SCAR
Why not try real solutions?
Spokane could just decide to love its community more. Everyone wants less crime, but leaning on police to do all the work just creates more prisoners. We need to actually invest in our community; in each other.
Combating Anti-Asian Racism
A statement from Asian Pacific Islander Coalition (APIC) Washington:
“We are heartbroken and outraged by the murder of eight people – 6 of them women of Asian descent – in the shooting spree in Georgia. We mourn with the families of the victims, and we stand with the Asian American & Pacific Islander communities in Georgia.”
We must acknowledge the role of racism, classism, and racialized misogyny in the senseless violence committed against the six Asian women who lost their lives. It was not only a hate crime; it was an act of terror. White supremacy is the root of these acts of violence.
Asian American communities across the nation are grief-stricken, anxious, fearful and angry. We have seen the rise of anti-Asian violence and racism for over a year now. The Stop AAPI Hate coalition reported over 3,700 hate incidents between March 2020 and February 2021. We have also seen the escalation of hate crimes and racism against Asian across the State of Washington. We are concerned about the safety of ourselves and our loved ones.
We need to recognize that anti-Asian racism and violence is not a new phenomenon. Anti-Asian violence is interwoven in the history of Asian Americans in the United States. Early Asian immigrants were not only targets of violence by individuals, but systematic, mass violence such as the Chinese Massacre of 1871. Anti-Japanese sentiments of 1980s led to the murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American in Detriot, Michigan. After 9/11, people of South Asian descent became the target of hate crimes. The COVID pandemic has only pulled the cover that hid the anti-Asian racism already deeply ingrained in the U.S. society.
In this time, we call for solidarity with other communities of color. White supremacy devalues the lives of our BIPOC community – it has manifested in the racial disparities in the COVID pandemic over the past year and police brutality against BIPOC folks, specifically the Black community, without consequence. We recognize that the racism we experience is intertwined, and all of it is due to the common issue of white supremacy and white nationalism. We must fight against this violence, and call out the strategy of those in power who would like to see our communities turn against each other instead of moving forward together. We are much more powerful when we band together than when we are torn apart, and the support we have seen over the past 48 hours has shown a powerful future of what coalition and solidarity can and should look like.
We call for action from elected officials at the local, state and federal levels. Beyond publicly speaking up against anti-Asian racism, we ask our elected leaders to invest in community-based solutions that address the root cause of hate and violence. This includes funding, investment, and prioritization of 1) in-language and culturally responsive resources, crisis intervention support, and mental health services for our communities who have experienced harm 2) programs that support all immigrants and refugees including but not limited to safety net programs, unemployment benefits, LEP pathways, naturalization services, and more 3) ethnic studies curriculum, including Asian and Pacific Islander history, in our K-12 public schools and universities and 4) genuine and sustained engagement of our communities in policy discussions.
We ask that you join us in solidarity to support our communities and combat hate and white supremacy.
The Making of Asian America: A History by Erika Lee
American History Unbound: Asians and
Pacific Islanders by Gary Y. Okihiro
Reporting Hate Incidents:
Spokane Area
- Spokane County Human Rights Task Force’s Hate Incident Report Form
- City of Spokane Human Rights Commission website: it contains information on different types of complaints
- Spokane Police Department’s Information on How to Report Hate Crime
National
- Stop AAPI Hate Project: Form available in English, Chinese (traditional & simplified), Korean, Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese, Khmer, Punjabi, Tagalog, Hmong & Hindi; also check out the reports they compiled. The website also has resources such as safety tips in different Asian languages.
- Stand Against Hatred Project: Form available in English, Chinese (traditional & simplified), Korean and Vietnamese; you can also check out the report they compiled. Asian Americans Advancing Social Justice, the organization behind this effort, has also compiled a very comprehensive list of resources addressing COVID-19 anti-Asian racism.
Bystander Intervention Resources:
- Hollaback – an organization dedicated to bystander intervention training to combat harassment and hate; note that it has resources to especially address anti-Asian coronavirus racism.
- Teaching Tolerance – the website has a lot of bystander resources, and it also have resources specifically about coronavirus racism such as How to Respond to Coronavirus Racism by Teaching Tolerance
Educators Resources:
- Yellow Peril Teach-In Resources (resources to address coronavirus racism) – this Google doc contains a large amount of resources; teachers will be able to find materials they can use for their classes that are age appropriate.
- Anti-Asian Racism and COVID 19: A Teach-In – webinar by PEN America
- A TownHall on Anti-Asian Racism: Race, Struggle and Solidarity In the Time of A Global Pandemic – a frank and powerful conversation on COVID-19 anti-Asian racism with a panel made up of organizers and academics; it offers an intersectional perspective that also addresses dynamics within Asian American communities.
- Act-to-Change – it has put together resources organized a series of virtual conversations specifically addressing anti-Asian discrimination in the COVID pandemic. Here’s the first in the series.
- The long history of US racism against Asian Americans, from ‘yellow peril’ to ‘model minority’ to the ‘Chinese virus’
- Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Los Angeles – curriculum and lesson plans
- Zinn Education Project’s Teaching People’s History in the Pandemic page
- Racial Equity Tools’ COVID-19 – Racial Equity & Social Justice Resources
- Teaching Tolerance’s website – it has a lot of COVID-19 resources (such as this) and general resources on topics related to diversity and equity.
- Facing History and Ourselves Support for Teachers During the COVID-19 Outbreak page – Protect Yourself and Stand Against Racism
- NASP’s Countering COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Stigma and Racism: Tips for Parents and Caregivers
- A letter on xenophobia: a resource to assist adults in conversations on xenophobia with Asian American children
- Act to Change’s COVID-19 Resources To Fight Bullying And Hate
Videos, Websites & Books to Learn More About AAPI Communities:
- The Chinese Massacre of 1871 – here are a couple of videos on this history – Recounting the Chinese Massacre of 1871 and the Largest Lynching in US History
- The Tacoma Method – a website documenting the violent expulsion of Chinese in Tacoma in 1885 and other similar cases of anti-Chinese violence in Puget Sound and the rest of the U.S.
- The Omoide Project in Spokane – a project to document the history of local Japanese Americans.
- Voices: Who Is Vincent Chin? | NBC Asian America – this is a short video about the murder of Vincent Chin and the activism in Asian American communities across the U.S. To learn more, you can watch this excellent documentary Vincent Who: The Murder of a Chinese American Man on the Spokane Public Library’s Kanopy Streaming site if you have a library account.
- PBS’s 5-hour Series on Asian Americans
- The Road to Chinese Exclusion: The Denver Riot, 1880 Election, and Rise of the West, and Gold Mountain Turned to Dust: Essays on the Legal History of the Chinese in the Nineteenth-Century American West, written by Liping Zhu.
- PBS’s documentary on the Chinese Exclusion Act – the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is the first law that singled out a racial/ethnic group to prohibit them from migrating to the United States.
- Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning written by Cathy Park Hong
- Yellow: Race in American Beyond Black and White – written by legal scholar Frank Wu, who has been recently appointed as the President of Queens College, CUNY.
- Asian American History: A Very Short Introduction (a pocket book) and The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority – written by Madeline Y Hsu
- The Making of Asian America: A History and America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States – written by historian Erika Lee