‘Unbearable’: Sacramento Asian communities, stunned by Atlanta shootings, demand change

The killing of six Asian women in three Atlanta-area spas Tuesday shook Sacramento’s Asian community, which was already reeling from a year of heightened anxiety and ruinous economic loss during the coronavirus pandemic.

Sacramento, like other cities around the country, has faced a spike in attacks and discrimination against Asian Americans. In a county where nearly one in four residents identify as Asian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, the shootings, which left eight people in total dead, has resurfaced painful memories for many Asians in Sacramento of discrimination, violence and hate.

“We are being targeted,” said Janice O’Malley Galizio, executive officer of AAPI advocacy group OCA Sacramento. “And it doesn’t feel like it’s getting better.”

“There’s a part of me that wants to think these are isolated incidents or random acts by random people,” O’Malley Galizio continued. “But when there’s a story almost every week, no matter how small the incident … it still raises your level of anxiety.”

Hate and bias-motivated crimes surged in Sacramento last year, according to local police data, as did incidents targeting Asian Americans. They reported being spit on, having tires slashed, and being punched in the head for wearing a mask. In two separate incidents, papers were taped to a victim’s door with the words “Kill these Chinese Virus” and “Chinese Virus in here.”

The spike reflects a troubling state and nationwide trend. The Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center received nearly 1,700 reports of anti-Asian discrimination in California alone since the pandemic began. Women reported anti-Asian incidents 2.3 times more frequently than men.

Karun Yee, a member of the Chinese American Council of Sacramento, experienced it herself earlier this year when she was punched in the face by a stranger on the sidewalk.

“I was just standing there,” Yee said. “I’m very much more cautious, and I think every Asian is more cautious about their surroundings now.”

Just last month, a mutilated cat was left outside a Chinese-owned butcher shop in south Sacramento, which police are investigating as a potential hate crime. “This is my every single day (reality), and I feel like I have to apologize for being a race I just am,” the owner, Kelly Shum, previously told The Bee. “I’m tired of this.”

“When I think of the words to describe how I feel: Heartbroken. Unbearable,” said Mai Vang, who made history last year as the first Asian American woman elected to Sacramento City Council. “We just have so much work ahead to address systems of injustice to humanity.”

“I’m really exhausted,” she continued. “It’s been really heavy for me, just thinking about the lives lost yesterday. Those were someone’s mothers, daughters, aunties, with hopes and dreams, with kids and families.”

Patterns of violence, discrimination in history

In many ways, California has been defined by the methods and policies by which it discriminated and disenfranchised Asians who immigrated here.

In 1913, California passed the Alien Land Laws, preventing noncitizens from owning land, which targeted Japanese immigrants but eventually expanded to block Asians at large until 1948, when it was overturned. In San Francisco, 19th century laws such as the Cubic Air Ordinance squeezed Chinese migrants into incredibly cramped living quarters and selectively imposed jail terms and fines for failing to provide adequate “air space” per lodger.

The history of violence against Asian women in particular is long, grim and pernicious. It’s tied to U.S. military occupations in Asia, particularly during the Vietnam and Korean wars, said UC Davis historian Cecilia Tsu. Male soldiers who solicited sex workers overseas would often bring back misogynistic stereotypes of Asian women, which may have contributed to ongoing perceptions of them as exoticized and fetishized.

Tsu added the recent rise in anti-Asian discrimination is linked to the reoccurring tendency to blame Asian immigrants in times of economic crisis in the U.S. When Asians were accused of stealing jobs during an economic depression in the 1870s, it led to a wave of violence against Asians and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Vincent Chin was murdered in Detroit in 1982 after two white autoworkers, believing Chin to be Japanese, said Japanese people caused the collapse of American manufacturing.

The coronavirus pandemic isn’t the first public health outbreak that’s been heavily racialized against Asians. In the 1900s, Chinese immigrants were labeled as the cause of the bubonic plague in San Francisco, and many living in Chinatown were stereotyped as dirty and diseased.

“The consistent theme you have is how Asian Americans have been seen as perpetual foreigners, as a racial, economic and now a public health threat as well,” Tsu said. “That’s not new, unfortunately.”

In Sacramento, racist policies have fundamentally shaped the landscape of the city. For example, before World War II, hundreds of Japanese-owned businesses — restaurants, hotels, churches, banks, law and medical offices — dotted the city’s downtown.

About 3,000 Sacramentans of Japanese descent, most of whom were American-born U.S. citizens, were ultimately forced out of their homes and farmlands and sent to internment camps. A majority returned, but never recovered their houses and businesses.

After the war, anti-Japanese sentiments persisted in Sacramento. In 1957, the City Council ignored the pleas of Japanese Americans and let developers bulldoze a once-vibrant community, demolishing Japantown to make way for corporate skyscrapers and a manicured Capitol Mall on K Street.

Even today, community leaders say residents and businesses in Sacramento’s Asian neighborhoods continue to be left behind, struggling to access education, health and economic opportunities. A lack of disaggregated data on ethnicity-based subgroups in the AAPI community masks the wide net of inequities many face, particularly Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders. Asian Americans face the highest income inequality of any other racial group.

“This is the tip of a very nasty iceberg,” said state Sen. Richard Pan, who called for more funding for data collection. “We’re a very diverse community. We know that there’s a lot of disparities. … We need to have the funding and support for API organizations to address these issues.”

Sacramento-area Asian American leaders demand action

During a news conference led by female Asian American community leaders at My Sister’s House on Wednesday, Sacramento Asian Pacific Chamber of Commerce President Pat Fong Kushida hit back against those questioning whether the killings were racially motivated.

“We’re offended by that statement,” Kushida said. “He could have done that anywhere, but he chose to target API-owned businesses.”

Whether or not the attacks will be explicitly labeled as hate crimes, Tsu said the timing of the shooting in a moment of heightened fear and anxiety among Asians across the country cannot be downplayed.

“We can’t allow this dismissive oversimplification,” Tsu said. “He decided to target Asian women and kill them. There has to be this recognition of intersecting patterns here.”

Stockton Boulevard Business Partnership Executive Director Frank Louie said the organization partnered with Sacramento law enforcement just last week to hand out leaflets in multiple languages about how Asian Americans can protect themselves and report hate crimes.

“If they’re in fear, they need to report it,” Louie said. “I get there’s a cultural disconnect, maybe a lack of trust to get their message out. … We need to educate our small business owners that they need to report crimes or incidents.”

Many Asians may hesitate to report hate crimes or abuse out of distrust of law enforcement, advocates said, or fears that they won’t be taken seriously. Nilda Valmores, executive director of My Sister’s House, urged Asian American women to reach out for help through organizations like hers, which provide culturally specific support for AAPI women impacted by domestic abuse.

“I understand the feeling (of fear), but it’s important to talk because only then does the healing begin,” Valmores said. “Especially if they’re Asian … the trauma-based healing begins with an understanding of that culture.”

Some advocates, like Angela Chan, policy director at the Asian Law Caucus, emphasized however that beefing up law enforcement budgets and neighborhood policing should not be the default response to address anti-Asian violence.

In a year that saw twin crises — a devastating pandemic marred by disparities, and racial unrest over police violence against Black Americans — more resources and government funding must go instead to programs related to restorative justice, mental health support, victim funds, bystander training and more, Chan said.

Asians in the United States haven’t been untouched by the criminal justice system or immigration raids, Chan said, pointing to ongoing deportations against Southeast Asian refugees for sometimes decades-old offenses. Many were children when their families fled countries torn apart by war and violence and moved to America, swept up in gang culture in the 80s and 90s as their low-income neighborhoods languished, schools were underfunded and the prison industry swelled.

“It’s the same elected officials, the same private contractors, the same federal and state systems that are incarcerating Black, brown and AAPI communities,” Chan said. “We don’t want these tragedies to be exploited to funnel more power and resources to police.”

Asian American leaders in Sacramento stressed the need for communities of all backgrounds to begin advocating for social justice collectively. Vang noted that the “model minority” myth — the stereotype that all Asian Americans are hard-working and successful — was specifically designed to disparage other racial groups and minimize the role racism plays perpetuating systemic disparities in society.

“In the midst of these horrific incidents, I think what we’ve seen is people mobilizing with solidarity within the Asian American community,” Tsu said. “People are more attuned that it’s this system of white supremacy. … People of color can recognize shared circumstances in history. We have to look out for others.”

This story was originally published March 18, 2021 at 5:00 AM.