Final Reflection

For this assignment, I chose to research the rise of hate against Asian American & Pacific Islander communities. I’ve had previous experience in research, so I had some idea of what to do; but for this year, I felt it was an easier assignment and to research because it was a topic that I was interested in. I first came across the coalition Stop AAPI Hate. They heightened my interest in this topic because the activist group was so informative and made me realize what was happening to my community and made me realize that more attention should be brought to what’s happening to these communities. It links multiple articles that talk about any recent issues happening within the APPI communities. One of those links goes to the National Report through June 2021 and shows the comparison of different types of hate crimes towards the AAPI community between 2020 and 2021. For the other articles, I searched on Google for rise in AAPI hate and found a ton of other articles that were all helpful.

For readers to follow what I’m writing, they should learn how numbers and percentages have risen violently in hate against Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders especially after Covid-19 was introduced. In the first post, the article mentioned that out of 4,000 hate-related incidents, 70% were women. This information was important to include because it’s evidence that can show the recent escalation of hate against the AAPI communities. In the second post, the informative article, I wrote about multiple incidents that happened in history where APPI hate was shown, including the Vincent Chin incident that happened in 1982 in Detroit, when 2 white men were mistakenly blaming Vincent for being Japanese and taking away their auto-industry jobs. They beat Chin with a bat, and he passed away several days later. The 2 white men stood in front of a judge and were given probation and a $3,000 fine. Including this section was important because it helps people recognize a pattern that has been happening for a long time and helps emphasize why it’s a problem. For the third post, we had to look for a text that included reader interactions, and I used the article “Asian-Americans Are Being Attacked,” and its comments. These comments mostly agreed with the importance of recognizing AAPI hate, while a few people had a different viewpoint. All 4 sources mention the recent situation in Georgia; when a gunman killed 8 people, 6 being women of Asian descent, and the reasoning for this shooting was said to be for a sexual addiction, denying any racial bias.

I also wanted to talk about how the recent escalation affected the mental health of the AAPI communities. The Asian American Psychological Association (AAPA) focuses on helping and advancing the mental health and well-being of the AAPI communities. They released an infographic in May 2021 that showed percentages and statistics of how the mental health of these communities has been affected. I wanted to include this infographic on my website because of the statistics and the evidence that showed that the recent rise affected the AAPI communities. All my sources agree on recognizing the hate and xenophobia that has been recently happening to the APPI communities. The Stop AAPI Hate website provides ways on reporting a hate incident and does mention some of the ways they plan to help the AAPI community. The “Asian-Americans Are Scared for a Reason” article used words like “vile pathologies” and “vitriol violence” to describe what’s happening to the AAPI communities. The article I used for the third post, “Asian-Americans Are Being Attacked. Why Are Hate Crime Charges So Rare?” talked about various incidents that happened around NYC and brought up the point that the hate crimes against the APPI community are not random or surprising. After looking through many articles, tweets, and websites, I realized how research works and how looking at multiple sources can beneficial when researching about a topic. I learned that with more research, the easier it is to write because I understand the topic better. For this activity, I looked at a ton of articles that talked about multiple incidents of AAPI hate or websites like Stop AAPI Hate, or Asian American Psychological Association, and they all helped me with this assignment.