From ‘Yellow Peril’ to COVID-19: New book takes unflinching look at anti-Asian racism
More than 150 years ago, some 15,000 Chinese workers arrived in the U.S. to help construct the country’s first transcontinental railroad, which connected the West Coast with the East Coast’s rail network.
These Chinese laborers received lower wages than their white counterparts for the same job and endured worse living conditions.
Over the past century and a half, discrimination against Asians has persisted.
During World War II, the U.S. incarcerated hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans; after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, hate incidents against Middle Eastern and South Asian communities soared; following the coronavirus outbreak, .
After witnessing a surge in anti-Asian hate incidents during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ethnic Studies Professor Jennifer Ho collected a diverse range of stories from authors of Asian heritage worldwide and released the edited volume “” in February.
“If you know someone who's Asian, living anywhere in this world, they have been subjected to and have thought about being the target of violence and racism,” says Ho, a Chinese American woman who was herself subject to anti-Asian harassment at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
May marks the 155th anniversary of the railroad’s completion and the annual celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month. ýĻƷ Today spoke with Ho, director of the Center for Humanities & the Arts, about her new book and the importance of supporting AAPI communities year-round.
Jennifer Ho
What ignited the recent wave of anti-Asian racism?
The COVID-19 virus originated out of China. That’s really all it took, given the centuries-long circulation of “yellow peril” rhetoric, which describes the Western fears that East Asians would take over the West and disrupt Western values.
The peak of the recent wave of anti-Asian racism was in March of 2021 when a gunman in Atlanta, Georgia, killed eight people, six of whom were Asian women. Around the same time, we saw multiple videos of Asian elders being punched in the face in various Chinatowns across the U.S.
Racism against Asian Americans is not new. How are the recent events different?
The recent events are specifically targeting Chinese or people who have East Asian features and are misidentified as Chinese. But this violence is rooted in a longstanding history of targeting Asians in the U.S. simply because they look different.
In the U.S. context, white supremacy is the main driving force of anti-Asian racism. White supremacy perpetuates the belief that Asians never inherently belong in U.S. spaces and that Asians are always hyphenated Americans. For example, I'm never going to be treated or seen as someone who is just plain American, because in the minds of most people in the U.S., an American is someone with a white face.