Vast majority of anti-AAPI incidents are prompted by white racists

Demonstrations against the rise in anti-Asian racism are being organized across the nation.

In the thousands of incidents studied in a new report for which there were reported details about the individuals who were the source of anti-Asian harassment, discrimination, and stigmatization, the majority of the offenders were identified as male, white, and, in the case of politicians, affiliated with the Republican Party.

The Virulent Hate Project, which is supported by U-M’s Center for Social Solutions and Poverty Solutions initiative, reviewed 4,337 news articles from 2020 that addressed coronavirus-related, anti-Asian racism in the United States. From those articles, researchers identified 1,023 unique incidents of anti-Asian racism.

"We found that there are many forms of anti-Asian racism that took place as early as January 2020 all throughout the pandemic," said Melissa Borja, lead researcher on the Virulent Hate Project and assistant professor in U-M’s Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies Program.

"There is a lot of conversation in the current moment about hate crimes, but the reality is that Asian Americans experience a wide variety of forms of racism, and all of them did harm all across the country and all ethnic groups were affected and all age groups were affected. So this is a pervasive problem and this is why many Asian Americans are feeling concerned about going about their daily lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in China, resurfaced long-held stereotypes about Asian Americans, and stigmatizing rhetoric led to increased anti-Asian hostility in 2020 that has continued in 2021, said Borja.

“We saw two main stereotypes driving anti-Asian hostility in 2020: first, the view of Asian Americans as ‘perpetual foreigners,’ and second, the belief that Asian people and Asian Americans are a ‘yellow peril’ that pose an epidemiological, cultural, economic, racial and national security threat to the United States,” Borja continued.

Studying these hate incidents and making the data publicly accessible can contribute to a better understanding of anti-Asian racism, shape public policy and guide the activism of Asian American community organizations, she said. The Virulent Hate Project supports the work of Stop AAPI Hate and the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University.

“We imagine this project as not just counting incidents of anti-Asian racism, but collecting hundreds of stories that can help shape the public conversation,” Borja said. “In addition to tracking anti-Asian hate incidents, it also is important to document the ways Asian American communities are resisting racism and advocating for anti-discrimination policies that will better protect them.”

In the 184 incidents in which the race of the source was identified, the perpetrators were predominantly white. White individuals were reported as offenders in 165 of the 184 anti-Asian incidents (89.6%). 

In contrast, Black individuals were identified as offenders in 10 of the 184 anti-Asian incidents (5.43%). This observation is worth noting, given the current public conversation about Asian-Black relations, the report cites. The information that presented, while limited and imperfect, does not support the common claim that Black hostility is driving the current epidemic of anti-Asian racism and violence.

Of the 157 incidents for which the political affiliation of the politicians and government officials could be identified, 152 incidents (96.82%) involved politicians affiliated with the Republican Party.

“There has been a tendency to target different Asian ethnicities throughout the United States history,” said Karen J. Leong, an associate professor of women and gender studies and Asian Pacific American studies in the School of Social Transformation. “It’s never been one monolithic anti-Asian narrative. It’s taken on different forms and specificites based on the particular moment.”

“Anti-Asian racism is linked structurally to white supremacy and often to cis white hetero patriarchy, which really is about this very normative idea of heterosexual families, led by the authority of white males,” Leong said.

This white supremacy is now persevering through political agendas that shift the blame for many of America's problems onto marginalized communities, she says. 

“There's this idea of how to get different non-white groups to fight against each other, rather than to unite and fight against white nationalism and white supremacy,” Leong said. “So there's ... this constant shifting of who's going to feel like they might have access and who's going to be seen as the other, and how these different groups can be pitted against each other.” 

Other key findings from the Virulent Hate Project include:

• Of the 1,023 unique anti-Asian hate incidents analyzed, 66% (679 incidents) involved anti-Asian harassment and vandalism that targeted individuals or groups. 

• Approximately 33% (344 incidents) involved stigmatizing and discriminatory statements, images, policies and proposals made by individuals or groups that reproduced anti-Asian stereotypes and harmed Asian Americans as a community.

• Anti-Asian harassment affected Asian Americans of all ages, ethnic groups and genders, although the harassment was not experienced evenly across demographic groups. Women were the victim in 65% of anti-Asian harassment incidents, and

• Chinese Americans experienced nearly 58% of the harassment incidents reported in the news, although 14 Asian ethnicities were victims of the attacks or harassment.

• Incidents of anti-Asian harassment were reported in the news in 40 states and the District of Columbia. The majority (67%) of anti-Asian harassment incidents occurred in businesses, streets and public transit.