Asian Americans are perceived as “perpetual foreigners” regardless of how long they or their families have lived in the United States, according to results of a survey released by AAPI Data and SurveyMonkey on Tuesday, March 30.
AAPI Data, which publishes demographic data and policy research about the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, launched the survey soon after eight people, including six women of Asian descent, died in three March 16 shootings at Asian-owned spas in Atlanta. A 21-year-old White man has been charged in the case.
The report’s release comes as Asian Americans increasingly find themselves the target of hate crimes and hate incidents amid the coronavirus pandemic. The group Stop AAPI Hate recently reported that it received 3,795 incident reports from March 19, 2020 to Feb. 28, 2021, with the most incidents (1,691, or 44.6%) reported in California.
The Asian American community, from activists to faith leaders and average citizens, have protested against hate nationwide since the shootings in Atlanta. Many in the community also place some blame on former President Donald Trump’s anti-China rhetoric for the surge in anti-Asian hate crimes and hate incidents.
The perils of ‘othering’
The survey, which AAPI Data said was administered only in English because of time limitations, shows Asian Americans are viewed as “perpetual foreigners.” About 64% of Asian American respondents said they’ve been asked questions such as: “Where are you from, assuming you’re not from the U.S.?”
This perception of Asian Americans as outsiders has been on display in disturbing footage of various violent hate crimes against people of Asian descent where a perpetrator, generally of another race, yells out that the victim doesn’t belong in the U.S. or that they should go back to their own country, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder of AAPI Data and director of UC Riverside’s Center for Social Innovation.
“It’s the idea that not only are you from somewhere else, but that you don’t belong here,” he said, adding that the survey shows Asian Americans experience this “othering” even more so than Latinos.
“Whenever there are real or perceived threats from other countries, people who are seen as representing those countries come under scrutiny,” Ramakrishnan said. “We saw that with the Japanese internment camps. We also saw that the first person killed after the 9/11 attacks was a Sikh man in Arizona.”
It’s also just a perpetual reminder that one is “not American,” Ramakrishnan said.
“This is also seen in the pressure to anglicize or Americanize your name,” he said. “It’s the wrongful notion that, somehow, you can’t maintain your cultural identity and be American at the same time.”
The survey released Tuesday shows Asian Americans are highly likely to encounter people who act as if they don’t speak English (45%) and suggest that they “whiten” or “Americanize” their names (20%). The results are similarly high for Pacific Islanders and Latinos, according to the survey.
About 1-in-4 Asian Americans surveyed by AAPI Data reported experiencing a hate crime or bias incident, defined in the survey as race-motivated “verbal or physical abuse or damage to their property.” The survey also showed 10% of Asian Americans said they experienced hate in 2020 and 2021. But only 30% of Asian respondents said they would be “very comfortable” reporting a hate crime to law enforcement, the lowest of any racial group.
“These numbers are very concerning,” said Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, the organization that co-founded Stop AAPI Hate. “This (survey) is opening up dialog around ways in which people have been otherized. My own children who were born in the United States have been asked where they are from because of their skin color.”
Racist tropes pervasive
In addition, according to the survey, racial exclusion works differently for different communities of color. For example, while Asian Americans are viewed as “perpetual foreigners,” anti-Black prejudice is built on tropes about violence while ignoring centuries of oppression from slavery and Jim Crow to modern-day incarceration. In the survey, nearly half of all Black respondents reported that people of another race acted as if afraid of them (45%) or as if they were dishonest (47%). Those numbers were high for Pacific Islanders as well, but lowest for White people and Asian Americans.
The intersectionality between misogyny, anti-immigrant sentiment and hate crimes and hate incidents shouldn’t be ignored, said Drishti Pillai, research manager at National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. The March 16 shootings in Atlanta are an example of that intersection, she said.
“AAPI women are four times more likely to report that gender plays a part in a hate crime or incident,” Pillai added. “Race is a very important factor, but so is gender.”
The Atlanta shootings stirred up nationwide conversations about the hypersexualization and fetishization of Asian American women.
Despite escalating tensions, including those that have historically existed between communities of color, now is the time for all communities to support each other and build solidarity, said Niambi Carter, associate professor of political science at Howard University.
“We can build community and coalitions,” she said. “Don’t be silent about voting rights, police violence, mass incarceration, environmental racism or other issues that are going to affect all of us. Pain and trauma is one part of our relatedness. But there are places outside of our pain where we can also think about being in community with each other.”
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