Looks absolutely horrible. Anyone have any personal experience or knowledge of incidents like these? Any ideas about what’s driving this spike?
I imagine trump calling Covid the “China Virus” approximately 37,000 times had something to do with it.
Here is a non-paywalled article from CNN that covers what I presume is the same ground, as well as providing some validation for solost’s theory.
At the beginning of the pandemic period we had some discriminations against Asian or Asian looking people.
Some restaurants put a sign outside the door saying “no Chinese admitted”, and TV reported that some Asian were told to go back to their homes while walking on the street
The reason is of course the name mass media gave to the virus : the Chinese virus
How many people in San Francisco are forming their perceptions of the world based on Donald Trump? Are you sure that the ideas being communicated by the city’s school board don’t matter here?
One year ago, it might have been Covid-related. By this point, though, the virus is so widespread that one is just as likely to catch it from a non-Asian as an Asian (in fact, perhaps more likely, given that Asians have pretty good compliance with masks and whatnot). So it’s questionable as to whether that’s the motive.
In addition, Asians have long been perceived as the ‘safe’ minority to pick on. As in, there is this attitude that racism is a bad thing overall, but if one must pick on one race, better to target the Asians than others.
None of this was every about the likelihood of actually catching Covid. It’s tribal animosity ratcheted up by people who benefited from riling people up.
I think Asian Americans have been victims of hate crimes for a long time; it’s just not as talked about. But there’s been a definite spike in the last few years, due initially to Trump’s anti-immigration and anti-China platform, but then it has spiked out of control since the start of COVID.