawing on the social-ecological perspective, this chapter examines anti-Asian racism and discrimination experienced by Asians and Asian Americans, their responses, and the impact that such experience has had on their lives in the United States during the pandemic. The study sample consisted of 249 adults from 20 states who are primarily Taiwanese, Chinese, and of other Asian ethnicities. The chapter also examines approaches that governments and nongovernmental organizations have taken with regard to the rise of anti-Asian racism amid the pandemic. Results have implications for policy, practice, and research.

Rather than review what the “model minority” stereotype is, or what the literature says about it, this article first reviews the methodologies that researchers and higher academicians have employed when conducting their scholarship on dispelling the model minority stereotype. The purpose of this empirical paper was to test whether the “model minority” in fact homogenizes Asian American socio-demographic realities. We sought to examine whether there were underlying subgroups of students who share similar demographic characteristics as Asian Americans. The researchers analyzed representative national data procured from the restricted-use Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002). This study is differently from other studies insofar as the researchers used finite mixture modeling (FMM) as a methodological approach to demystifying the model minority stereotype of Asian Americans. If the model minority stereotype of Asian Americans were true, then one might expect Asian American students to be members of the same latent class as their White counterparts. This pattern student membership was not only absent in the findings of this study, but the researchers found that class membership between Asian American students was the most varied out of the more prevalent minority groups represented in the data.

Through narratives of three Asian American female protagonists─M.J. Wyn, Alex Kwan and Lin Cho, Michelle Yu and Blossom Kan present a new image of Asian American women who are chic, confident, and successful in China Dolls. These contemporary Asian American women struggle against difficulties and stereotypes intertwined with ethnicity, gender and class in their daily lives. Yet, the authors deal with these predicaments and stereotypes in a humorous, light-hearted way. As a subgenre of chick lit, China Dolls engages in chick-lit conventions, while at the same time it also inherits Asian American women’s writing traditions. In order to understand Asian American chick lit in depth, this thesis begins with a brief introduction to the history and development of chick lit and how it attracts ethnic writers to join its creation. The first chapter focuses on a postfeminist discourse and how Asian American chick lit reveals postfeminist features. The second chapter explores chick-lit conventions, its relationship with traditional romance(s), especially the Harlequin romance, and the nuance between white chick lit and Asian American chick lit. The third chapter examines how China Dolls rewrites and inherits the Asian American women’s writing traditions led by Jade Snow Wong, Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan. Finally, I point out the future and the limitation of Asian American chick lit, concluding that Asian American chick lit not only challenges chick lit as a white-dominated market but also provides a new direction for Asian American women’s writing.

The recent high-profile cases of hate crimes in the U.S., especially those targeting Asian Americans, have raised concerns about their risk of victimization. Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, intimations—and even accusations—that the novel coronavirus is an “Asian” or “Chinese” virus have been linked to anti-Asian American hate crime, potentially leaving members of this group not only fearful of being victimized but also at risk for victimization. According to the Stop AAPI Hate Center, nearly 1900 hate crimes against Asian Americans were reported by victims, and around 69% of cases were related to verbal harassment, including being called the “Chinese Coronavirus.” Yet, most of the evidence martialed on spikes in anti-Asian American hate crime during the COVID-19 pandemic has been descriptive. Using data from four U.S. cities that have large Asian American populations (New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C.), this study finds that hate crime against Asian Americans increased considerably in 2020 compared with that of 2019. Specifically, hate crime against Asian Americans temporarily surged after March 16, 2020, when the blaming labels including “Kung flu” or “Chinese Virus” were used publicly. However, the significant spike after March 16, 2020, in anti-Asian American hate crime was not sustained over the follow-up time period available for analysis.

Phong Nguyen’s The Adventures of Joe Harper revisits America in the Reconstruction era through the eponymous narrator-protagonist, who is a marginal character from Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. One of the most recent spin-offs of Huckleberry Finn, it is an interesting Asian American project to appropriate Twain’s American epic while refusing to be reduced to and defined by the author’s racial identity. Nguyen overlays the saga of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer with an Asian American presence and experiences but his investment in Asian American experiences is not only on account of his identity as Asian American but also by virtue of his inheritance of Twain’s literary legacy. The significance of Joe Harper is both in its association with Huckleberry Finn and in its inheritance and development of Twain’s literary legacy overall, including an interrogation of the Chinese question and the dismantling of Chinese stereotypes in American literature. Introducing a memorable Asian American character, Lee, and embedding his history in Twainesque postbellum America, Nguyen considers the theme of racialized mobility, Asian American similarity, and the desexualization of Asian masculinity. The characterizations of Joe and Lee are to be compared with Twain’s famous characters, and the larger context of American literature is also to be brought to bear on the consideration of Lee and Joe’s journey and their interracial homosocial bond. Joe Harper features interesting twists of Twain’s plots and characters, showing the ways in which Nguyen inherits and revises Twain’s original tale, by way of the contemporary American imagination.

The benefits of using films/movies in the English language classroom to teach culture and cultural awareness in addition to the four skills of language acquisition have been well documented. This study attempts to examine how Korean Americans are portrayed and depicted in Hollywood films which have traditionally reduced the complexity of Asian nations and cultures into simplified stereotypes. Most Asian characters were stereotyped as the “Yellow Peril,” “Lotus Blossom,” “Dragon Lady,” “Charlie Chan,” or “Dr. Fu Manchu.” Though these negative stereotypes were commonly used in early Hollywood films, they continue to appear in many contemporary films. In recent years, additional stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans have appeared, such as the “Nerdy Shy Guy,” the “Anti-Model Minority,” and “The Greedy Merchant.” The study also examines how Hollywood deals with Korean women who do not fit the classic and contemporary negative Hollywood stereotypes. The study concludes by suggesting methods for identifying the negative stereotypes presented in Hollywood films in the English language classroom in order to raise awareness and when necessary to challenge these stereotypes of Asians and Asian Americans in films or other forms of media.