- Hate crimes, tragically, are nothing new to members of the Asian American community.

Today's guest helps us put them in historical context from the Asian Exclusion Acts to the rise of violence targeting Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She's Dr. Janelle Wong.

This week on "Story in the Public Square".

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to a "Story in the Public Square", where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

Joining me from his home in Rhode Island, is my great friend and colleague G. Wayne Miller of The Providence Journal.

Each week, we talk about big issues with great guests.

Authors, journalists, scholars and more to make sense of the stories that shape public life in the United States today.

This week, we're joined by Dr. Janelle Wong, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland.

Janelle, thank you so much for being with us.

- [Janelle] Thanks for having me.

- [Jim] So there's a lot that we wanna talk to you about today, but we're especially mindful of the recent surge in hate violence targeting Asian Americans.

I was looking at some data from an advocacy group called Stop AAPI Hate, which reported 2,800 incidents of anti-Asian hate from 47 States and Washington, DC the period between March 2020 and the end of last year.

And an additional 987 incidents in the first two months of 2021.

Those numbers are kind of startling and shocking.

What do you make of them?

- [Janelle] Well, I think what these numbers show is definitely more attention to the kind of anti-Asian violence that's occurring in the US.

We didn't have data really before the pandemic started, but there's definitely been an increase in, especially worry, among Asian-Americans in terms of the possible backlash against the pandemic, as people started to blame China on the spread of the virus.

And so I think what this moment is really capturing is yes, there is a potential for backlash against Asian-Americans, but this is also a kind of reaction that people in the US have had to Asian-Americans in this country since really the beginning of immigration of Asian-Americans to US shores.

And so there have been times throughout history that Asian Americans have been scapegoated and blamed for potential bringing disease, bringing their culture, bringing potential kinds of disruptions to US life and this is really part of this longer history.

- [Jim] So when I think about this issue my mind goes back to things like the Asian Exclusion Act, the internment of Japanese Americans in the second world war.

Give us just a sense of that long sweep of history of discrimination against the Asians who are have either immigrated to the United States or who are second generation or later citizens.

- [Janelle] Yeah, so those incidents you bring up always occur during times of kind of national anxiety for the especially white population in the US.

And so during the exclusion, there were bands on immigration from China and then eventually other parts of Asia precisely because, and justified really, by the kind of similar rhetoric as today that Chinese would bring disease to the US, that they would bring their strange religions and strange languages.

But then we see as US history kind of marches on.

that there are other moments where the US feels either economic anxiety or other kinds of anxiety.

So either military anxiety, as you mentioned with World War II, and the internment of Japanese Americans, and also economic anxiety that happened in the 1980s as Japan started to become a more formidable economic power.

There were a feeling of threat, especially in the US auto industry.

And so Vincent Chin, a Chinese man born in the US, was killed by two white auto workers who thought he was Japanese.

This actually started to spur the Asian-American movement but then also we've seen more recently, even in 2012, attacks against Sikh Americans who are seen as fundamentally foreign in some ways, because they are blamed for especially terrorism, they're mistaken as Muslim and so this kind cycle of violence against Asian Americans is really embedded in US history.

It's not always prominent.

It doesn't always get the attention that it's getting today, but it certainly is sort of lurking in the past and now in the present.

- [G.] So can you give us a bit of an overview of the beginnings, the origins of this?

And in the mid 1800s, when Asians came to this country for jobs, jobs in the railroad industry, and other industries, that's when it began.

And many of these people, most of these people, came through California, which of course, is your home state.

Just give us a quick view of that, what was going on, the economic factors you mentioned the economy today, but also go back and give us a bit of a view.

- [Janelle] Yeah so in the mid 1800s, Chinese began to arrive on US shores and they were here partly as a labor recruitment as the country needed more people to do low wage work on the transcontinental railroad and in agriculture.

And so Congress was actually pushing for labor recruitment and described Chinese Americans as especially well-suited to agricultural work.

Quickly though, that turned to a sense of potential economic competition.

And as more Chinese came, they were still like less than 1% of the population, then especially a white-led union started to mobilize against them with real fears of not only economic competition, but fears, as I mentioned before, that Asian Americans, Chinese Americans would pollute the US labor force not only with potential sources of competition.

but with strange food, strange religions, strange languages.

- [G.] So returning to the present, what was the impact of the Trump administration on anti-Asian and Asian American hate and hate crimes?

And clearly that was a big factor in what has been going on for the last several years.

It's not just the pandemic, this proceeds that.

- [Janelle] Yeah.

So of course this is the rise in xenophobia is partly associated with President Trump.

So while these things have been these kinds of trends in history, anti-Asian sentiment, has been part of US history, it is triggered at times by especially rhetoric from political leaders and Trump is a good example of that.

And so as Trump started to talk about China as an enemy and getting tough on China, then because of this longer history and association in the US mind of Asian-Americans as fundamentally foreign, then they become an easy scapegoat.

What happened in terms of the pandemic in particular though, is that as China became the target of Trump's blame, then we saw other political leaders take up that same kind of language, calling the virus, "the wuhan virus", calling it the "kung flu", and there's a lot of evidence in terms of looking at trends on Twitter and then associating those trends with implicit bias that as rhetoric sort of started to center on Chinese as a potential source of the virus, then people's implicit bias towards Asian-Americans as a whole began to increase.

And one of the most interesting things of the pandemic moment is that while the blame was sort of squarely on China, Asian Americans of all different national origins felt the impact.

So they all expressed worries, including Indian-Americans.

And they were all subject to racist attacks to some degree.

So many of those attacks are not Chinese.

They were Korean, they were Southeast Asian, and so that shows you the kind of nature of anti-Asian bias.

It doesn't ever center on a single group usually.

- [Jim] Is there any understanding of how those leader and group dynamics work?

In an earlier part of my career, I remember looking at the rise of ethnic violence in various parts of the world.

And the role of the leaders is really essential in understanding why populations that traditionally have lived very well together for a very long time suddenly turn on one another.

Do we have an understanding of how that has happened for members of the AAPI community in the United States in this current context?

- [Janelle] Well, you know I think most of us do trace the particular way that anti-Asian rhetoric affects our group by really looking at the deeper roots in history.

The tenacious power of this perpetual foreigner stereotype is fairly unique, it's not only Asian Americans who feel it.

So sometimes Latin Americans are subject to the same kind of outsider status.

But if you think about, let's say Russians, and there has been a lot of condemnation of Russia as infiltrating our democracy, as trying to tear down our democracy.

You don't see the same kind of backlash when leaders are very harsh towards Russia at times, right?

And it doesn't necessarily translate then into a scapegoating of people who are Russian in the US partly because of race.

I mean, it really comes down to why does this happen because Asian-Americans are distinctive in terms of their racialization in the US.

And that leads to a certain kind of experience that isn't experienced by European immigrants.

- [G.] So, we could do a whole program on this question, it's something we talk about a lot and the role of the media in influencing thinking and politics and policies, but give us again, sort of an overview pro and con of the role the media have played over the years and particularly now in this current climate in early 2021.

- [Janelle] Yeah.

The media has played- I mean on the one hand, the media is what is drawing attention to the current experiences of Asian Americans and I see reporters and journalists doing a lot of work to kind of lift up this particular, maybe less understood experience of race in the US that is embodied by Asian Americans.

But at the same time, there is this long history of the media kind of going all in on certain kinds of stereotypes, covering Asian Americans as either foreigners or as especially well suited to math and science.

You know, I have to say that I think the media has done a very important job in drawing attention to especially violence against Asian Americans.

But one of the frustrations I have is that it tends to focus on Asian Americans outside of the broader context.

So Asian Americans, about 10%, have reported experiencing a hate incident in the first months of 2021.

And 10% of black Americans, and about 10% of Latinos have also reported a hate incident.

And so I think we need to understand the experience of Asian Americans as rooted in much of the same kinds of racism that other groups face, but also distinct and that's kind of what I'm not seeing as much of in this moment.

- [G.] So let's talk about two very recent events.

The first one is the mass shooting in Atlanta in March.

That I think brought to people who maybe had not been paying attention a focus on this.

Obviously this is a terrible tragedy, but do you think that in any way, at least in the media context, will begin to show a greater awareness and understanding?

- [Janelle] Definitely.

That tragic event brought more attention to violence against Asian Americans.

Particularly, the ways in which certain tropes associated with white supremacy.

For instance, the idea that Asian women are particularly hyper-sexualized.

The fact that it was a white shooter who was attacking these kind of places where non-white people were on the front lines I think did raise up some awareness.

At the same time I think that, again, that incident was sort of treated in isolation to some extent and did draw this very important attention to the Asian-American experience with especially racialized violence, but it also kind of failed to connect.

This was all unfolding against the background of the trial of Derek Chauvin who killed George Floyd, and other incidents of police violence.

And so one of the things my colleagues and I did after the Atlanta shootings, two days later we had a survey in the field with SurveyMonkey that really brought out some of the both kind of commonalities across racial groups and the differences.

So we find for instance that yes, Asian Americans, 60% or more, are likely to say someone asked them where they were from, assuming they're not from the US.

Or more than 40% have been treated like they don't speak English when they do.

But at the same time, we also found that Asian Americans were the least likely to experience police violence.

They were less likely than other groups, black Americans, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, to face housing discrimination.

They are the least likely to be told by a teacher to not to continue their education.

And so understanding the Asian American experience, the particular ways in which we experienced racism in connection to how other groups also experience racism, I think it's like this fundamental opportunity right now that we need to reflect on more deeply.

- [G.] So the other event, of course, was the guilty verdict.

Actually we're taping this in April, it was just yesterday, of Derek Chauvin of the murder of George Floyd.

How do you see that impacting the entire national dialogue, in particular Asian American people?

- [Janelle] I mean I think that it is, again, an opportunity that tragedy is something that really also presents an opportunity for solidarity by Asian Americans.

And we are seeing some of that, but it's complicated.

One of the police officers that witnessed and was a bystander in the killing of George Floyd was an Asian American man, right?

And he was Hmong American, one of the least advantaged groups, most marginalized groups in the Asian American community among Americans.

So, I think what we are looking at here is a chance for greater understanding.

I know many Asian-Americans, for instance, our surveys show a majority of Asian Americans support Black Lives Matter and that is especially true among young people.

If you asked people whether or not they want to reallocate funds from police to education and healthcare, we see a critical mass of Asian Americans supporting that kind of policy, but we also see some divisions.

So older people are more conservative especially on some of these issues.

But what has been very interesting about this moment is after Atlanta, after the attention to anti-Asian bias that we've seen over the past year, grassroots community organizations in the Asian American community have been like hyper vigilant about trying to change the narrative from one of policing, policing, policing, and hate crimes, increased hate crime legislation, which is one way to address these to something else: community investment, doubling down on anti-poverty programs, trying to think more broadly about long-term solutions to bias that don't necessarily just go to this kind of traditional narrative of "yeah, there's crime.

Let's go to more police".

That is not necessarily the answer according to many organizations on the ground.

- [G.] So that's certainly a welcomed development.

- Yeah, I mean, I think it is a real testament to the Asian American leaders who were on the ground before the Atlanta shootings, will be there in the future who have developed, I think, very strong relationships with other racial justice community organizations so that they're very much aware in maybe the way that you were hinting at, of the experiences of other groups and they don't want to invest in a response that could lead to very tragic consequences for other communities of color.

- [Jim] So Janelle, I wonder if we could take a step back and look at the political dynamics in all of this.

You were the Co-principal Investigator of the 2016 National Asian American Survey, a nationwide survey of Asian Americans' political and social attitudes.

Let's talk a little bit about what you found in the course of that survey.

- [Janelle] So this is also- there's so much attention right now to Asian Americans and whether or not they will present a meaningful force in the larger US electorate and in US politics.

And when people are talking about Asian-Americans, they are usually talking about is there really an Asian-American agenda?

What holds this really diverse group that represents so many national origin, so many language groups, so many generations, what holds them together?

And the stereotype would say, "oh, it's either immigration issues or it's education" because those are the two stereotypes that we are saddled with: the perpetual foreigner stereotype, and the model minority stereotype.

What we found in 2016 and it continues to be true in 2020, is that the issues that hold Asian Americans together that make them really distinct from other Americans, are healthcare.

So 80% of Asian-Americans support universal health care, they love Obamacare.

Second is the environment.

Asian-Americans are environmentalists and environmental voters.

Almost nobody thinks of them as such.

Asian-Americans are pro gun control.

So even the most Republican Asian American groups, sky high support for gun control.

And then finally, and this sometimes blows people's minds, this is a group that across the board supports big government programs and the taxes that might be needed to support those programs.

So we see tremendous support much more than in the general population among both Democrats and Republicans for taxing the rich to provide a middle-class tax.

And that's even true of those making over 200,000 a year.

So this is a community I think that, parties and candidates, they don't quite reach out to Asian-Americans on these issues yet, but these are the issues that really do present the Asian-American agenda.

- [Jim] That sounds like a very progressive agenda.

- [Janelle] That has also been a big surprise.

I think people think they consider Asian Americans sort of split, but Asian Americans are becoming a more consistent block.

There are a lot of people who are nonpartisan, but we're really seeing that over the last 20 years a kind of consolidation with the democratic party.

Is it a shoe in for the Democrats?

No.

Because there's still a lot of pockets of conservatism among Asian-Americans and we still see lack of outreach by the political parties to Asian-Americans.

I think maybe what parties might be focusing on is, even as we saw, Asian Americans were really important in swing states like Georgia in 2020 and in the runoffs.

- [G.] So the Biden administration is obviously still young, but what's your early take on the Biden administration on these issues?

- You know, I don't have a lot of faith that there will be kind of consistent outreach to Asian Americans by either party after what I've witnessed in my lifetime, that Asian Americans seem like an exciting new group of voters sometimes when the rubber hits the road close to an election, then parties start to think, "oh, why are we gonna go after a group "that's mostly in California, New York and Hawaii?"

These very blue states.

"Why are we going to go after a group that "yeah they lean one way, but they're not a sure thing" And I get worried every election cycle that there won't be enough attention, but I will give it to the Biden administration they did more paid media than any other campaign did.

It was late because they got their money late.

Right?

And so we do see every election cycle a little bit of attention to Asian Americans in the three, four weeks before the election.

- [Jim] You know your 2018 book, "Immigrants, Evangelicals, and Politics "in an Era of Demographic Change" seems to be like it would have to touch on a lot of these issues.

Can you tell us a little bit about that book?

- [Janelle] Yeah, thanks so I- - We've got about a minute and a half left.

- Okay.

(laughs) No problem.

That book started out looking at growing numbers of immigrants among evangelicals and ended up being about how white evangelicals maintain political power in the face of massive demographic change.

And so we have seen white evangelicals decline in the population, but they have not declined as a force in the American electorate.

They still represent a quarter of the electorate.

And so I'm waiting for the moment to see when immigration is going to change the evangelical population in the US.

It's coming.

It's not yet.

- [Jim] Are there Asian American members of the evangelical churches?

- [Janelle] Yeah.

About 13% of all evangelicals are either Asian-American or Latino and I thought long ago that that growing number would force white evangelicals to embrace more progressive immigration policies, but as we can see, that did not happen.

- [Jim] Fascinating.

Go ahead, Wayne.

- [G.] Yeah, no, just what's on the horizon for you?

You're obviously very busy and do a lot of great work.

What can we look for in the next months and years?

- Really quick.

- [Janelle] I am starting to look at conservative Asian American movements that are challenging progressive reforms in K through 12.

So the Asian-Americans that are challenging the racial integration of specialized magnet schools and are really tearing down the civil rights agenda.

- [Jim] Fascinating.

Janelle, thank you so much for sharing this story with us.

That's all the time we have this week, but if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square" you can find us on Facebook and Twitter or visit pellenter.org where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square".

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