Chapter 14: Anti-Asian Hate During the Pandemic

On March 14, 2020—in a Sam’s Club Warehouse in Midland, Texas—an Asian man and his two young children were attacked by an assailant who believed they were “from the country who started spreading that disease (COVID-19) around” (U.S. Department of Justice, 2022). The assailant slashed both the father and his 6-year-old child in their faces and stabbed a store employee who intervened to stop the violence. The perpetrator later admitted to the crime and stated that he blamed Chinese people for the COVID-19 pandemic (U.S. Department of Justice, 2022). This tragedy is one among many hate incidents directed toward Asians and Asian Americans since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. From its launch in mid-March 2020 until March 31, 2021, the self-reporting portal, Stop AAPI Hate, received nearly 11,500 incidents of anti-Asian hate (Yellow Horse & Chen, 2022). These types of incidents have included a range of verbal or written hate speech, avoidance or shunning, and physical violence, and reports have come from all 50 states and the District of Columbia (Yellow Horse & Chen, 2022).