It’s been one year since eight people were killed after a gunman opened fire at two Atlanta-area massage businesses. Six of the victims were of Asian descent, sparking fear and outcry within Asian American communities across the country over the possibility the victims were targeted because of their race.
The deadly attacks were part of an increase in anti-Asian violence that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when former President Donald Trump and others called the coronavirus the “China virus” and “Kung Flu.”
In the aftermath of the Atlanta shootings, President Joe Biden said, “Whatever the motivation here, I know Asian Americans are very concerned. Because as you know, I have been speaking about the brutality against Asian Americans for the last couple months, and I think it’s very, very troubling.”
And a year later, violence against Asian Americans is still on the rise, according to recent reports.
A recent report by Stop AAPI Hate said there were 10,905 reports of hate incidents against Asians in America between March 19, 2020 — three days after the Atlanta shootings — and Dec. 31, 2021.
That constitutes a 339% increase in reported hate incidents against Asian Americans over the past year, including both hate crimes and other instances of violence and discrimination, according to a March report by the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum.
Asian American and Pacific Islander women face a significant level of racialized violence, the NAPAWF said, making up 62% of all national hate incidents over the last year, according to the report.
NAPAWF surveyed 2,414 adult women who self-identify as Asian American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.
Over the last 12 months, 74% of all respondents said they had personally experienced racism or discrimination, 38% reported experiencing sexual harassment, and 12% reported experiencing physical violence — either gender-based, race-based or both.
Of those, 53% of the perpetrators of racism or discrimination were strangers. The report said 43% of respondents said they were discriminated against for their race or ethnicity, 34% said they experienced racism because of their skin color, and 19% said they were targeted for their language or accent, the report said.
AAPI women also reported experiencing significant levels of sexual harassment.
Though 40% of all respondents reported feeling more unsafe now than when the pandemic first began, East Asian respondents were significantly more likely to report feeling more unsafe than other groups, the report said.
Most respondents — “a staggering 71%,” the report said — said they were stressed and anxious over the last year due to fear of gender- or race-based hate incidents. Only 29% of respondents said they felt their local elected officials had sufficiently addressed anti-AAPI hate.
The report’s findings come on the heels of several other incidents of violence against Asian Americans that have made national headlines.
On Jan. 15, Michelle Go, a 40-year-old New Yorker, was pushed off a subway platform to her death. A month later, on Feb. 14, Christina Yuna Lee was found dead in her bathtub after being followed into her Chinatown apartment and stabbed 40 times, The New York Times reported.
Also in New York, a man was arrested on March 2 after being accused of attacking seven Asian women in the span of two hours several days earlier.
Robert Aaron Long, 22, the man charged in the Atlanta-area shootings, was sentenced to life without parole after pleading guilty last summer to murder and other charges in the Cherokee County killings, ABC News reported. He is still facing charges in the Atlanta killings, and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who has said she believes gender and race were a motive, is seeking the death penalty.
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