Elk Grove condemns hate + Hate at Rocklin school + Sacramento reacts to Atlanta: Your AAPI newsletter

It is Thursday, March 25, 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:

Elk Grove leaders on Wednesday emphatically condemned hate against the Asian American Pacific Islander community and promised new plans to help bolster the community’s safety in the wake of racist rhetoric and violent attacks against Asian Americans in California and across the country.

A resolution that condemns and aims to combats hate violence targeting the AAPI community, as well as support state legislation, sits on Elk Grove City Council members desks and was expected to be adopted in council chambers Wednesday night.

“Violence against any one of us is a threat to all of us,” said Elk Grove Mayor Bobbie Singh-Allen at a news conference outside Elk Grove City Hall. She introduced a “buddy” program partnering Elk Grove police with local nonprofits that serve the AAPI community and a tip line to report attacks and harassment. The tip line’s number is 916-691-5246.

Nearly a third of the city’s residents — 30% — identify as Asian-American and Pacific Islander. The City Council reflects the community: Singh-Allen is the first directly elected Sikh woman elected mayor in the nation; the city’s vice mayor, Stephanie Nguyen, and Councilman Darren Suen, are of Asian descent.

Assemblyman Rob Bonta will be California’s next attorney general, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday, making him the state’s top cop and first Filipino to hold the office.

Bonta, a Democrat from Alameda, will take the position following the departure of Xavier Becerra, who last week was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as Health and Human Services Secretary under President Joe Biden. Bonta’s appointment is subject to confirmation by the State Senate and Assembly within 90 days.

In Bonta, Newsom selected a Democrat who has championed criminal justice reform throughout his career in the Legislature. He’s campaigned to end the cash bail system, curtail the use of private prisons and limit the influence of law enforcement unions.

In a statement, Bonta thanked Newsom for his confidence.

“I became a lawyer because I saw the law as the best way to make a positive difference for the most people, and it would be an honor of a lifetime to serve as the attorney for the people of this great state,” he said.

Asian American high schoolers in Rocklin received hateful anonymous messages on social media over the weekend, the Rocklin Unified School District said.

According to district spokesman Sundeep Dosanjh, Whitney High School launched an investigation over the weekend after students in the school’s Asian Youth Leadership Association club reported to the district that an anonymous Instagram account had sent them hate messages. Any students identified as involved in sending the messages will be “disciplined,” Dosanjh said in a statement, although the type of disciplinary action was not specified.

CBS Sacramento reported that the messages contained a hateful cartoon and words, along with racial slurs used against people of Chinese descent and the message that Chinese students “aren’t welcome at Whitney and y’all know it.”

Sacramento community leaders and state officials gathered last Thursday to denounce anti-Asian violence and discrimination and call for culturally sensitive law enforcement protection and hate crime data collection.

Gathered inside Asian Resources Inc., state leaders and community organizers including Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, state Sen. Richard Pan, La Familia Counseling Center Executive Director Rachel Rios and City Councilman Eric Guerra pointed to the long history of anti-Asian racism in the U.S. as well as the recent rise in attacks. Leaders emphasized the importance of elevating Asian voices and getting more funding for local API community organizations.

“As an API daughter of refugee parents, we came here escaping war, escaping violence,” said ARI executive director Stephanie Nguyen. “We today call Sacramento home, and home is where we need to feel safe. Can you imagine the fear I felt the next day coming in to work? ... We are not going to let fear win this.”

The killing of six Asian women in three Atlanta-area spas March 16 shook Sacramento’s Asian community, which was already reeling from a year of heightened anxiety and ruinous economic loss during the coronavirus pandemic. 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.”

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.

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.

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,” UC Davis historian Cecilia Tsu said. “That’s not new, unfortunately.”

In other news

• Asian Americans hold rallies in state to denounce violence (The Sacramento Bee)
• Pepper spray, Instagram and buddy systems: How Asian Americans are dealing with attacks (Los Angeles Times)
• Why don’t we know more about the Atlanta shooting victims? (The Washington Post)
• ‘All I Can Think About Is Her’: Families Grieve for Victims of Atlanta Attacks (The New York Times)
• Local leaders hold Chinatown rally to call for unity amid rash of anti-Asian racist attacks (KRON 4 Bay Area)
• ‘I Have Never Seen the Asian American Community Galvanized Like This’ (POLITICO)
• Elderly Asian American woman who fought attacker to use $1M in donations to fight racism (USA Today)
• SF Mayor Breed announces new safety measures for Asian community (ABC News)
• Asian American-owned businesses making efforts to protect staff after slew of attacks (ABC News)
• Column: The secret to keeping this moment of solidarity between Black and Asian Americans (Los Angeles Times)

This week in AAPI pop culture

Oscar nominations are here and this year provided an impressively underwhelming slate of ‘firsts’: For the first time in the Academy’s 93-year-history, a woman of color has been nominated for best director, and more than one actor of Asian descent has been nominated for lead actor. It’s also the first time more than one woman has been nominated for best director in the same year.

As far history-making moments go, this one clears a pathetically low bar. Riz Ahmed and Steven Yeun have both been nominated for best actor, with Ahmed becoming the first Muslim nominated for “Sound of Metal” and Yeun becoming the first Asian American nominated for “Minari.”

And in the best director category, Lee Isaac Chung and Chloe Zhao were both nominated for “Minari” and “Nomadland,” respectively. With her nomination, Zhao becomes the first woman of Asian descent and, most shockingly, the first woman of color to be nominated for directing. She’s also one of two women up for the category this year, Emerald Fennell being the other, marking another paltry first for the Academy.

Every year’s awards season sparks the same push-and-pull conversations between those who want to celebrate any progress made by the film industry and those who are skeptical about the significance of such gestures. On one hand, it’s great to see underrepresented artists win awards for their work; on the other hand, those wins are still few and far between, and those who win still don’t receive the same opportunities as white male artists.

Mere representation will not solve the deep-seated racism in our institutions. But I’d like to think there’s value in recognizing the achievements of talented artists of color who have historically been undervalued by the mainstream entertainment industry.

But with such glacial progress, we should always be questioning the merit of idolizing an institution that has been loathe to recognize talent of color, female and non-cisgender artists for almost a century. Here’s to hoping these pushes will snowball into equity in front of and behind the camera, and soon.

The 93rd Academy Awards will air live on ABC on April 25.

Got a story suggestion? Please reach out to me at awong@sacbee.com.

That’s it for this week’s newsletter. If you’re on the hunt for a gift or new toy, consider buying something from an Asian American-owned brand. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

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