Countering Covid related Stigma and Hate against Asian-American School Children
Countering Covid related Stigma and Hate against Asian-American School Children
Ishita Ghosh, Senior Researcher, NoSchoolViolence
Covid related stigma and racial violence
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded in early 2020, Asian Americans and Pacific Islander communities became the target of racial profiling and harassment due to misinformation, fear, and prejudice fueled by anti-China rhetoric such as the ‘Chinese virus’ or ‘Kung flu’. A national poll conducted around March 2020 reported that over 30% of Americans had witnessed some form of COVID-19-related bias against Asians. According to Stop AAPI Hate (a group formed around the same time to draw awareness to this issue), Asian Americans reported being victims of racist, physical or verbal attacks since the country went under lockdown. The number of self-reported hate incidents increased to 6,603 by March 2021. Recent incidents of harassment, including a deadly mass shooting in Atlanta, Georgia, that killed six Asian women, is indicative of the continuing backlash against the community.
History of racism against Asians
The current events of racial abuse and stigmatizing Asian Americans as disease carriers need to be read in the context of the history of racism faced by Asian communities in the US. In the 19th century, Asian immigration to North America was characterized as a “Yellow Peril.” White nativists in San Francisco spread xenophobic propaganda about Chinese uncleanliness leading to the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. The prejudice against Asians was further reinforced by print media of the time through xenophobic caricatures of the Chinese stigmatizing them as carriers of disease besides being a threat to the livelihoods of white people.
As pointed out by R. Benedito Ferrão, Asian Americans have been perpetually regarded as outsiders. Thus, Americans of Japanese ancestry, regardless of their birth or lifetime in the United States, were placed in concentration camps during World War II due to the perceived threat of their alleged nascent patriotism to Japan getting activated. More recently, as highlighted by Sociologist Carrianne Leung in her research, stigmatization of Asian people through the rhetoric of disease resurfaced in the years following SARS in the form of everyday racism against Chinese and Filipina health care workers. These existing tropes were exacerbated by the more contemporary label of ‘Chinese Virus’, fuelling racist attacks against Asian Americans across the country.
Schools as a site of racial violence
When the pandemic broke out in early 2020, the school communities also became sites of stigmatization and racial violence for Asian American students. Incidentally, Stop AAPI Hate was formed following an incident in a middle school in Los Angeles County on February 4, 2020, when a student was accused by a classmate of being a Covid-19 carrier and told: “go back to China.” On responding that he was not Chinese, the student allegedly received 20 punches to the head and had to be taken to the emergency room.
There were several other incidents around the time where teachers reported overhearing Coronavirus-related comments targeted at Asian students. Also, many school districts in Oregon, California, and Washington state (where the pandemic initially broke out), voiced concerns regarding Asian students being subjected to discrimination. In this context, Angie Hong writes about her nine-year-old American-born Korean son targeted with statements like, “You’re Chinese, you have coronavirus!”. In another article, Jayson Chang, a social science teacher at a high school, mentions an incident in his school where a student did not want to touch an Asian student’s things. Several such incidents followed across the country.
Within months of tracking incidents of Anti-Asian Americans and Pacific Islander (AAPI ) discrimination among youth, Stop AAPI Hate received 341 reports which accounted for 16% of all self-reported hate incidents (N= 2,499). Types of discrimination reported to Stop AAPI Hate were being bullying or verbally harassed - (81.5%), shunning and social isolation (24%) and, physical assaults (8%).
Emerging trends of discrimination
Some emerging trends discrimination against AAPI students, based on self-reported incidents to Stop AAPI Hate :
High school students faced verbal harassment in schools, public places, and online.
AAPI youth were more exposed to cyberbullying and online harassment (14%) during the pandemic, with academics going online.
More girls were verbally harassed than boys (71.0% v. 65.4%) and were more likely to be coughed and spat upon (3.8% v. 2.8%). Boys are almost twice as likely to be assaulted than girls (8.4%% v. 4.6%).
In more than half of the cases, victims were targeted with anti-Chinese hate speech (like blaming the Chinese as the source of the virus and mocking Chinese dietary habits.)
Students reported facing shunning and experienced emotional/social isolation at higher rates than college-aged students (33.0% v. 23.1%), with significant mental health impacts.
Preventing Covid related racism in schools
Asian American students remain vulnerable to the Covid related stigma and racism. In this context, educators have an important role in proactively addressing COVID-19-related social stigma and discrimination by countering misinformation and racially motivated behavior against Asian American students. Some schools have begun to take cognizance of the issue and are instilling steps to address it. For instance, recently, in California, Oakland Unified School District hosted a ‘solidarity dialog’ via Zoom for high school students of Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, and Middle Eastern, and North African descent in response to violence against Asians. In other instances, teachers of Asian American origin have been taking action on their own. For example, in an interview with Today Parents, Gina Cynn, a Korean American school teacher, voiced that classroom discussion on anti-Asian racism needs to be held to dispel any misconceptions, and she leads by discussing her Korean background and answering any questions her students have about her culture.
According to Arlene Inouye, secretary of United Teachers Los Angeles, statistics prove that interventions by teachers make a significant difference in stopping racist slurs, bullying, and physical violence. Unfortunately, as Inouye points out, the “model minority” myth associated with Asian-Americans works against Asian American students by downplaying the racism issues, and often any discrimination against them is not taken seriously.
What can schools do?
Some guidelines for schools to be more proactive in addressing hate incidents :
-Provide scientifically validated information on COVID-19 to dispel misinformation Asian Americans as carriers of Covid -19
-Strictly implement zero-tolerance policies against racism
-Implement a system for reporting bullying while maintaining the anonymity of the person reporting
-Implement guidelines for school staff to respond to reported incidents of racial discrimination and or / bullying. A constructive method can be the restorative justice models that use peer mediation for addressing conflict and restoring relationships
-Teachers should receive diversity, equity, and inclusion training, including bias reduction and bystander training on issues specific to Asian Americans
-Empower students to speak up when they witness hate and bias at school. A helpful resource is Speak Up at School guide from Learning for Justice
-Integrate ethnic studies and anti-racism curriculum into coursework to address the roots of racism and promote empathy and racial justice
-Address the social and emotional well-being of APPI students experiencing racial trauma. It is well documented that the ‘model minority’ stereotype often prevents AAPI students from seeking mental health counseling. Schools need to connect teachers/staff and families with school-based mental health programs and community healthcare providers to facilitate culturally relevant mental health services and resources to normalize help-seeking behaviors among AAPI students
Additional resources
To report an anti-Asian hate incident or to help, visit stopaapihate.org
2. Resource addressing classroom bias :
a)https://www.hmhco.com/blog/anti-bias-resources-for-the-classroom
b) https://neaedjustice.org/2019/10/11/5-things-educators-can-do-to-address-bias-in-their-
school/?_ga=2.176440229.1662137784.1622668760-783209987.1622668760
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