A Week That Feels Like the Past Century

Atlanta, March 2021. Photo credit: Megan Varner/Getty Images

By Joel P. Engardio

It was another troubling week for Asian Americans.

Monday: Danny Yu Chang was struck in the head and knocked unconscious during his lunch break in downtown San Francisco.

Tuesday: Six Asian American women were among eight people shot and killed in Atlanta.

Wednesday: 83-year-old Ngoc Pham was attacked walking home with a bag of groceries in the Tenderloin.

The same morning, 75-year-old grandmother Xiao Zhen Xie was punched in the face waiting to cross Market Street.

That afternoon, police arrested three men who beat and robbed an Asian senior in a Chinatown laundromat. Surveillance video of the brutal assault went viral.

Thursday: Residents living in the area of San Francisco Police Department’s Park station received an email newsletter with helpful tips to “survive an active attacker.” The captain’s message included links to instructional videos on how to “Stop The Bleed.”

Friday: A school board member’s racist tweets aimed at Asian Americans were revealed from 2016, adding to the pain and outrage that the Asian community has felt for a long time.

Connecting the Dots
The Atlanta shootings of 2021 put a spotlight on the disturbing number of hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders nationwide. The group Stop AAPI Hate documented nearly 3,800 incidents the past year.

Yet Atlanta 2021 connects to Detroit 1982 when Vincent Chin was murdered with a baseball bat. The industrial rust belt was reeling from recession and two unemployed auto workers blamed Japanese car makers. They targeted a Chinese-American man who was in a bar celebrating his bachelor party.

I remember the murder of Vincent Chin. I grew up in Michigan. At nine, I was old enough to understand how tragic and shocking his death was. My husband Lionel also remembers Vincent Chin. Lionel grew up in Taiwan where the anti-Chinese murder dominated the news. It was the only impression Lionel had of America: a place where Asian people were not safe.

Years later when Lionel visited Michigan for the first time, Vincent Chin was on his mind.

Modern San Francisco
Lionel and I built a life in San Francisco, a city that is one-third Asian but with a long history of anti-Asian sentiment. Atlanta 2021 and Detroit 1982 connect to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the detention of Chinese immigrants on Angel Island, not allowing Asian residents to buy homes on San Francisco’s westside, and the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

The discrimination of the past century is a direct line to modern San Francisco, where violence against Asian residents was a problem long before the politics of a pandemic scapegoated Asian Americans.

It was difficult for the group Stop Crime SF to keep up with all the cases — like 89-year-old Yik Oi Huang, a grandmother who was robbed and beaten into a coma while walking in a Visitacion Valley park in 2019. She eventually died from her injuries.

Stop Crime SF asked Marlene Tran to join its board of directors. Marlene is a community advocate who has been trying for 30 years to get police, prosecutors, and elected officials to pay attention to crimes against Chinese immigrants in long ignored neighborhoods like Visitacion Valley.

A large group of Lionel’s family traveled from Taiwan to San Francisco for our wedding in 2015. They have good memories of the trip but can’t believe the violence happening in such a beautiful city. When I first wrote about how Lionel’s mother worries about his safety, it was before the pandemic and subsequent rise in attacks. Now she calls even more frequently.

Processing the Stress
The Atlanta murders, multiple assaults on Asian seniors in San Francisco, and learning about the school board vice president’s racist anti-Asian views was a lot of trauma to process in a single week. Especially when the school board president chose to defend her vice president, over the calls from the community for Alison Collins to resign.

This puts the dismantling of the Lowell High School admissions process in a new light. It was recently pushed through by the school board president and vice president with little public input. Lowell is San Francisco’s only academically merit-based high school and the student population is majority Asian. As one of the best-ranked schools in the nation, Lowell is a popular option for families who can’t afford private school. More than one-third of Lowell students have low-income parents.

A father on the westside recently told me about his garage being broken into while his family slept above it. Now his kids are terrified the bad guys are going to come and get them, too. The kids were already frayed from being isolated in Zoom school for a year. But that didn’t shield them from seeing all the hate crimes against Asian residents in San Francisco and across the country. This Asian American family is stressed.

From public safety to our public schools, there is a lot we need to hold our elected officials accountable for. San Francisco shouldn’t tolerate the status quo.

ACTION ITEMS
Do you want to do something to help? Here are some suggested actions:

Join these Democratic clubs to support their work in the Asian American community. They were the first to call for the resignation of School Board Commissioner Alison Collins for her racist tweets:
- Ed Lee Asian Pacific Democratic Club
- Chinese American Democratic Club

Join the Friends of Lowell Foundation, focused on restoring Lowell High School as an academic, merit-based public high school and to boost academic preparation for all San Francisco public school students.

Join the effort to Recall the San Francisco School Board.

Join Stop Crime SF, focused on creating a safe and sound city for all.