Support and protect Asian Americans: They faced discrimination and hate long before the coronavirus made them targets. 2021. Star Tribune, Mar 23, 2021. (accessed March 24, 2021).

During the past year, a Woodbury resident of Hmong descent and his wife found a note on their townhouse door accusing them of “infecting us with your disease.”

In Austin, Minn., an Asian American family discovered the words “China virus” burned into their lawn. And a Korean American journalist with MPR News described being harassed because of her race while working in rural Minnesota.

[…]

The ramped-up hostility has been well documented. According to PoltiFact, the respected Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University found that anti-Asian hate crimes rose from 49 incidents in 2019 to 122 in 2020.

The center used public records from 16 of the largest U.S. cities to come up with those numbers. And the FBI’s hate crime data shows that reported anti-Asian hate crimes declined in the late 1990s but started to climb more recently.

It’s important to note that experts say hate crimes are underreported. “There are barriers to reporting,” Jeannine Bell, an Indiana University law professor, told PolitiFact. “Individual victims have to feel as if they are comfortable enough to report, and most likely they don’t.”

You can read the full article here: https://www.startribune.com/asian-americans-need-nation-s-support/600037359/