As the world followed the spread of the coronavirus in early 2020, other reports began to spread as well: harassment, attacks, and other incidents directed against Asian people. San Francisco wasn’t immune from fear of the virus after the first outbreak in Wuhan, China. In a show of solidarity, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Chinatown and encouraged others to do the same.
Around the same time Pelosi was linking arms with Chinatown leaders, San Francisco State University professor Russell Jeung, who grew up in the Richmond district, was flying east to speak at the Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Conn.
En route, he catalogued more than 700 news articles detailing coronavirus-related xenophobic behavior for a new project he was working on: Stop AAPI Hate. (AAPI stands for Asian American Pacific Islander.)
At his hotel that night, he realized he had forgotten to hit save: hours of work were lost. But Jeung, 58, pressed on, and with the help of two other organizations, Stop AAPI Hate launched in late March as a site where people could report anti-Asian incidents.
Cell phones might capture a few moments that go viral, but most remain private.
“I think that’s why people report to us rather than to the police,” says Jeung. “They want to share their story, and they don’t necessarily think the police can stop what happens to them.”
The portal as of early August had logged more than 2,500 self-reported incidents: verbal and physical attacks, shunning, even incidents of intentional coughing and spitting. (Forty percent of the reports are from Californians, 60 percent are from out of state.)
The collection is a powerful picture of scapegoating and racism egged on by President Donald Trump, his supporters, and the ugly language they use to deflect blame for mishandling the pandemic.
Jeung, who writes about the intersections of faith, culture, and ethnicity and calls himself a Christian activist, has taught at SF State since 2002. He is currently the chair of the school’s Asian-American Studies department. He spoke to The Frisc about Stop AAPI Hate, the state of San Francisco race relations, and more.
The conversation has been edited and condensed.
The Frisc: How did the Stop AAPI Hate site come about?
Russell Jeung: Upsurges [in hate incidents] have always occurred during times of war, pandemic, and economic downturn. Right now we have all three, if you consider we’re in a cold war against China.
We started following the news in January and saw a clear increase. We knew it was coming. We heard a lot about shunning — purposeful avoidance on public transportation — and included that as a category. Later we started to see [intentional] coughing and spitting. You’d never think that’s how people would treat each other, but we created that category and now it’s 7% to 8% of incidents reported.
It’s all self-reported, and we get about 10 incidents a day in California. As a baseline, a study by the California Health Interview Survey found 5.4% of Asians in California have experienced racism. That’s a conservative number, but it’s still really high, more than 1,000 people a day.
San Francisco likes to think of itself as diverse and tolerant. But your work shows a lot of incidents happening here.
We like to think of ourselves as a progressive, liberal city, and it’s true. But we do have a higher rate of incidents. As a percentage of total incidents, SF has probably about double the assaults and coughing and spitting rate as the rest of the nation.
Perhaps it’s because SF is higher density, so people come into more conflict. And because we’re more progressive, Asian Americans are more likely to say “That’s discrimination and we’re not going to put up with it.”
How does the current situation compare to previous periods of American history, like 9/11?
After 9/11, President George W. Bush said let’s protect our Muslim-American communities. Social media is another difference between now and 9/11.
But we see similar patterns of interpersonal violence and racist policies. These days it’s a mass immigration ban, a ban on students, a ban on WeChat, and a DOJ initiative that racially profiles Chinese scientists.
Attacks on elderly Asians in SF is a big problem, most recently two terrible assaults in the Tenderloin, after which the district attorney and two supervisors spoke out last week. But they didn’t call for new policies or laws. (Editor’s note: A legislative aide to Sup. Matt Haney, whose district includes the Tenderloin, said “we are engaging with community to address their concerns and needs directly and will have them help guide what next steps will be.”) What would you like to see happen?
There are two issues: One is the rate of crime against the elderly, the second is hate incidents against Asian Americans. We don’t know if recent crimes against elderly were racially motivated. We like to keep those two issues distinct. We don’t want to charge communities as being racist when they’re not.
For hate incidents, we don’t think greater law enforcement is necessarily the answer. We need more public education, ethnic studies, and understanding to promote strong race relations.
We also need more civil rights enforcement. Most incidents typically occur at business places. When we’re shopping, other customers yell at us or employees mistreat us, and that violates civil rights in California, not getting public accommodation and safe access to goods and services. We’re working with the state’s civil rights agency to advertise and encourage businesses to promote civility and respect.
For protecting our elderly, I think the community would want more police presence, more language access to police services, quicker response times, and victim assistance. We need more neighborhood-based policing.
How does that fit with the current calls for less police funding?
It’s related. You can say neighborhood policing with more comprehensive wraparound services, including mental health support, victim assistance, and safety escorts.
In Chinatown they created a new civilian patrol group. They respond to both anti-Asian hate and crimes against elderly. They’ve stopped a few people.
Are you worried they’ll racially profile others coming to Chinatown?
That would be the next thing to worry about for them. Or if they get hurt.
About education and outreach, what has proven effective?
The Los Angeles Human Relations Commission has a neighborhood-based campaign called L.A. vs. Hate. It just launched two months ago, so we don’t know the impact. We support neighborhood conversations to discuss the issue. In San Francisco, the Richmond district is hosting neighborhood forums and talks.
My classes have been going into the Bayview for a decade to host joint Lunar New Year-African American Heritage Month celebrations at the Bayview YMCA. We recognized that Asian Americans were moving into historically Black neighborhoods and there have been issues. Even before the pandemic, better race relations were necessary.
We need to both target our own anti-Blackness and reach out to other groups to prevent anti-Asian hate. It’s both-and.
russell jeung
American racial relations, and the need for frank discussions about race, are often framed as Black/white. How much urgency is there for these discussions between different groups of people of color?
Everyone is impacted by white supremacy. Addressing anti-Asian hate is another part of dismantling it.
In the Asian American community, we are omitted from the Black/white dialogue. We need to both target our own anti-Blackness and reach out to other groups to prevent anti-Asian hate. It’s both-and. We need to address the implicit biases that everyone has.
Culturally responsible approaches are important; having a dialogue might not be an Asian way of approaching conflict resolution. Working side by side to address an issue — more action than words — can be appreciated by some groups of Asian Americans.
The elderly Asian man who was collecting cans and was beaten up by young Black men in the Bayview opted for restorative justice.
There were two assailants. One case went through the restorative justice process, the other went to jail. A lot of elderly Asians, I can’t say for sure, but they might not want to directly confront or punish their assailants, they just want them to stop and take accountability for their issues. I think that’s what this man wanted.
I think that’s why people report to us rather than to the police. They want to share their story—they don’t necessarily think the police can stop what happens to them. It happens too quickly, and the incidents don’t always rise to the level of crime.
Is the Bayview a flashpoint neighborhood right now?
It’s citywide, and particularly in gentrifying neighborhoods that have more ethnic competition over resources.
As you collect reports from the ground, so to speak, are you working with researchers studying online hate speech?
We have another report that [examines] what language is used during these incidents. What we can say is the hate speech of three primary online instigators [including Trump] gets parroted in the language of local perpetrators … scapegoating, blaming terms like “Chinese virus” and “go back to China.” What’s interesting is that Canada and Australia are reporting the same language. Trump’s terminology spreads around the world.
