Asian Americans Express Alarm Over Recent Acts of Violence And Demand Action

On Wednesday, a man violently shoved a 52-year-old Chinese woman on a sidewalk in Flushing, Queens. The victim required at least five stitches after knocking her head on the concrete floor.

A video of the incident, which took place in daylight outside a bakery and showed the attacker throwing an object at the woman before pushing her, was shared online and quickly went viral, the latest in a string of violent incidents that have troubled Asian American communities and prominent public officials.

What made the Flushing attack especially alarming to some Asian Americans is that it took place in a neighborhood that is overwhelmingly Asian.

“I think Asians are easy targets,” said Chris Kwok, a board member of the Asian American Federation, an advocacy group for Asian communities. “I think people feel like they won’t fight back. People feel ‘Oh, the police won’t report. And maybe Asians won’t report.’”

Kwok co-authored a report for the Asian American Bar Association of New York, "A Rising Tide of Hate and Violence Against Asian Americans in New York During COVID-19: Impact, Causes, Solutions, finding 2,500 Asians to be the target of a hate attack related to COVID-19 between March and September 2020 nationwide.

“And this number understates the actual number of anti-Asian hate incidents because most incidents are not reported,” the report reads.

Deputy Inspector Stewart Loo, who heads the NYPD’s Asian Hate Crime Task Force, which formed last August after a spike in hate crimes against Asians, corroborated Kwok’s “soft target” theory.

“One hundred percent that is part of the problem,” said Loo in an interview with Gothamist/WNYC on Friday. “I spoke to people who rob Asian Americans and they'll tell you why they target Asian Americans. It's not because they're Asian. They perceive them to be soft targets. They carry cash. They won't report it. It's less likely that they'll identify them, and they put up the least amount of resistance.”

The NYPD arrested Patrick Mateo, 47, for the Flushing attack, and he was charged with assault and harassment. The incident took place a day after two other Asian American women were attacked in separate subway encounters. Earlier this month, a 61-year-old Filipino man was slashed across the face while riding the L train. 

Across the country, Asian American organizations have documented thousands of bias incidents since the beginning of the pandemic last year and are urging law enforcement agencies and government officials to take the problem seriously. In San Francisco, an 84-year-old Thai man died after being knocked to the ground; a 91-year-old Asian American was pushed to the ground in Oakland’s Chinatown, and a Vietnamese grandmother was robbed in San Jose ahead of the Lunar New Year

The NYPD has not yet established a racial motive for the Flushing attack but in a Facebook post the victim’s daughter categorized it as a hate crime.

"This douchebag was yelling out racial slurs, walks into my mom and shoved my mother on Main street and Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing, Queens today,” wrote Maggie Kayla Cheng on Wednesday. “He shoved her with such force that she hit her head on the concrete and passed out on the floor. She received 5-10 stitches on her forehead, spending 4-5 hours in the hospital. Hate crime has no place in our community. How you go up against a 5'3”, 110-115lbs lady?"

State Senator John Liu was more blunt about the discrimination in these attacks. He joined the Reverend Al Sharpton to denounce the anti-Asian violence at Sharpton’s National Action Network on Saturday.

“We have seen attacks against Asian Americans, sometimes with explicit racial terms, and sometimes not so overt, but you know, as an Asian American,” Liu said. “We understand, when we’re being singled out for one reason and one reason only. And that is the color of our skin or some would say, the angle of our eyes. That is bigotry, and it’s worse. And we cannot stand for, here in New York or anywhere else in this country.”

The Asian American Federation estimated “approximately 500 reports of bias incidents and hate crimes directed at our community in New York City,” and joined with Black, Arab American and Latino groups in calling for leaders “to go beyond verbal expressions of solidarity and take meaningful actions to provide us with the resources to navigate COVID-19 and address the racism that is plaguing Asian New Yorkers.”

The group is planning a Stop the Hate rally on February 27th at Federal Plaza in downtown Manhattan. It called for resources for victims of bias incidents to seek recovery in Asian languages and help in encouraging self defense among Asian Americans as well as bystander intervention training. Another rally is slated for Monday and organized by Queens Borough President Donovan Richards.

The overall number of hate crimes in the city dropped from 426 in 2019 to 276 last year. But the NYPD identified a total of 26 crimes specifically motivated by COVID-19, of which 24 were against Asians. The trend prompted the NYPD last summer to create the Asian Hate Crime Task Force, comprising 25 Asian American detectives.

Loo said the detectives on the task force collectively speak 11 languages, including several Chinese dialects as well as Korean, Thai, Tagalog, and Burmese.

“A lot of things get lost in language, and translation,” he said. “So it's extremely important from an investigative standpoint that you speak the same language as your victim. And I feel crimes as serious as hate crimes, you need that connection. You need to be able to speak with the victim in their native language and this task force provides that.”

Loo moved to this country from Taiwan as a child, and witnessed firsthand how his father, a restaurant delivery worker, was dealt with as a victim of crime during the 1980s crime wave.

“There's always an issue, depending on which officer shows up. Some officers, when they have difficulties speaking with victims who don't speak the language, they get frustrated [and] the report doesn't end up getting made,” Loo said.

The experiences left the younger Loo feeling like “a guest,” he said. “It didn’t feel like home.”

He joined the NYPD in 2000 when he said there were around 200 Asian Americans on the force. 

“We were overwhelmingly under-represented and the public was ill-equipped to handle all these Asian victims who did not speak English,” Loo said.

The figure now stands closer to 2,000 Asian American officers, comprising around 5% of the NYPD. 

“We are making progress,” Loo said. 

Part of the work is convincing undocumented Asian New Yorkers to come forward and conveying that there is no risk in doing so.

“If it comes from somebody like me, maybe they’ll trust it more,” Loo said.  

The results of a survey released by Stop AAPI Hate indicate that Asian Americans are more likely to experience verbal harassment or name calling in New York than nationally, and more likely to be victims of physical assault, or be coughed at or spat upon.

“The surge is staggering: there’s been a 1,900% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in New York City in the past year,” wrote Eric Toda, the global head of social at Facebook, in an Ad Week article aimed at corporate America. “And no one is paying attention. No big news outlets. No brands. No influencers. No hashtags. Silence.”

The frequency of the attacks, which many Asian American leaders tie to the xenophobic language deployed by former President Donald Trump during the early days of the pandemic, has prompted some members of the community to change their behavior. 

In New York, 70% of Asian American students have opted out of in-person learning, the highest of all racial groups and twice the level of white students. One principal told NBC News that one factor for this was the anti-Asian sentiment in the community.

“Asian American women, moms, feel fear when they go to the playground with their children, when they go to the supermarket, when they go to the doctors,” Kwok told Gothamist/WNYC. “My wife won’t take the subway anymore because she really fears what might happen."

Loo said even his wife won’t take the subway either, because she thinks “it’s too dangerous.” 

The problem of anti-Asian discrimination, he said, has been around for a long time, and he doesn’t expect it to go away soon. But he argued that Asians who are victimized increasingly have recourse.

“A lot of the concern is that nobody cares, and the police don't care, the police don’t do anything,” Loo said of criticism from community groups, then added, “We care. We're here and we're going to do everything we can. We’re going to take care of the Asian American community.”

With reporting from Sophia Chang

Arun Venugopal reports for the Race & Justice Unit at Gothamist/WNYC