Several San Jose State community members gathered on Zoom Tuesday to hear from the Asian Law Alliance, which discussed the relevance and importance of understanding the hate that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders experience.
The Asian Law Alliance is a nonprofit community law office which aims to provide equal access to the legal justice system for low-income and Asian American and Pacific Islander communities in the Santa Clara County area.
During the event, Asian Law Alliance members presented a powerpoint, explaining the history of Asian hate and how similar it was to what is happening today.
“When talking about cross-racial solidarity, historically, white communities have used these racial tensions as a mechanism to further oppress communities of color,” said Therese Santiago, Asian Law Alliance volunteer coordinator. “The animosity between the groups of color is not happenstance but rather intentionally designed to uphold white supremacy.”
Asian Law Alliance members also explained the difference between a hate incident and a hate crime.
They said a hate incident is where behavior motivated by hate is presented, but legally protected by the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech. If that certain hate incident starts to threaten a person or a property, it becomes a hate crime.
Social-protected groups in California include ethnicity, religion and gender who are legally protected under the law. If a victim were to be targeted by any of the social protected groups as a criminal offense, it would be a hate crime.
Asian Law Alliance members presented information from the Stop AAPI Hate website, which shows that between March 19, 2020 and March 31 of this year, nearly 11,500 hate incidents were reported.
Stop AAPI Hate is a nonprofit organization that runs the Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center, which tracks incidents of hate and discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S.
Of that 11,500, 67% involved harassment, 17% involved physical violence, 40% occurred in public spaces and 27% occurred in a business, according to the Stop AAPI Hate website.
The report also said mental health is one of the many factors affected by a hate incident, specifically among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
As many as 49% reported having depression or anxiety and 72% named discrimination as the greatest source of stress, according to the Stop AAPI Hate website.
It said those hate incident’s not only impact mental health, but additionally leads to increased levels of fear.
About 49% of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders felt safe going out, 65% worried about the safety of their family members and elders, and 32% of parents were concerned about their child being a victim of I hate and discrimination.
Therese Santiago said she believes as hard as it is to read these statistics, the generalization of Anti-Asian hate has been relevant for hundreds of years.
“I think it’s important to have multiple approaches to understanding the issue,” Santiago said. “It highlights the importance of everybody having a historical understanding of Asian hate from a legal and cultural perspective.”
In 1875, The Page Act prohibited the recruitment of laborers from “China, Japan or any Oriental country,” who were not brought to the U.S. of their own free will, according to a March 19, 2021 History article.
A recent tragic incident was the series of shootings that occurred at massage parlors in Atlanta on March 16 and out of eight people who were killed, six were Asian American women, according to a March 17 NBC News article.
Leika La Roque, Asian Law Alliance community organizer, said she wants individuals who are affected by hate to share their stories and use their voices.
“There are ways for people to understand Anti-Asian hate,” La Roque said. “It can be through statistics and it can be through personal stories.”
She said it’s important to show people that those incidents occur more often than they think and the main way to fight back at it is to speak up.
La Roque said fear will overwhelm the public if the public does not speak out.
“We always encourage people to report these things because some people, especially in the Asian American community, brush it off as they’re just too scared to report it at all,” she said.
The event was part of SJSU’s annual “Transforming Communities: A Movement to Racial Justice,” which is a two-week series that is designed to catalyze change and create a more just and equitable city and county, according to its website.
The events in the series, put on by university community members, are scheduled every day up to Nov. 13.
