White, Black and Asian

By John Burton

The recent wave of anti-Asian hate crimes in the U.S. has complex roots. It is normally framed in the narrative that Asians have been victims of white supremacy. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act banned Chinese immigrants for 60 years and 120,000 Japanese Americans were put in internment camps during World War II.

COVID-19 has added to the scapegoating of Asians, with frequent references by right-wing political leaders, including President Trump, to "kung flu" and the "China virus." Growing anti-China sentiment in the U.S. over trade and national security has helped fuel xenophobia.

Hate crimes against Asians, which are defined as anything from shouted racial slurs to unprovoked physical attacks, have risen by 150 percent in the past year, according to one estimate, with nearly 4,000 cases being reported and many of the victims being women.

Observers draw parallels with the hate crimes committed against Muslims in the U.S. following the 2001 terrorist attacks and President Trump's ban against Muslim immigrants after he took office in 2017.

Less acknowledged is that the attacks also reflect tensions between Asians and other minorities. Black men have been identified as perpetrators in several of the most-publicized assaults caught on camera. One recent academic study concluded that 26 percent of offenders in anti-Asian hate crimes between 1992 and 2014 were non-white.

This has led to concerns that Asians are also likely to engage in racial stereotyping that Black communities harbor anti-Asian sentiment because Asians are regarded by many Americans as a "model minority" who are successful and rich. This narrative was amplified during the 1992 riots in Los Angeles that were marked by violent conflicts between Koreans and Blacks and led to the widespread destruction of Korean American businesses. Blacks have also complained that Asians have long displayed racial prejudice against them.

One example of the lingering tensions between Asian Americans and Blacks was a recent spat between two American journalists. Alexi McCammond, a young Black journalist, was named recently as the new editor of Teen Vogue magazine, but was forced to resign after it was revealed that she had made anti-Asian remarks on Twitter when she was a high school student a decade ago.

Among those criticizing McCammond was Korean American CNN anchor and journalist Amara Walker, who wrote that "these decade-old tweets conjure up profound feelings of marginalization that many of us Asians and Asian Americans feel in our gut each time a stranger mockingly pulls the ends of their eyes up at us or hurls racist or xenophobic slurs."
Walker added, "It's not lost on me that McCammond, too, worked as a political journalist of color during a racially charged time in our nation's history. Yet, it's difficult to see her as an ally when her past views perpetuated stereotypes and hate against one racial group."

But Asian American rights campaigners, such as those in the San Francisco Bay area where many of the attacks have taken place, argue that Asians and Blacks can find common ground in resisting the racism to which they have both been subjected.

There are also questions whether some of the attacks on ethnic Asians amount to hate crimes. Some of the assailants were homeless men with mental problems. This issue of intent has also been raised in regard to the young white man who killed six Asian women, of whom four were Korean, at massage parlors in Atlanta last month.

The lack of evidence whether the attacks amounted to hate crimes has not stopped some from claiming they are the result of anti-Asian prejudice. Whether such assumptions are right or wrong reflects the fact there is little data that accurately keeps track of hate crimes against Asians in the U.S., since it is up to local police departments to determine whether that is the case and many do not follow federal guidelines.

Another problem is that Asian immigrants may be reluctant to report hate crimes to the police because they are illegally in the country or cannot speak English well.

Nonetheless, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that hate crimes against Asians are increasing in the U.S. Some worry that this trend will likely rise as the political rhetoric against China as a national security threat to the U.S. becomes harsher and affects American perceptions of Asians.

This should concern Korean Americans and not just Chinese Americans since they also run the risk of becoming targets of racist acts in cases of mistaken identity of their national background. In 1982, during the height of the auto trade war with Japan, for example, a Chinese American man was beaten to death in Detroit because his attackers thought he was Japanese.

Marilyn Strickland, the new Black Korean congresswoman from Washington State, summed up the situation best: "Words matter. Leadership matters."

John Burton (johnburtonft@yahoo.com), a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and consultant.