California passes bill allocating $1.4 million to track anti-Asian bias and hate crimes

California legislators approved $1.4 million in state funding to help combat anti-Asian violence and racism through the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center on Monday.

Assemblymember Phil Ting, D-San Francisco and chair of the Assembly Budget Committee, secured funding through the passage of AB 85, which provides $7.6 billion in additional state resources for the ongoing pandemic response. The money will be used to support Stop AAPI Hate’s research and help the organization track anti-Asian incidents, which have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill into law Tuesday.

“The rise in hate incidents against Asian Americans during the pandemic is alarming,” Ting said in a statement. “But, we can’t solve a problem without knowing how big it is. New state funding allows the data gathering to continue, and the research will ultimately lead us to solutions that will make all communities safer.”

Stop AAPI Hate’s reporting center was formed in March last year by the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council, Chinese for Affirmative Action and San Francisco State University’s Asian American Studies department to collect reports of anti-Asian discrimination nationwide. Between March and August 2020, the center received 2,583 self-reported incidents of anti-Asian discrimination nationwide, with more than 40% of those reports from California.

Recent months have seen a spike in attacks against elderly Asian Americans, particularly in the Bay Area. In January, an elderly Thai man died in San Francisco after being violently shoved to the ground, while a 91-year-old Asian man was also assaulted in Oakland’s Chinatown.

“The history of the Asian American Pacific Islander community in the United States has been punctuated by times of racism and hate including the Chinese Exclusion Act, the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americas in World War II, the murder of Vincent Chin, hate crimes against Sikhs after 9/11, and most recently, attacks and murder of API seniors incited by racist rhetoric about the COVID pandemic,” Richard Pan, D-Sacramento and chair of the Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus, said in a statement. “I am grateful that California will be funding data collection and research at UCLA to address racism and hate against the API community thanks to the leadership of Assembly Budget Committee Chair Phil Ting.”

This story was originally published February 22, 2021 at 5:03 PM.