April 13, 2020
“Put on a mask, you Asian bitch,” are one of many examples of incident reports from A3PCON (Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council). “You’re all cheap yellow who*es, just like those bi*ches my dad used to f*ck in Saigon,” would be another disturbing example. “You bi*ches are always hungry for co*k, that’s why you all come to us [white men] and not your tiny d*ck boyfriends.”
Believe it or not, those are all actual incident reports filed online and the very first example coming from A3PCON among organizations bombarded with reports by Asian-Americans within the last 30 days.
Asian women are 3x more likely to be harassed with coronavirus-related incidents, according to the Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council report released late March. That last report clocked in at 750 cases of racial harassment and hate crimes. As of the first week of April, the number of incidents has increased to 1,100 cases.
Cynthia Choi, co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action stated to HuffPost: “There’s reasons for that. One is the sense that perhaps women are not going to fight back, are more vulnerable, less likely to respond, and so when people feel like they have a license to [harass them], they’re gonna go after people who may appear to be vulnerable even though that’s not the case.”
Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of AP3CON reinforced Choi’s statement with another example of her own from incident reports “on the same block as where I live, which is in downtown Los Angeles, when I was crossing the street and crossing paths with three young men. They noticed me and started making suggestive comments and catcalling. One of them said, ‘Do you want to give me the coronavirus?’” quoted to HuffPost.
These are not isolated incidents. For those readers who are of Asian descent, we’ve all experienced racial insults at the very least that would not be given a ‘pass’ if said to other groups of people. Things said to Asians these days would mean the end of the world if you were to replace the Asian racial slurs with black or Latino slurs. There would be riots in the streets, 24/7 coverage on CNN, and the mass public labeling those guilty individuals as the anti-Christ.
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