“There is an overall general sentiment of fear,” said Quincy City Councilor Nina Liang. “As an AAPI resident here in the city, just in general, there’s been a lot of animosity towards the community and not just since the pandemic, but the pandemic, I think, certainly put it front and center for folks.”
From violent hate crimes and vandalism to name-calling and discrimination, scapegoating has fueled countless anti-AAPI hate incidents across the United States since the start of the pandemic. From 2019 to 2020, there was a 77% increase in the number of anti-Asian hate crimes compiled by the FBI. At that same time, the number of reporting agencies decreased by 452 across the United States, meaning that the spike in hate crimes was likely underreported.
According to Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition launched in March of 2020 that tracks and responds to hate incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, or AAPI, in the United States, this surge was worsened by politicians such as President Trump blanketly blaming China for the virus’s spread. Among Asian Americans surveyed in 2021, Donald Trump was cited as the single most significant cause of increased Asian hate in the United States, but respondents also said that racism, misinformation and the news media were other contributing factors.
One Boston woman reported to Stop AAPI Hate: “I went to a store a block away from my building. On my way back, at a red light, a man in a car rolled down his window to scream at me, ‘China did this to us, to Americans, f*** you, f*** China, yeah I’m talking to you, b****’ with slurs and acted as though he was going to get out of his car before he sped off.”
According to Stop AAPI Hate, 11,467 hate incidents were reported throughout the United States between March 19, 2020 and March 31, 2022. Massachusetts had the sixth highest number of reports of any state, with 340 reported hate incidents. These reports include acts of hate, violence, harassment,…
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