SPECIAL • MARCH 21, 2023
PRESENTED BY THE KAUFFMAN FOUNDATION
👋 Good morning, and welcome to a special edition of The Yappie’s AAPI politics briefing — your guide to the policy news and activism affecting Asian Americans + Pacific Islanders. S
end tips and feedback to [email protected] and support our work by making a donation.
— Edited by Shawna Chen
THE BIG STORY
Attendees at a "Stop Asian Hate" rally in New York City stand in Times Square on March 16, 2022, to mark one year after the Atlanta spa shootings. Photo courtesy of Katie Godowski via Pexels.
Two years after the Atlanta spa shootings, fear of anti-Asian discrimination still looms
👉
Last Thursday marked the two-year anniversary of the Atlanta spa shootings that killed eight people, including six Asian women, after a white gunman opened fire at three Asian-owned establishments. As the world slowly re-opens, advocates are escalating calls on officials to strengthen holistic responses to anti-Asian violence. Here's what you need to know...
WHERE THINGS STAND
The 23-year-old man charged with carrying out the shootings was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences plus 35 years after pleading guilty to killing four people and wounding a fifth in Cherokee County.
He will face a death penalty trial for the murders in Fulton County, but proceedings likely won’t kick off until May, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Shaddi Abusaid reports. Fulton prosecutors are also pursuing hate crime enhancements under a state law enacted after Ahmaud Arbery’s murder.
Robert Peterson, whose mother Yong Ae Yue died in the shootings, told Axios’ Shawna Chen in October that his family backs the Fulton prosecutors’ push for the death penalty and enhancements. “The fact that we’re fighting for it to be recognized as a hate crime is important to me,” he said.
About 70% of Georgia’s Asian population is concentrated in Atlanta. The shootings sparked an outcry both locally and across the nation as people rallied to protest in dozens of cities. It also turned into a moment of reckoning with “the violence, racism and misogyny intertwined with the historical fetishization of Asian women,” The Yappie’s Shawna Chen wrote at the time.
WHAT'S HAPPENED SINCE
President Joe Biden signs the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act into law on May 20, 2021. Photo courtesy of the White House.
The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act was signed into law in 2021 in response to the shooting and spikes in anti-Asian hate crimes. The legislation, sponsored by Asian American lawmakers, aimed to provide more tools and resources for government and law enforcement to better prevent, track, and respond to hate incidents.
The Department of Justice in 2021 awarded more than $21 million to community organizations and state, local, and tribal agencies for the purpose of addressing hate crimes. Attorney General Merrick Garland later hired a language access coordinator and directed federal agencies to review their practices and policies so as to better reach people with limited English proficiency.
Rep. Grace Meng (D-New York) introduced the Teaching Asian Pacific American History Act in 2021 to mandate that K-12 schools teach AAPI history in order to work toward dismantling discrimination and prejudice against the AAPI community. Several states have since implemented their own requirements for Asian American history in public school curricula.
Under President Joe Biden, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has taken steps to bolster training and support for state and local efforts aimed at preventing pandemic-related harassment and discrimination.
Several states set aside additional funding to tackle anti-Asian hate—most notably California, which in 2021 greenlit a $156 million budget for AAPI-focused initiatives such as victim support and crime prevention services.
And yet—it’s still far from enough. Roughly a third of Asian Americans say they have changed their daily routine out of concern about the threat of violence, a 2022 Pew Research Center survey found. About 40% of the Asian Americans surveyed also said their local elected officials were doing a “very or somewhat bad job” of preventing anti-Asian violence.
🔎 DATA POINT
Graphic courtesy of Pew Research Center.
More recent tragedies—including the racially motivated stabbing of an Asian American college student in Indiana and mass shootings in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay—also shook the Asian American community nationwide. Though the two suspects in the shootings were Asian men, it heightened Asian Americans’ existing anxieties about stepping foot outside their homes.
“Less than a month ago, another family is experiencing what my family had to go through,” Peterson told ABC News’ Nakylah Carter. “We say we don’t want other families to experience this. But again and again, we see exactly that. And we see our leadership … lacking in progression.”
MOVING FORWARD
The Asian Justice Movement partnered with other Asian American community organizations to host an event on March 16—titled “Always With Us: Asian Americans Rise Against Hate”—in five cities including Atlanta to commemorate the anniversary and demand stronger action in addressing anti-Asian hate locally and nationwide.
The Asian Leaders Alliance and the Asian Justice Movement created a resource guide in 2023 for best practices in supporting businesses and employees and to facilitate community advocacy across various organizations supporting AAPIs.
“These things are still happening and it is creating a sense of fear and a lack of safety in our community,” Eugena Oh, The Asian American Foundation’s NYC regional director, said to ABC News’ Nakylah Carter.
Advocates point to the need to fight systemic racism and bolster education about the wide spectrum of anti-Asian violence.
“It’s not just physical assaults on the street, but it’s our communities being targeted for detention and deportation,” Phi Nguyen, executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, said to Axios’ Kristal Dixon on the one-year anniversary of the shootings last year. “It’s also our communities having their votes suppressed. It’s the … white supremacy that our communities face.”
— By
Wendy Ying Lau
+
Katrina Pham
Additional writing by Shawna Chen
A MESSAGE FROM THE KAUFFMAN FOUNDATION
Get a glimpse into the critical role equitable access to opportunity, knowledge, support, and capital plays out – for better or worse – on the ground in Kansas City, Missouri.
AAPI NATION
ON OUR RADAR
Here's what else is happening across America...
The Los Angeles Times is dropping use of the word “internment” to describe the wrongful incarceration of more than 125,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.
Times employees and Asian American journalists have long pressed for the change in language—with the late Henry Fuhrmann, a former Times assistant managing editor, leading the charge, reports the Times’ Teresa Watanabe.
Don’t forget: In 2017, the Times issued a formal apology for championing then-President Franklin Roosevelt’s executive order to imprison Japanese Americans.
The Pentagon is considering keeping the Red Hill infrastructure in the ground instead of removing it following a water contamination crisis that led the Navy to shut down the facility, reports Sophie Cocke of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. It could go against the demands of many Native Hawaiians who have called for the site’s closure and clean-up.
The umbrella term “Asian American” is provoking debate once more as advocates and scholars discuss the health and income disparities it buries among subgroups such as Hmong Americans and other Southeast Asians, NBC News’ Sakshi Venkatraman reports.
Catch up: For years, efforts to disaggregate Asian American and Pacific Islander data have been slowed by community infighting, government bureaucracy, and bitter conflicts over identity, write Andrew Peng, Javan Santos, and Mary Yang in a deep dive for The Yappie.
A lack in housing and staffing is hindering efforts to address homelessness in Hawai‘i, where Native Hawaiians are vastly overrepresented among the unsheltered, the Honolulu Civil Beat’s Jessica Terrell notes.
Sustained health disparities among Marshallese people in Arkansas have prompted renewed investment in community health workers, Arielle Dreher reports for The Spokesman-Review.
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” and its awards sweep at the Oscars showcased the kind of authentic storytelling that happens when Asians are both in front of and behind the camera. Yet the film’s historic wins also reiterate the limitations of Hollywood, Regina Kim writes for Pop Off.
The long read: KQED’s Adesh Thapliyal explores the origins of the first Asian American rock album, as produced by a group of Filipinos in San Francisco.
🥰 Enjoying The Yappie? Make a donation, forward this briefing to a friend. or subscribe here. You can also follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
— By
The Yappie Staff
A MESSAGE FROM THE KAUFFMAN FOUNDATION
The Kauffman Foundation helps unlock opportunity for all so that people can achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity – regardless of race, gender, or geography.