California has allocated $ 1.4 million to help Asian Americans report hate incidents and track the attacks after a slew of cases – including the murder of an 84-year-old man – have rocked the nation in recent weeks.
Gavin Newsom signed the larger pandemic budget bill AB85, which includes $ 1.4 million for researchers from the Asian American Studies Center at the University of California Los Angeles and the Stop AAPI Hate website, into law Tuesday.
California’s decision to fund Asia-led community initiatives is clearly different from responses in other parts of the country, such as New York City’s pledge to ramp up the police force.
The Stop AAPI Hate site was launched by a coalition of advocacy groups nearly a year ago as the COVID-19 pandemic and its suspected origins in Wuhan, China sparked a new wave of anti-Asian attacks and discrimination in the US .
The site tracks hate incidents and helps Asian Americans report them in a dozen languages. It has recorded nearly 3,000 incidents of hate in 2020 alone, although lawmakers think this is a small fraction of the total, as many victims in Asian-American communities may not report due to mistrust in government and law enforcement.
“I think that’s only about a tenth, or even less, of the actual hate crimes that take place because most people don’t even know the website exists or don’t even know how to properly report a hate crime,” California assembly member Phil Ting , who helped draft this piece of legislation, told ABC News.
“We’ve seen a massive increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans since the start of the pandemic,” Ting said. “I know people are upset and angry and they want to blame people, and unfortunately a few people blame the wrong individuals, and they blame Asian Americans.”
‘They were attacked and killed. They have been spit on, ”he added. “It’s been pretty gruesome.”
Ting said the emphasis on assistance with reporting and data collection could help take more action to combat the hate crimes.
“Unless you have data, it’s hard to say it’s a problem,” he said. “We all know there are individual acts of racism. Unless you can prove that it is more widespread than a corner incident or an incident in a store, it is very difficult to justify a broader response.”
Ting lamented former President Donald Trump’s use of the “Chinese virus” or “Kung flu”, saying these words from the highest branch of the administration are directly linked to the rise in anti-Asian racism.
“When you see hate speech on the rise, and I consider that hate speech, there is always an increase in hate crimes that go along with it,” Ting said. “Because it just becomes okay to say hateful things to Asian Americans who have nothing to do with this virus, and then it becomes okay to attack Asian Americans.”
“The reason we take a strong stance on this is because hate crimes are not an attack on an individual, but in fact an attack on a community,” he said. “They are really meant to bring fear into a general community.”
Ting implored victims to report the incidents on the Stop AAPI Hate website, which attempts to break through a number of language barriers and other factors that can prevent people from reporting hate crimes, even if they have occurred multiple times.
“They just try to shake it off and just say, ‘Hey, this is just something that I’m dealing with, and I’m just going to move on,’ even though it’s kind of traumatic, ” Ting said of many in the AAPI community. ”I think in most cases we just have people who would just want to forget that the whole situation happened and move on and do nothing. And I think that’s why we urge our community to report this. “
Richard Pan, the chairman of the Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus in California, noted in a statement praising the new legislation that anti-Asian racism in the US has not started the coronavirus pandemic.
Pan cited a long legacy of xenophobia in the US, from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
“I am grateful that California is funding data collection and research at UCLA to address racism and hatred of the API community,” added Pan.
The Stop AAPI Hate Coalition told ABC News that it has learned over the past year that it is “absolutely critical” to invest in documenting, tracking and analyzing the attacks to draw attention to the crisis.
“The funding allocated to Stop AAPI Hate will support the coalition’s efforts to address the devastating impact of anti-Asian hatred, including tracking and documenting incidents to proactively prevent future incidents,” the coalition said in a statement. statement.
The funding will also enable the coalition to expand the resources it can provide directly to affected community members and families, and forge new partnerships with organizations, businesses and governments to develop long-term policies and community-based solutions to hate and violence. to develop. , ” the statement added.