Anti-Asian hate crimes not spiking here, but nationwide trend troubles community
Mar. 20—Since coronavirus shutdowns started last year, thousands of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States have faced racially charged hostilities and attacks.
It was this widespread rise in anti-Asian sentiment that prompted West Hartford photographer Mike Keo to urge his wife and parents to take extra precautions.
"Seeing all these racist attacks against Asian Americans, even in California, feels close to home because it lets me know that we're not safe. You know, we have to take extra precautions, like my wife didn't go out to the store for a few months, and I had to call my parents and ask them not to go shopping," said Keo, who is of Khmer descent. "These attacks were happening all across the nation, so, yeah, it affects our daily lives. We have to be extra careful; we have to be a little bit more vigilant."
HOW TO FILE A COMPLAINT
—The Office of the Attorney General accepts complaints reporting microaggressions, racial profiling, hate crimes, and more. Visit
—The Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity & Opportunity also takes online complaints and has links to information on how to teach to children about prejudice and its Statement of Unity supporting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Visit
https://wp.cga.ct.gov/cwcseo/asian-home/
—In this time of tension, Yeung encourages Asian Americans to take steps to protect themselves, including being aware of their surroundings. She also recommends elderly Asian Americans not put themselves in a compromising situation.
And a recent wave of attacks on Asian Americans has only intensified these worries.
In late January, an 84-year-old Thai man in San Francisco was attacked and later died after being violently shoved to the ground. Days later, on Feb. 3, a 64-year-old Vietnamese woman was assaulted and robbed of $1,000 in cash in San Jose, while a 61-year-old man of Filipino descent was slashed in the face with a box cutter on the subway in New York City.
And on Tuesday, eight people, six of whom were Asian women, were killed in a mass shooting in Atlanta. Robert Aaron Long, 21, has been arrested in connection with the killings and reportedly denied that the attacks were racially motivated.
Still, it's caused further unease.
In Connecticut, the readily available data on anti-Asian attacks does not point to a spike in violence against Asian Americans.
The state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection's Crime Analysis Unit, which collects hate crime statistics for each municipality across the state, reported a total of 77 hate crimes in 2019. Of those hate crimes, only two were documented as having an anti-Asian bias, the same number as 2018.
It is unknown if those numbers rose or fell in 2020, as hate crime statistics for last year have yet to be released locally and nationally.
Through the Freedom of Information Act, the Journal Inquirer obtained data for most of north-central Connecticut on the number of Asian American hate crimes over the past five years.
Enfield Police Chief Alaric Fox said such documentation was not readily available in his town and fulfilling the request would require extensive research and tabulation.
Anecdotally, though, he said Enfield has not seen an uptick in reported crimes with Asian victims over the past year and could not recall any incidents that support an increase in criminal incidents involving Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
Of the data from other area towns, there were few racially motivated criminal incidents in which Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders were the victims and/or complainants of a crime. Nevertheless, about half of the municipalities in north-central Connecticut saw an increase in the number of reported crimes that involved Asian American victims from 2019 to 2020.
RACIALLY MOTIVATED INCIDENTS
Data from local police departments involving Asian Americans for 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020
—Manchester: 39, 46, 44, 46, 61
—East Hartford: 41, 34, 30, 18, 38
—Vernon: 12, 13, 17, 17, 24
—Glastonbury: 3, 10, 13, 13, 22
—South Windsor: 8, 10, 14, 16, 12
—Windsor: 7, 17, 21, 14, 8
—Windsor Locks: 2, 12, 4, 2, 6
—Coventry: 1, 6, 3, 5, 5
—Suffield: 10, 6, 6, 1, 4
—Andover: 0, 0, 2, 0, 3
—Bolton: 0, 0, 0, 0, 2
—East Windsor: 0, 0, 0, 1, 2
—Stafford: 0, 0, 0, 0, 2
—Tolland: 0, 1, 2, 1, 1
—Ellington: 0, 1, 4, 0, 0
—Hebron: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0
—Somers: 1, 1, 2, 0, 0
—Enfield: Not available
It's unclear if the uptick is related to increased anti-Asian sentiment, a rise in crime overall, more reporting of these types of crimes, or some other factor. Regardless, Sen. M. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, said people should not be made to feel uncomfortable or unsafe just because they look or appear different.
"We need to make sure that we remain committed to our beliefs and understanding that you can be an American no matter where and what you look like, what you believe in, and you have that right, and you need to have mutual respect for each other. I think that's our collective responsibility," Anwar, who was born in Pakistan, said.
14 documented attacks in Conn.
A nationwide study by Stop AAPI Hate documented 3,795 racially motivated attacks against Asian Americans from March 2020 to February 2021, though many more are believed to have been unreported, the study notes.
Of those racially motivated attacks, at least 14 happened in Connecticut and were mostly verbal altercations. They included Asian Americans being called "coronavirus" and an incident during which two white men approached an individual and their toddler and told them to go back to wherever they came while using obscene language.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong's office has received reports of race-based incidents, such as cyberbullying and condemnation of Chinese eateries.
In one instance, a Chinese American woman was attacked at a Stamford supermarket when the checkout clerk sprayed her with Lysol because the clerk thought the woman, who's been in the United States for over 30 years, was contagious with coronavirus.
"I mean, that's ridiculous and hateful, and hurtful," Tong, who's no stranger to racism as an Asian American himself, said of the incident. "Too often violence and discrimination against Asian Americans goes unnoticed and unremedied. And that's because to be Asian American in this country means that we are often invisible in the discussion about race, and the discussion about hate and the discussion about discrimination."
Anti-Asian complaints have also been filed with the state Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity & Opportunity.
Miriam Yeung, chairwoman of the Asian Pacific Coalition of Connecticut, said around 30 complaints had been filed since the start of the pandemic, mostly verbal attacks in which Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders were made to feel uncomfortable in public.
She said the complaints conform to the national trends in which Asian women and the elderly are being targeted more frequently.
However, Yeung said, the number is likely a fraction of the true number of attacks because many were not reported to the group.
She said this could be either because people don't know where to make a complaint or are afraid of lodging one.
Tong said immigrant communities and communities of color tend not to report crimes against them as much as other groups because of the fear of retribution or that law enforcement won't be helpful. Some also fear for their immigration status if they report something to the police.
A history of anti-Asian sentiment
The recent uptick in anti-Asian racism isn't something new in the history of the United States.
Though the pandemic, coupled with former President Donald Trump's frequent racist rhetoric about the origins of COVID-19, has added fuel to the fire, the country has a long history of prejudice against Asian Americans.
Two of the country's first immigration laws — the Page Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 — were passed to prevent Chinese American laborers from entering the country during a time of widespread xenophobia and concerns about workplace competition.
In the early 20th century, American officials in the Philippines disparaged Filipinos for their supposedly unclean and uncivilized bodies. And during World War II, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an executive order to incarcerate people suspected of being enemies in internment camps, the vast majority of whom were of Japanese descent.
So what's the solution to curbing these anti-Asian attacks and biases?
Tong said he hopes greater civil rights legislation will be passed, empowering him, as the attorney general, to enforce hate crimes laws and take action on civil rights violations.
He also wants law enforcement to recognize the possibility of hate crimes against Asian Americans and take action to protect those communities.
"We're at kind of a precipice where we can either kind of acknowledge this issue or continue to ignore it, and it just gets worse," Tong said.
As a photographer Keo took the issue head on and started a portrait campaign of Asian Americans, titled #iamnotavirus, to tell Asian American stories and contextualize the individuals so their experiences can be understood.
"I'm aware that this rhetoric, of the 'Chinese virus' or the 'Wuhan flu.' It really allows people to act out their worst impulses against their neighbor for their perceived ethnicity, or what they represent because of the color of their skin. And, you know, we saw that last year.
"I think what we're trying to do is increase the visibility of Asian American, and also ask the question, 'Who gets to belong when and where?' Like, how do we prevent members of our community from feeling afraid or alone? And not just these Americans, but all communities of color," he said.
He added that he'd also like to see the passing of a bill in the General Assembly that mandates public schools offer elective courses in Asian Pacific American studies, thus easing bias through education.
Keo said he understands, though, that none of this will be accomplished overnight.
"That's an ongoing process," he added.
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