Over 1,000 anti-Asian reports in California + UC Davis researcher out on bail: Your AAPI newsletter
It is Thursday, Sept. 17, and this is The Sacramento Bee’s AAPI weekly newsletter.
Here’s a recap of the stories I’ve covered and ones I’m following:
The Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center received 1,116 reports of anti-Asian discrimination in California between March and July this year, according to a Thursday report.
As of Aug. 5, 2,583 incidents of anti-Asian discrimination nationwide have been self-reported to the Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center since March. More than 40% of those reports are from California, with 174 of those reports coming from California youths between the ages of 12 and 20.
Of the types of discrimination reported, verbal harassment and name calling were the most frequent, making up about 70.6% of incidents nationwide. Chinese people were the most likely to report discrimination at about 40.4%, followed by Koreans at 15.7%.
Anonymous reporters recalled incidents ranging from children being mocked in class for having the “corona touch” to being spit on and sprayed with Lysol in public.
“A white woman in an SUV mounted the curb to try and run over one of my family members, who was just out taking a walk for exercise,” wrote one person from Thousand Oaks. “This woman saw that they were Asian, pulled over, started yelling and spitting at us, drove off, then turned around and tried to run them over with her car.”
The Chinese researcher accused of lying about her ties to China’s military to gain access to a lab at UC Davis has been released on bail from the Sacramento County Main Jail, but federal officials have renewed their efforts to return her to custody as a flight risk.
Dr. Juan Tang, a cancer researcher who was arrested by the FBI in July after spending nearly a month in the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, was released from jail late Thursday after a Bay Area attorney, Steven Cui, agreed to put up $750,000 in his home equity as bail. Tang has been ordered to spend 14 days in a COVID-19 quarantine at Cui’s home and not leave the home after that without permission from pretrial services officials.
She also has been ordered not to apply for a passport to replace the one seized by the FBI in June and told that she “may only consult with officials of the People’s Republic of China at the consulate only in the presence of counsel via telephone or video-conference.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Heiko Coppola filed a motion in federal court in Sacramento asking another judge to overturn Newman’s order and return Tang to jail.
Some expectant Black and Pacific Islander mothers in San Francisco will get $1,000 a month during their pregnancy, officials announced, as the city looks to improve a longstanding racial gap in birthing outcomes.
On Monday, Mayor London Breed introduced the Abundant Birth Project, which will give a basic income supplement to 150 Black and Pacific Islander women during pregnancy. They’ll get $1,000 a month through their pregnancy and for the first six months postpartum, “with a goal of eventually providing a supplement for up to two years post-pregnancy,” the mayor announced.
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander mothers were more than four times more likely to get no or late prenatal care than white mothers in 2017, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
In other news
- ‘At the Intersection of Two Criminalized Identities’: Black and Non-Black Muslims Confront a Complicated Relationship With Policing and Anti-Blackness [Time]
- “Insecure” star Sujata Day redefines South Asian stereotypes in spelling bee movie [Salon]
- For Cambodian and Vietnamese immigrants, multiple barriers prevent access to culturally sensitive healthcare [Los Angeles Times]
- Why does the U.S. have so many Chinatowns? [National Geographic]
- New SF program takes aim at race disparities in maternal health with funding program [San Francisco Chronicle]
- A Daring Star Of SF Chinatown’s Most Glamorous Era [SF Gate]
- At 82, My Grandmother Has Lost Her Husband -- And the World As She Knows It [BuzzFeed News]
- Jeremy Lin leaves Beijing Ducks, seeks return to NBA [Yahoo Sports]
- This artist recasts famous films with Black, queer and Asian stars: ‘Representation is everything’ [Yahoo Entertainment]
- Alumnus writes a foundational history of Thai Americans and appears on Taste the Nation [USC Dornsife News]
- Why a Pacific Islander Community in Rural Arkansas Became a COVID Hot Spot [Slate]
Asian Americans prefer Biden but many remain undecided: poll [The Hill]
Trump spent years trying to win over Indian Americans. Then Biden picked Harris. [Politico]
A surging Asian American population is shaping Quincy’s future [The Boston Globe]
Berkeley Renames Downtown Street ‘Kala Bagai Way’ After South Asian Immigrant Activist [KQED]
This week in AAPI pop culture
U.S.-based Chinese director Chloé Zhao made waves at the Venice Film Festival on Friday when she took home the internationally coveted Golden Lion award for her latest feature, “Nomadland,” a documentary-influenced road movie starring Frances McDormand.
Zhao is the first woman to win a Golden Lion since 2010, and the first woman of color since 2001, accepting the prize remotely in Pasadena from the Rose Bowl. She first made a name for herself in 2017, when her film “The Rider” opened to rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival.
“Nomadland,” based on Jessica Bruder’s 2017 nonfiction book “Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century,” was written and directed by Zhao. McDormand plays Fern, a widow from a collapsed Nevada mining town who finds new life on the road.
“The world is trying to divide us,” Zhao said in an interview with IndieWire. “In the past several months, we’ve all gone through a version of what Fern has felt — this feeling of great loss to a life that you used to have. It’s just this void you feel, the need to go back to normal, which leads to acceptance and how you can grow to ultimately feel OK with your place in the world. That’s what a lot of people need right now.”
“Nomadland” is shot in Zhao’s characteristic style, which focuses on expansive, open scenery and moody, introspective characters. It’s this distinct style that led Marvel execs to tap her to helm their upcoming film “Eternals,” one of the most anticipated superhero epics of 2021. It has the series’ first LGBT character and an Indian hero played by Kumail Nanjiani.
“America is as diverse as its landscape,” Zhao said in an interview with The Associated Press. “There is a way for us to connect. Making the film gave me that hope. I know it’s tough these days, but I have that hope.”
Got a story suggestion? Please reach out to me at awong@sacbee.com.
That’s it for this week’s newsletter. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
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