AAPI Hate at IU: how we got here and where to go

It was one less person to blow up the country.

This was the justification given by the 56-year-old white woman who attacked an Asian IU student on the bus on Wednesday, January 11th. The student has multiple stab wounds to the head; the perpetrator was charged with attempted murder; and all this happened on 4th St, a place many IU students know and love, especially due to its multicultural presence. How did we get here?

While anti-Asian hate has certainly been on the rise since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been consistent in our country for generations, going back to the California Gold Rush of the 1850s. The U.S. even enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1886, which prohibited Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States, the only piece of legislation in our history to exclude a group of people based on their race. The Japanese-American population suffered in internment camps during the Second World War, and violent acts against the Asian people in America can be traced from a Los Angeles massacre in 1871 to last week’s attack in 2023. In fact, according to a study done by Stop AAPI Hate, there have been 11,467 hate incidents reported to the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center, and that 1 in 6 of these incidents involved physical violence, with 1 in 9 occurring on public transportation. At this point in time, 51% of Asian-Americans do not feel safe going out.

Especially because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in China, some people have opted to believe that it is all the Chinese– and by proxy– East Asian people who are responsible for the spread of the virus and associated casualties. This is simply inaccurate; according to a review study by Hughes and colleagues, pandemics begin when a virus from an animal mutates into a form that can be transmitted to humans and eventually engage in human-to-human transmission. This can happen when individuals around these animals engage in unsterile butchering techniques. By that logic, the parties to blame are some likely unknowing butchers, the animal with COVID (which is still unclear, by the way), and the laws of virus biology. A whole ethnic group couldn’t possibly have orchestrated such an event.

In order to understand why this happened, we need to know simply why racism, particularly anti-Asian racism, exists. I believe the answer is simple: a lack of understanding and respect for Asian and Asian-American culture from people of other ethnic groups. There are a variety of Asian stereotypes present in our society: that all Asians are good at math, or terrible at driving, or out to steal our jobs, or that Asian women are meek and submissive, or that Asian men are effeminate. None of these could possibly be true: there are simply too many individual differences between people for all of a group to subscribe to one particular characteristic. The problem is, these individual differences, a core concept in human psychology, don’t seem to apply to Asian people in the minds of racist people.

However, this is simply my theory. While I am a person of color like the victim, I am not Asian, and thus will not claim to know all the answers or experiences of Asian-Americans. For this, I reached out to IU’s Asian-American community.

Disgust, horror, grief, shock. It was jarring. But it wasn’t surprising. This is how my two interviewees felt about the whole ordeal.

“I get emails from the IDS, and [a] headline was about the Asian hate crime, so I clicked on it immediately”, said Elie Bryan, a sophomore at IU majoring in media science with a specialization in media psychology. My second interviewee, A.O., sent the news immediately to her mother and aunt, the “most prominent Asian women in my life”.

“I have to use the Bloomington Bus to and from campus, and every time I see a middle-aged/older white person, I instantly panic inside,” said Bryan. “As a woman, I always took standard precautions walking alone on campus, but after this event, I’m even more aware of my surroundings.”

Luckily, in terms of personal racially-motivated attacks, Bryan couldn’t recall any violent incidents. “I thankfully have not experienced anything aggressive or felt like my life was in danger. I know that I’ve experienced microaggressions from my peers, but I can’t recall a specific instance.”

For A.O., a microaggression came in the form of racist language at her place of work. It happened “at a buffet on the West side” of Bloomington, said A.O. “A guy figured I was the owner/manager of the place because I had ch*nk eyes”.

Both A.O. and Bryan agree that the problem comes from a lack of understanding and education about other cultures. According to the University of Washington School of Education, multicultural education can help promote equity, reduce prejudice, and empower the school as a whole. Social action initiatives can span many grade levels, all of which can promote gaining an understanding of all people, without any grandiose lectures and listening sessions. All it takes is a few steps every day, every month, and every year, to effectively engage in an equity pedagogy. Closer to home, Indianapolis Public Schools recently relaunched their Education Equity Initiative, which should hopefully pave the way for an easier journey for Black and Brown youth.

With equal opportunities and treatment for these students, perhaps peers who otherwise would not have exposure to other cultures can learn to see different cultures as different, yet equal. With changing beliefs starting at the school-age, children can grow up to become mindful, culturally aware, and successful adults who know that their peers are not responsible for blowing up the country.