Attacks against Asian Americans are up. It's time to pay attention.
After Dylan Adler was screamed at, chased and sucker-punched by a stranger on a New York street last year, he had almost convinced himself it was just bad luck. Nothing to do with the color of his skin.
“But I talked with other friends,” said Adler, 24, who checked in with his fellow Asian Americans about the attack, which happened at the very start of the global pandemic. “They had other incidents, too.”
That was also the start of an alarming increase in hate attacks against Asian Americans. There were about 3,800 recorded over the past year, from slurs on the street and stabbings to vandalism at Asian American-owned businesses. It went up 150 percent in 2020, according to research by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino.
In Columbia, Md., last month, three businesses were vandalized and ransacked on Lunar New Year, the most important holiday in Chinese culture. The criminals ignored the Cheesecake Factory and Chipotle nearby, but hit Urban Hot Pot, Kung Fu Tea and Bonchon. Police said they were investigating them as commercial burglaries, not hate crimes. The community felt differently.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/attacks-against-asian-americans-are-up-its-time-to-pay-attention/ar-BB1eJxA6?li=BBnb7Kz
