An apology + Tracking coronavirus harassment + Victims sheltered with abusers: Your AAPI Newsletter
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It is Thursday, March 26, and this is The Sacramento Bee’s AAPI weekly newsletter.
First, an apology. Last Thursday, we published a story about a map made by a research organization that visualizes where different Asian American groups are spread across the Sacramento metro area with census tract public data. The story is intended to serve as a tool to indicate different language needs for areas to aid census outreach and advocacy work.
I started working on the story in late February as a part of The Bee’s series on census outreach and to understand the changing populations that shift across cities by comparing 2010 to 2018 data.
The story was published at an insensitive time and has caused fear and pain in the community, which was never our intention. As your AAPI writer, I apologize. I’ll strive to be more empathetic and vigilant.
The story was recast, with an apology from us at the beginning: Even though the U.S. Census Bureau has delayed field operations because to help contain the spread of the coronavirus, efforts to offer tools to enable more effective outreach are still ongoing.
Here’s a recap on others stories I recently covered and issues I’m following:
In response to rising discrimination toward the Asian communities resulting from the coronavirus pandemic, California organizations have launched an online response form to collect and track incidents of microaggressions and harassment. The form is available in English, traditional and simplified Chinese, Korean, Thai, Japanese and Vietnamese so far.
“COVID-19 is a public health issue, not a racial one,” said Assemblymember Phil Ting, D-San Francisco. “Calling it a ‘Chinese virus’ only encourages hate crimes and incidents against Asian Americans at a time when communities should be working together to get through this crisis.”
I contributed to a story about how stay-at-home orders mean more isolation for domestic violence victims who have to spend more time at home with their abusers. According to local organization My Sister’s House, its crisis hotline has seen a 17 percent increase in calls during the first half of March compared to a year ago, which is an “unusually high increase.” Local and national 24/7 crisis lines are still operating.
Cases of insensitive, discriminatory reactions due to misinformation and xenophobia tied to the coronavirus outbreak across the country have blasted the internet. The Sacramento area is experiencing those cases as well. On March 6, a student told a fellow fifth-grader of Asian descent during a break that “he is the coronavirus,” his mother told The Bee.
The child’s mother said her son dealt with the incident well; it did not affect him much emotionally. But she was surprised when she heard about it. “You should not say that to a healthy person,” she said. “In the long run, we need to learn to not look at people of different ethnicity through tinted glasses. We should not pick on any person of any race, but stand up together to fight the virus.”
In other news
Trump has no qualms about calling coronavirus the ‘Chinese Virus.” That’s a dangerous attitude, experts say [Washington Post]
Video shows passenger defending Asian woman facing racism on New York subway [NBC News]
People are coming together across U.S. to support local Chinatowns amid coronavirus fears [NBC News]
“Safer in Korea”: Bay Area resident finds lack of testing, health checks in US coronavirus response [The Mercury News]
Advocates worry coronavirus could impact California census count [CapRadio]
Outreach efforts underway to reach Asian population in census count in the Bay Area [SF Gate]
At census time, Asian Americans again confront the question of who ‘counts’ as Asian. Here’s how the answer got so complicated [Time]
NYPD makes two hate crime arrests for attacks against Asian-Americans amid coronavirus pandemic [CBS News]
Fearful of a Coronavirus backlash, some Asian Americans are stocking up on guns [The Trace]
Spit on, yelled at, attacked: Chinese-American fear for their safety [The New York Times]
The Trump administration drove him back to China, where he invented a fast coronavirus test [ProPublica]
“Minor Feelings” and the possibilities of Asian-American identity – on Cathy Park Hong’s essay collection “Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning” [The New Yorker]
For things to do in Sacramento and beyond, many events have been canceled in compliance of the county’s public health orders.
The Sacramento Asian Pacific Film Festival to be held in May will be canceled or postponed until further notice. Organizer Jason Jong said the team is assessing online streaming options and a physical event may still be possible later in the year.
Social distancing and self-quarantine may be a good time for reading. I just finished E.J. Koh’s page-turning memoir “The Magical Language of Others” and it was nothing short of a magical read on forgiveness, love and intergenerational trauma. Koh wrote about how her 15-year-old self dealt with coming of age and living with her brother in Davis while separated from their parents who went back to South Korea for work. After discovering her mother’s weekly handwritten letters years later in a box, Koh began to dig into her family’s history, including the Jeju Island Massacre her grandmother had witnessed.
Finally, what stories would you like to read about? Are you working on the front lines in some way to help with the containment of the coronavirus, or are contributing to the health and well being of our community? Please let me know. Send your story to me at tyu@sacbee.com.
That’s it for this week’s newsletter. Thanks for reading, stay safe and hang in there!
This story was originally published March 26, 2020 at 11:34 AM.