On the last day 17/03, a white man entered a massage parlor area in Atlanta, us United States, and killed eight people, six of them women of Chinese and Korean descent. No UK, in early March, a Chinese teacher of 37 years old he was beaten by four white men who cursed him for “Chinese virus”.
The increase in prejudice and hatred against the Asian community can be attributed to the spread of âfake newsâ that has been circulating since the beginning of the pandemic, attributing to Asians the proliferation of the virus, identifying them as the only ones responsible for the disease, what, as we know, originated in Wuhan, and China. To combat the spread of prejudice in the USA, a group of Americans launched the âStop Asian Hateâ/Stop APPI Hate campaign that has been gaining traction on social networks in the United States. The group's demonstrations continue to take place in several US locations: Nova York, Oxford, The Angels, San Francisco and Chicago were some of the cities that staged these protests.
in the last weeks, artists like the actors in the series âKilling Eveâ, Sandra Oh, and from the series "Lost", Daniel Dae Kim, have been some of the most active voices calling on the US justice system for energetic attitudes against this wave of prejudice.. Recently, Daniel Kim, which is of korean origin, addressed lawmakers in the US Congress House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee calling for an Asian anti-hate bill. Kim didn't hide his frustration after 164 Republican members of the National Congress have voted against the bill.
According to "Stop APPI Hate", who is responsible for identifying and recording the attacks, 3.795 Racist incidents against Asians were reported between March last year and February this year. Since the beginning of the pandemic, these attacks increased by almost 150%, second study developed by the "Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism", from the University of California. This escalation is fueled reactions from the Asian community that has now organized neighborhood patrols in Queens, Nova York, where your more than 200 members take turns reporting suspicious activity to the police. A dozen of them recently applied for firearms licenses.
Universities such as Harvard and Columbia University provided solidarity with the movement., which gained strong support from the student community. The dean of Columbia University, Lee C. Bollinger, posted the following message: âto the thousands in our Columbia community who are Asians or Asian Americans, we want you to know that we, also, in your name and for all of us, we feel the justifiable anguish and fear because of this latest episode of a deeply rooted tension of racism in America. The truth is that there can be no equanimity for any of us as long as the violence born of intolerance and xenophobia is present in our lives.â.
Other important universities hosted acts in support of the campaign and demand greater support from education sector authorities, including improvements in security and educational systems, through actions that recapitulate the historical saga of the Asian people and their communities established both on American soil and on the Pacific Islands, including with regard to the amplification of its representation in various sectors of American society.
The UN joined these initiatives and also expressed its repudiation through a statement from the Secretary-General, AntĂłnio Gueterres, in day 22/03, in which he claims to be "deeply concerned (âprofoundly concernedâ) with increased violence against Asians and people of Asian descent during the COVID-19 pandemic…this moment of challenge for all must be a moment to defend the dignity of allâ.
these are the facts. Let's go, now, seek to analyze the circumstances…
Advocates for the cause say the violence may be linked to heightened anti-Asian sentiment in the US, which they attribute to former President Donald Trump's anti-China rhetoric, which often referred to the pandemic as the “china virus” or at “gripe if”. However, these incidents are best explained by “widespread omission” of community in the American multicultural context, according to the activist and founder of the NGO âRise Civil Rightsâ, Amanda Nguyen. For her, â… although the Asian population has grown faster than other large groups, as per the last US census, their stories are not widely covered by the media and their concerns are not taken up by political partiesâ. And add⊠“We have been systematically erased on every single level and people can start to combat that by educating themselves about us.”
In fact, The hole is further down", and older…let us resort to history:
This is not the first time that race foundation has been used as a cover to marginalize or act against Asians in the US. Prejudice dates back to the time of the so-called "Gold Rush" - the "California Gold Rush" – to the California region, in the middle of the 19th century. The dream of the Californian âEldoradoâ encouraged the Chinese who lived through troubled times in the Qing Empire to emigrate to the region. The first arrived in 1848, In San Francisco. By the late 1850s they already constituted a fifth of the territory's population.. Cultural estrangement fueled white nativists to spread propaganda about the impure habits of immigrants. From then on they started to constitute the “yellow danger”, unfit for citizenship in America.
This state of mind fueled the approval of the âChinese Exclusion Lawâ, signed by President Chester A. Arthur, in 6 from May of 1882, which banned all immigration of Chinese workers. this law, just like a previous one, of 1875, which forbade Chinese women from immigrating to the United States, were the first, and remain the only legislation implemented to prevent members of a specific ethnic or national group from immigrating to the United States.. The legislation was initially intended to last. 10 years, but it was renewed in 1892 and became permanent in 1902, until it falls into disuse.
Ethnic prejudice took a new form in World War II, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, in 1941. Asian Americans were massively interned in the US, in the name of national security. The ones who suffered most were the 120.000 Californians of Japanese descent, two-thirds of which were actually born on American soil and, therefore, were US citizens. Most were incarcerated in “relocation fields” remote for over two years, despite never having been convicted - or even formally charged – of any crime. By the way, as a matter of fact, it is worth remembering that the same occurred in Brazil, as the writer Fernando de Morais masterfully tells in his book âCoraçÔes Sujosâ.
The ember of prejudice is always lit, not only against asians, of course, and its sparks are ready to spread to all corners of the planet: immigrants and refugees of all kinds are one of the tenebrous targets. And don't respect borders, be they physical, religious, ethnic, etc., often in an explosive mixture, literally.
also us, in the ends of america, we live similar times. Surge, So, the question that doesn't want to be silent: to Coronavac, Chinese, will transmute us, Finally, in alligators????…
And so, the ship goes…
