Asian American Life and Death

Why Anti-Asian Racism Persists

History shows us the cyclical nature of anti-Asian racism and violence.

In the last year, violence against Asian-Americans has increased significantly. When a 21-year-old shooter in Atlanta, Georgia shot and killed eight, including six Asian-American women, a national eye finally turned to face the anti-Asian hate that’s been building since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic.

This kind of violence isn’t new. As Janelle Wong and Viet Thanh Nguyen write in a recent Washington Post piece, “While it is ever-lurking, the prominence of anti-Asian bias in U.S. life is cyclical. Though Asian Americans are often cast as a success story because of their high average levels of education and income, many Americans, at times of economic stress and uncertainty over U.S. global standing, associate Asian faces with a foreign threat.”

How can understanding the history of anti-Asian hate inform our national response today? Nguyen and Wong weigh in.

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