Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, violence against Asians, particularly East and Southeast Asians, have dramatically increased; they have been victim to countless racist, physical and verbal attacks. One of the incidents that have gained the most media attention was the recent horrifying Atlanta shootings on March 16th, 2021, and among the eight victims, were six Asian women. The shooting was a clear indicator of a racist, avoidable hate crime, yet the motive behind it was ruled as “unknown” and instead, the sheriff had publicly reported it as Robert Aaron Long just having a ‘bad day’. County sheriff Jay Baker was quoted to say “he was pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope. Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did”. Reducing this heinous crime to just someone having a bad day, not only diminishes the xenophobic discrimination that Asians experience on an everyday basis, but also encourages the normalisation of Asian hate. This murder was not an isolated event. In the past year, there has been almost 3800 reported hate crimes against Asians in the US, with women reporting 2.3 times more racially-motivated assaults compared to men.
As a response to the increasingly alarming rate of xenophobia, the #StopAsianHate had begun to dominate social media, gaining supporters from all over the globe; with informative posts and videos circulating the platforms. Yet as you read through news articles and info graphs, it is evident that there is a particular focus on the US, which is absolutely essential, but this specific concentration emphasises just how widely ignored and normalised Asian hate is in the UK. During the pandemic, hate crimes towards Chinese, East and Southeast Asians have risen by 300% in the UK, in the first few months of 2020, including assaults such as racial slurs, physical violence and individuals being spat on as well as sexploitation. One of the many incidents included a patient calling a Filipino nurse, Aldarico Jr Velsco, a “f***cking Chinese c***”, another involved a woman named Wei Saik who was physically assaulted by a group of teenagers as they screamed “COVID”.
Racism towards Asians is not a new thing that has suddenly happened in the midst of the pandemic, as someone who is of Southeast Asian descent, it’s not surprising that people have used the coronavirus to justify their prejudice against us. Growing up in a predominantly white area, there has been countless times I have been called a ‘chink’, accused of being a ‘mail-order bride’ and have been subject to countless ‘ching-chong’ and ‘ling-ling’ jokes. Asian trauma runs deep within British history, despite the popular assumption that they do not experience racism. This assumption comes from the reputation of Asians as the ‘model minority’ stereotyping us to be ‘hardworking’, ‘peaceful’, and ‘quiet’. It’s easy to say that these stereotypes are compliments, but it is far from, instead it creates huge consequences for the Asian community. Not only does it pressure us to live up to silly and incredibly high expectations, but it also allows the government as well as the general population to overlook the discrimination we face; Asians are perceived as a population that is well assimilated and thus, do not cause any trouble. Therefore, conveying the idea that anti-Asian hate is not a major issue that the government needs to address. The quest to racial justice is a difficult one because to others, we don’t experience racism so there’s no justice to fight for in the first place.
All this can date back to the late 19th century, in which the ‘Oriental other’ were equated with the colour yellow, and the Chinese became a community known as the Yellow Peril. When thinking of the Yellow Peril, history books have mostly documented this huge wave of xenophobia in the US, but there were very few written pieces on Britain’s experience. The Chinese immigrated to Britain and mostly resided in the areas of Cardiff, Liverpool and London in the late 18th century, but were never seen as much of a threat because the numbers were low and there was not much threat when it came to British jobs on the line, that was mostly an American issue; the Yellow Peril emerged through American attitudes towards the Asian community, where there was a rising fear that Asians would take over the West. British politicians and media instead portrayed the issues going on in the US to be happening in Britain too, making the Chinese community their scapegoats for social issues as well as continually being viewed as the ‘oriental other’.
Now with the outbreak of the virus, the discourse of the ‘yellow peril’ is on the rise again, portraying East and Southeast Asians as a threat to societies, as disease-carriers. It has been branded as an issue isolated to the US, completely ignored in British society conveying just how under-played racism towards Asians are. Britain is not exempt from racism and Asians are not exempt from experiencing it.
Art by Zainna Alea Dilan
Sources:
Khan, A. 2021. ‘I don’t feel safe’: Asians in the UK reflect on a year of hatred. Aljazeera. 23rd March.
Lyman, S.M., 2000. The" yellow peril" mystique: Origins and vicissitudes of a racist discourse. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, pp.683-747.
Reny, T.T. and Barreto, M.A., 2020. Xenophobia in the time of pandemic: othering, anti-Asian attitudes, and COVID-19. Politics, Groups, and Identities, pp.1-24.
Shim, D., 1998. From yellow peril through model minority to renewed yellow peril. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 22(4), pp.385-409.
Yeh, D., 2014. Contesting the ‘model minority’: Racialization, youth culture and ‘British Chinese’/‘Oriental’nights. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 37(7), pp.1197-1210.
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