Anti-Asian hate crimes decreased 33% from 2021 to 2022, according to data released last week by the FBI — the first recorded drop in anti-Asian hate crimes since the start of the pandemic.
The decrease from 746 to 499 hate incidents is attributed to several factors, including diminished opportunity for Covid-related scapegoating, less inflammatory rhetoric from leaders and reporting fatigue, experts say. But not every group saw similar drops.
But the decrease is likely part of a “cyclical” pattern, experts say, and may not be long term.
“Anti-Asian hate crimes … are often tied to national security or other kinds of U.S. foreign policy that heightened attention to Asian Americans in the U.S.,” Janelle Wong, senior researcher at the data and civic engagement nonprofit AAPI Data, said. “We will expect them to go up again at some point, depending on what the national and international context is and the degree to which places in Asia are cast as a threat to the U.S.”
Wong explained that economic downturns coupled with blaming Asians for Covid most likely contributed to the initial spike in hate crimes. A 2021 study, for example, showed that in Italy, areas with high unemployment experienced the most significant increases in anti-Asian hate crimes, compared to those with high infections and mortality.
“We don’t have a president saying that the ‘Chinese flu’ has come to the U.S.”
Janelle Wong, aapi data
The landscape has since changed, Wong said.
“The economy’s doing a lot better right now. There’s not the same kind of attention to a life or death situation, the way that Covid really heightened emotions around this idea that people from Asia could bring illness or to blame for Covid,” Wong said. “We don’t have a president saying that the ‘Chinese flu’ has come to the U.S.”
A 2020 study showed that while anti-Asian bias had been in a steady decline over a decade, the trend reversed sharply after political leaders began…
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