Editorial from the Baltimore Sun editorial board
During a national address from the White House on March 11, President Biden condemned hate crime attacks on Asian Americans. In that speech, President Biden called such incidents “vicious” and “un-American.”
The president observed how Asian Americans, some of them front-line workers in the pandemic, were being “attacked, harassed, blamed and scapegoated.” And he was correct: It is happening with shameful frequency.
A new study from the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism found anti-Asian hate crimes in the nation’s largest cities is up 149 percent in 2020 compared to an overall drop in hate crimes of 7 percent during the same period.
The study’s authors speculate that such incidents are greatly underreported as these are only cases which result in a police report. Victims of hate crimes are frequently fearful of reprisal and reluctant to contact authorities.
It’s not difficult to see what’s going on here. Then-President Donald Trump took particular glee in referring to COVID-19 as the “China virus” or “kung flu,” and he did so again and again at rallies to the point where anything China or Chinese would draw a chorus of angry boos and catcalls from his supporters.
It was exactly the kind of frenzy that he conjured four years earlier when speaking out against Mexican and Central American immigrants. There was no subtlety here, no policy point, it was all about anger and hatred and an America First vision that judges nonwhites as the enemy. Nor did it help that China became the favored boogie man of the Republican right-wing raising furor to a level reminiscent of the Red Scare when hate-mongers in the late ’40s and early ’50s were convinced that the People’s Republic of China was bent on invasion by first infiltrating the highest levels of government.
That’s not to suggest the U.S. doesn’t have legitimate policy disputes with China. Of course, we do.
But last fall, no fewer than 164 Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted against legislation condemning racist attacks on Asian Americans related to COVID. It was dismissed by some as too “woke.”
That’s right, apparently it’s just too politically correct to be against the 2,800 incidents of anti-Asian hate, including assaults, that took place between March 19 and Dec. 31, 2020, according to the advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate.
Enough is enough. It’s never been acceptable to senselessly attack people on the basis of race or nationality, gender or creed, religion, sexual orientation or anything else, whether there’s a virus or whatever the layers of ignorance involved. On this matter, America’s leaders ought to speak with one voice so that there’s no mistaking the truth: Stop the bullying, harassment and hate. Not in the times of COVID-19, not before and not after.
