At 89 years old, San Jose resident and Filipino American Robert Ragsac, said he still sees the same physical assault and verbal harassment against Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) members that he witnessed as a child.
Those incidents not only create recurring hostile environments for AAPI community members, but also negatively impact their mental well-being.
“The anti-Asian sentiment is almost as if it was built in the DNA of those people who do not like Asians,” Ragsac said in a Zoom interview. “It is embedded within them and they’re not gonna change their mind.”
Ragsac lived in San Jose during World War II, and said his earliest recollection of discrimination against AAPI community members was the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941.
He was walking to school with a Japanese American friend who was assaulted by a group of schoolmates.
“My friend was nisei second generation (Japanese), just like I'm second-generation Filipino,” Ragsac said. “He and I always walked to school together . . . when we got to the playgrounds, well the white kids jumped on him, because he's Japanese.”
Ragsac witnessed his Japanese friends being sent to internment camps under Executive Order 9066 and recalled how his godfather almost suffered the same fate.
“We were pounced upon by a local police officer and they interrogated my ninong (godfather) because he looked Japanese . . . but he was Filipino,” Ragsac said.
Margo McBane, a retired SJSU history lecturer, said California has a history of anti-Asian sentiment.
McBane’s areas of expertise include immigration history and U.S. comparative ethic and racial history.
She said the earliest anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. was against Asians, dating back to the 1850s California Gold Rush and the building of the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s, when Asian immigrants came to the U.S. to work.
From there, McBane said labor workers of Asian descent were discriminated against: first the Chinese, then the Japanese and then Filipinos.
Ragsac said this discrimination continues today.
More than 3,795 hate crimes against members of the AAPI community were reported nationwide from March 19, 2020 to Feb. 28, 2021, according to a Stop AAPI Hate report.
The San Francisco State reporting center allows AAPI individuals to self-report incidents of hate, discrimination, violence and harassment.
Anti-Asian discrimination has increased within the last year because of the misconception that Asian Americans are responsible for spreading the coronavirus, the center states.
Types of discrimination against members of the AAPI community include verbal harrassment, physical assult and shunning, according to the center’s March 17 report.
The increase of hate crimes against AAPI community members, along with how they’re covered in the media, has the potential to exert significant negative health effects, according to an Oct. 7, 2020 study from psychiatry researchers Justin Chen and Emily Zhang in the American Journal of Public Health.
Ellen Lin, an SJSU Counseling and Psychological Services licensed psychologist who focuses on Asian American identity and cross-cultural issues, said the mental stress caused by racial tension can be unhealthy for people.
“Emotions of fear and anxiety are very helpful to have for us to . . . be planful and intentional to stay safe,” Lin said in a phone call. “But when [fear and anxiety] is so prevalent, and we see it all the time, it's not good for any of our health.”
Nutritional science junior Nina Chuang said the rise in hate crimes didn’t shock her since members of the AAPI community have witnessed anti-Asian sentiment in the past. However, she said hearing about recent incidents has made her angry.
“I kind of saw [the rise of hate crimes] coming which is saddening in a way because it shouldn't be that shocking,” Chuang said in a phone call. “[I feel] this weird balance between sadness, frustration and anger. It's all just jumbled up in one big ball, like a hot pot.”
Psychology and sociology senior AJ Diokno said hearing about hate crimes toward Asian Americans has made her more anxious to go outside alone, out of the fear of being harassed.
“I can’t leave the house alone,” Diokno said in a phone interview. “If I do, I make sure I have pepper spray, an alarm . . . put keys in my hands, little things like that to ensure my safety.”
Diokno said she wished she didn’t feel scared about being Asian American.
“I think I should be afraid and I should be scared and I hate the feeling,” Diokno said. “All these things negatively impacted my mental health and with all of this it has skyrocketed.”
Lin also said there’s pressure in some AAPI communities to stay quiet about mental health or other personal matters.
This pressure can stem from people’s experiences living in countries with historically repressive political systems that reprimand people for speaking out, Lin said.
However, younger generations who were born in the U.S or who immigrated when they were children might want to question this idea.
“They have not been exposed at all to that political system back home that their parents or grandparents were,” Lin said. “So a lot of them don't understand why there's this, this expectation, this pressure to keep things within the family.”
Chuang said that although mental illness is not openly discussed in Asian American communities, it affects many of their members.
“In the Asian American experience, a lot of people can relate to when people say our struggles are not worth the time,” Chuang said. “But the thing is [there’s] a lot of people in the community that struggle with [mental illness].
Diokno said she related to the feeling of not having her mental health issues recognized by other community members. When she brought up her mental health with her family in the past, her concerns were often overlooked.
“When I would explain to them [my family] I was anxious about something, it was kind of shrugged off when in reality the feelings I felt were genuine,” Diokno said.
The consequences of ignoring one’s mental health concerns are real and don’t just affect the psyche, Lin said.
“People may get headaches. They may feel like they have an upset stomach. They may feel more tired these days,” Lin said. “And these all could be related to mental health issues that people don't recognize.”
