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The author growing up in Cleveland (the middle child, on her father’s lap)

The March 16, 2021 shootings in Atlanta, resulting in the tragic deaths of eight people, six of whom were Asian women, have raised awareness of anti-Asian violence, misogyny, and hatred in this country. In this unprecedented time when global viruses of COVID–19 and racism run rampant, the rise in anti-Asian hate and violence cannot be denied. The national Stop AAPI Hate report documented almost 3,800 such incidents from March, 2020 to February, 2021.

Anti-Asian violence is not new. As a second-generation Korean American, born and raised in the Midwest, and a resident of Champaign for over twenty years, I was disgusted by the Atlanta killings but not surprised. News outlets daily document random violent attacks against Asian Americans, but this racism has always been part of the Asian American experience. Despite generations of citizenship, loyalty, and civic engagement in this country, Asians have been cast as foreigners, disloyal, and untrustworthy. Chinese immigrants who came to the US in the 1800s were vilified as taking over white labor, and mobs lynched them and drove them out of towns. During World War II, the US government labeled Japanese Americans disloyal, and rounded up 120,000 of them, two-thirds of whom were citizens, into internment camps. With US military involvement in Korea and Vietnam, media depicted Asians as the enemy and as dispensable bodies, collateral victims of necessary wars against communism; Asian women were presented as prostitutes who would “love you long time.” After the September 11 terrorist attack, South Asians became the newest target, suspected of terrorism, disloyalty, and hatred of America. The COVID pandemic’s depiction as the “China virus” and the “kung flu” is merely the latest iteration of this tired theme, blaming Asians for disease and justifying retribution. Continue reading →