Last year, at the beginning of theCOVID-19pandemic,MulanactorTzi Mawas walking towards a Whole Foods in Pasadena, Calif., when a car slowed down in front of him.
“I said, ‘Oh, how courteous, a young man, slowing down for me to cross,'” Ma, who was born in Hong Kong, tells PEOPLE. “That was not the case. He rode up and stopped in front of me, rolled down his window and looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘You should be quarantined,’ and took off.”
The encounter, Ma said, left him “numb and kind of a little bit dazed.”
He was hardly alone in enduring racial abuse,as hate crime and racism against Asians have increasedsince the start of the pandemic. According to a recent Harris poll, 75 percent of Asian Americans arefearful of increased hate and discriminationtoward them. Connie Chung Joe, CEO of the nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles, says that there have been at least 2,800 hate incidents targeting Asians nationwide in the past year, and that those numbers may be deceptively low because of language and cultural barriers to reporting incidents.
Tzi Ma; Donald Trump.Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP/Shutterstock; Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Ma says former presidentDonald Trump— who referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus” and “Kung Flu” — has helped stoke the racism.
“He just basically kind of turned over all the rocks and [racists are] all crawling out,” says Ma. “It gave them permission, emboldened them just to come out and do whatever. Because, ‘Hey man, the leader of the free world is telling us it’s okay.’ He definitely had a hand in all of this and it’s still continuing.”
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Ma has joined#WashTheHate, a social media campaign that was launched last March in response to the uptick in anti-Asian violence.
The founder of the campaign, Telly Wong, the chief content officer at New York marketing agency IW Group, said he started #WashTheHate — whose name references the directive to wash hands to prevent the spread of COVID — after watching a disturbing attack online.
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He says his campaign enables people to “share stores, condemning hatred, as well as personal experiences in terms of how they’re dealing with the pandemic.”
To help combat the increase in violence, some cities, counties and law enforcement agencies are providing outreach to the Asian American community, with the aim of making people feel more comfortable reporting crimes and educating people about the dangers of xenophobia and discrimination.
In Los Angeles, when a man began threatening activist Hong Lee, a mother of two, screaming “Go back to Asia” and profanities, Lee posted the encounter on Instagram and Facebook. In response, the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission set up a help line for victims and witnesses to report hate incidents (211la.org/la-vs-hate) in 140 languages.
“The whole point is to just assist the victim,” says Lee.
Ma believes the recent attention paid to the assaults and racism is positive, but more work needs to be done.
“Everybody has to have a part of it to stem this,” he says. “We really need to organize. It’s a must. It has to be a unified effort otherwise it won’t work. It will bubble up again.”
To learn more and to report crimes, go to:Asian Americans Advancing Justice(advancingjustice-aajc.org)Stop the AAPI Hate(stopaapihate.org)National Council of Asian Pacific Americans(aapiern.org),Asian Americans Advancing Justice-LA (advancingjustice-la.org) and Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council (asianpacificpolicyandplanningcouncil.org).
source: people.com
