Discrimination against East Asians — A wake-up call!
Context
On the 16th of March 2021, Robert Aaron Long — a white male in Atlanta went on a murdering spree. He went from one spa to another, murdering 8 individuals; out of which 6 were East Asian women. This ignited the argument on whether or not these attacks were racially motivated, triggering a nationwide uproar on racism against East-Asians. Whether this act of violence was racially motivated or not, the story was initially underreported, and later the violence was almost condoned by the local county Sheriff who put out a statement saying, “he[Robert] was having a bad day”. According to the organization Stop AAPI Hate, from March 19th through December 31st, 2020, 2,808 firsthand reports of anti-Asian hate incidents were confirmed in the United States. The advent of this and other hate crimes in the recent past have triggered American Society to reflect on its discrimination against East Asians.
Big Idea
The advent of the coronavirus last year in China and its spread worldwide had caused the loss of both lives and livelihood in the US as well as the rest of the world. The severe distress caused by the pandemic along with the associated steep decline in US-China relations recently; had resulted in the “othering” of the East Asians. The case we are trying to address is that the Progression of Hatred starting with Othering to Social Categorization to Discrimination and Stigma, and culminating in Hate crimes has been pretty steep; fuelled by the incendiary support received from various quarters.
You are well aware that this climate of hatred and discrimination has been fanned by some parts of the erstwhile ruling establishment, media, segments of civil society and has further led to institutionalized racism against members of the East Asian community. Some of the latent prejudice, coupled with racial hatred fuelled by the usual suspects; reached a crescendo in the recent Atlanta incident; culminating in the misplaced targeting of the East Asian community in the form of discrimination and hate crimes.
According to the SimplyPsychology, Discrimination is the behavior or actions, usually negative, towards an individual or group of people, especially on the basis of race/sex/social class.
Making Connections:
According to the Principles of Social Psychology, Discrimination is defined as the “unjustified negative behaviors toward members of outgroups based on their group membership”. Discrimination itself is caused by negative causations that progressively get worse. The progression of these hateful methods has an uncanny similarity to the Pyramid of Hate, which progresses from bias to Individual acts of prejudice to Discrimination, to Bias motivated violence and in extreme cases to Genocide. The recent case of homicide in Atlanta and other such acts of hate crime have been caused due to discrimination against East Asians.
Let us explore the individual aspects of the Progression of Hatred below:
Othering & Stereotyping
People started to other the Chinese Americans due to the manufacturing job losses from the USA to China. This coupled with the ongoing trade war and the pandemic made things worse for the Chinese Americans. Stereotyping this community as “Bat eaters” to associate them with the mainland Chinese reinforced the systemic bias.
Social Categorization
However, the Chinese Americans were not the only ones caught up in this situation. Due to the Social-Categorization of East Asians as a whole, other communities like the Koreans and Japanese were also stigmatized; despite having no part to play in this situation whatsoever. The negative effects of the grouping of communities are also observed in the case of this hate crime, where there were more Korean Americans killed as part of the lumping of the East Asians in this project of social hatred. This was caused by outgroup homogeneity, according to which people tend to view members of outgroups as more similar to each other than we see members of ingroups.
Stigmatization & Discrimination
According to the prominent Sociologist Erving Goffman, Social Stigma is considered the disapproval of, or discrimination against, a person based on perceivable social characteristics that serve to distinguish them from other members of society.
The attempt by parts of the former establishment, sections of the media, and civil society by using terms like “Kung-flu” and the “Chinese virus”, not only stigmatized or discriminated against the Chinese Americans as an outgroup different from mainstream American society but also made it acceptable to blame in due course the East Asians for the pandemic because their perceivable social characteristics differed from the ingroup which critiques favored. This eventually, almost gave people a license to commit acts of violence against them.
Hate Crime
All of this Stigma and racism culminated in Robert Long’s act of Hate Crime that snuffed the lives of 8 innocent people; predominantly East Asians. The more worrying aspect for us was the statement from the Sheriff’s office that perhaps, exemplified the broader society impression — “He had a bad day”. This is the dehumanization and trivialization, that we as a society have been reduced to; where the lives of the dead people are just a passing statistic caused by an insane assassin who apparently had a bad day after all!
The Atlanta incident is a wake-up call for our society to address the systemic bias, deep-rooted prejudices of latent and overt racial discrimination that exists against East Asians and similar members of minority groups. Education, social awareness, proactive legislation along with quick and tough legislative actions are needed to arrest this volcano of hatred from engulfing us all!
