Hate Crimes Targeting Asian Americans Spiked by 150% in Major U.S. Cities

The reported spike in anti-Asian hate crimes is in line with data tracked by Asian American advocacy organizations.

Stop AAPI Hate, a hate tracker created last year by several Asian American groups, has recorded more than 2,800 incidents of racism and discrimination targeting Asian Americans between March and December 2020. While verbal harassment and shunning made up more than 90 percent of the incidents, physical assaults accounted for nearly 9 percent.

Many of the victims are non-Chinese Asians who apparently were mistaken for having hailed from China.

“East Asians who look Chinese are now experiencing this, and this goes back to a long history of anti-Asian discrimination in this country,” Kwok said of the United States.

In a troubling report released last month, Stop AAPI Hate said 126 of the incidents involved Asian Americans over the age of 60. A number of incidents took place in the San Francisco Bay area last month, including one involving a 91-year-old Asian man violently pushed to the ground by a stranger.

“These violent assaults have a devastating impact on our community as they are part of an alarming rise in anti-Asian American hate during the COVID-19 pandemic,” co-founders of STOP AAPI Hate said in a February 9 statement.

In the latest incident, Salman Muflihi, 23, was arrested last week for allegedly stabbing a 36-year-old Asian man on a street in New York City’s Chinatown. Muflihi was charged over the weekend with one count of attempted murder in addition to other charges, but not a hate crime. If authorities were to file a hate crime, it could result in a longer prison sentence.

Kwok said “there is a level of frustration” in the Asian American community over prosecutors’ refusals to file hate crime charges.

“I think they need to really reassess how they approach it, particularly in this era that we’re in, which I think of it as an emergency area, particularly for Asian Americans as they experience discrimination,” he said.

In a statement, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said additional charges may be forthcoming.

Meanwhile, overall hate crimes last year declined by an average of 7% in the 15 cities tracked by the center for the study of hate and extremism. In New York City, for example, police investigated 265 hate crimes, down from 428 the previous year.

Of the five cities that reported increases, two are in California, including San Jose, which saw an increase of 162 percent.

Masood Farivar covers the Justice Department and the FBI for Voice of America. This article   is published courtesy of the Voice of America (VOA).