Race-based attacks against people of Asian-heritage are on the rise and victims’ reluctance to report incidents to police is prompting new ways of collecting information.
Experts and victims say a spike in such occurrences happened after politicians, most notably former President Donald Trump, spread hateful rhetoric by falsely tying the coronavirus to Asia and calling the virus the “China flu.”
Since then, people have been verbally harassed, physically assaulted, and killed. On Tuesday, a white man fatally shot eight people, six of whom were Asian women, at an Atlanta spa. The suspect, who was charged Wednesday, told police the attack was not racially motivated, but rather a way to reduce his sexual addiction. However, politicians and community activism worry the attack has been spurred by anti-Asian sentiment.
Clearly, there is an increase in instances of bias and violence towards people of an Asian-heritage, but the situation in Michigan is less clear, according to James White, director of the state’s Department of Civil Rights. The department has seen a “steady and troubling” increase in the number of complaints filed by residents of Asian-heritage, though the number of filings remains low. Between 2016 and 2018, the department received 26 complaints and 14 complaints were filed in 2020 alone.
People may file a complaint with the Department of Civil Rights if they are discriminated against in employment, education, housing, public accommodation, public service and law enforcement for their gender, sexual orientation, race, or religion. More information about the MDCR’s investigative process can be found here.
Data on hate or bias crimes are collected by local law enforcement and reported to the Attorney General’s Office. In 2019, there were nine hate or bias crimes reported to the Attorney General. The office told MLive there was no other statistical information available. Lori Dougovito, a public affairs representative at Michigan State Police, said law enforcement’s role is to collect data “and we can’t speak to whether the reports we receive reflect occurrences.”
Still, White said simply because the numbers are not there, it does not mean the incidents are not happening.
“They could very well be happening, and there could be some reluctance to make those complaints with law enforcement,” White said. “There has been a lot of hate speech towards the Asian American community at the highest level around the country, and particularly over the last year, with the onset of this horrific virus, and there could be some concerns as to if those complaints are going to be taken seriously or investigated.”
Hate crimes against Asian Americans are on the surge across the country. The late Vichar Ratanapakdee, (seen in the photo on the left) was an 84-year-old immigrant from Thailand, who was violently shoved to the ground in a deadly attack in San Francisco. , during a community rally to raise awareness of anti-Asian violence and racist attitudes, in response to the string of violent racist attacks against Asians during the pandemic, held at Los Angeles Historic Park near the Chinatown district in Los Angeles, Saturday, Feb. 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) AP
People are harassed but do not report it to law enforcement officials for various reasons, such as culture, not being taken seriously by police, or that they didn’t know such instances can be reported.
Such reporting barriers prompted the creation of Stop Asian American and Pacific Islander Hate, a website where people can self-report harassment in their first language. Several Asian American and Pacific Islander advocacy organizations created the website to get a better understanding of how often people are getting harassed, the type of harassment and where it takes place.
Manjusha Kulkarni, of Los Angeles, who co-founded Stop AAPI Hate, said collected data can help push for policy changes, like education and community resources for victims. On the website, users can pull up any state and find information about the kind of incidents reported there. Kulkarni approached the California Attorney General’s Office to see if it would be interested in the self-reporting method but was told local law enforcement is responsible for collecting data.
Stop AAPI received 3,795 reports from all states and the District of Columbia between March 2020 and February. A majority of the harassment, 68%, is verbal and 20% involved shunning, the deliberate avoidance of a person based on their race. Businesses are the primary site of discrimination followed by public streets and public parks.
Twenty-five people in Michigan reported hate incidents to Stop AAPI Hate. Of those reports, 40% of the victims who reported the incidences are Chinese, 80% of incidences were verbal harassment and 60% of them happened in a workplace setting.
“We came to realize this is in fact a phenomenon, it was systemic and it is not isolated,” Kulkarni said. “Even though I’m a former civil rights lawyer, I’m still shocked when I see things like this happen. It’s extremely disheartening.”
Melissa Borja, a University of Michigan assistant professor and the point person for collecting Michigan data for Stop AAPI Hate, said the disjuncture between experiences people are having and experiences being reported to law enforcement or nongovernmental organizations, like Stop AAPI Hate, is because people may not know they have such options to report hate incidents.
“The incidents are affecting a wide range of people, but women are twice as likely as men to be the victim of an (incident),” Borja said.
In summer 2020, one of Borja’s students conducted an informal survey among Asian American business owners in Detroit. Borja said the results showed 40% of respondents did not know what to do if an incident of hate occurred at their business.
Lisa Bee owns Sweetwaters Coffee and Tea Cafe and is among the people who did not know there was a way to self-report incidents of racism. Bee’s extended family also own several restaurants in the Detroit area. While Bee has not experienced direct harassment, she noticed people’s behavior toward her in public changed since the pandemic started.
“We definitely felt that there was a little bit of thought that just because you’re Asian you must have COVID,” Lee said.
Bee’s two oldest sons, who live in New York where 517 reports of hate incidents have been reported to Stop AAPI Hate, have changed their habits as a result of the rising hate incidents.
“They don’t take the subway late at night, in fact, they try to avoid it altogether,” Bee said. “It’s not great, I feel like we have kind of moved backward.”
Linh Song, the only Asian City Council member in Ann Arbor, spoke about the issue publicly at a recent meeting following multiple incidents of anti-Asian sentiment in her ward. Two of her constituents, both Asian, were talking on the sidewalk when a woman coughed on them and her neighbor’s son was told to “go back to China,” according to Song.
Song has experienced anti-Asian harassment herself when running for city council. This is something most people of color have had to deal with in some fashion, Song said.
“We don’t want our children to have to face these racist outbursts. We prepare them. But it’s still shocking and it’s still surprising,” Song said. “Our instinct is to walk away. Just get away from the situation. But we have to understand that we have options to defend ourselves and to stop that from happening again.”
Even when people are aware of their options to report, they may feel reluctant to get the police involved for cultural reasons and fear of retaliation. An Ann Arbor store owner, who asked not to be named out of fear of his family or business being attacked, is among those who have been harassed but did not report the incidents to police.
Last year, the man was working when a white older gentleman wandered into his store looking for rice because many grocery stores ran out of it during the beginning of the pandemic. When the man approached the customer to help, he started backing away from him and asked, “Are you Chinese? Are you sick? Will you give me the virus?”
It was the second time the store owner, a second-generation Taiwanese American, was racially profiled within a year. The first incident occurred a few months prior when a group of college-aged students gathered around a pizza shop near his store yelled at him.
“They said ‘you don’t belong here’ and to ‘go home.’ I am home, Ann Arbor is my home,” the store owner said.
The store owner moved to Ann Arbor when the city was mainly a rural area and the population was primarily white. As a kid, he faced racism at school where kids made fun of him for his eyes and skin color. However, he said the city is more diverse than ever now--about 17% of its population is of Asian-heritage. The store owner thought the harassment he faced growing up was an issue of the past, something he hoped his children would not experience, but he believes the pandemic and the politics surrounding it changed things.
“I thought things were better and things were different, but it looks like maybe things were just under the surface more, and then the pandemic seemed to bring out this kind of nastier side of people,” the store owner said.
“My first instinct when there is conflict is to avoid it and not to call the police. From our perspective, especially immigrants, we don’t feel like law enforcement is on our side or that they are not going to protect us. I’m just as scared of police as I am of these people that are racially profiling me.”
Borja said reporting barriers can be lowered with the presence of community organizations, informing people of reporting options in their own language, and resources that connect people to bigger institutions for help.
More so, people can step in and intervene in hate incidents, whether it’s a student being bullied at school or someone being harassed at the grocery store. This can be done by meaningful bystander intervention, Borja said.
“If a person experiences a hate incident, it is important to have a friend or neighbor show concern and support them, and to also help that person report it to government institutions or non-government institutions,” Borja said.
People can self-report instances of hate or basis at https://stopaapihate.org/. For more information on the program in Michigan, contact Borja at mborja@umich.edu.
Michigan residents can report hate crimes by email at hatecrimes@michigan.gov or by phone at 313-456-0200. Residents can file complaints of unlawful discrimination based on race, sexual orientation, gender, or religion by contacting the Michigan Department of Civil Rights by phone, 800-482-3604, or email MDCR-INFO@michigan.gov.