Why I protested against racism toward people of Asian heritage

In the wake of the fatal shooting in Atlanta on March 16, in which six of the eight victims were Asian women, I was devastated and shocked by the appalling violence against people of Asian heritage.

As an Asian American myself, I am worried that I might come to harm in a similar manner someday. I feel compelled to speak out, so I protested against such anti-Asian racism last week in Burlington, joining dozens of others. We were cheered on by surrounding people while we were marching around the city hall. Although it only lasted for about two hours, I was encouraged by the positive attitude and support from the bystanders.

However, my fear has yet to go away. As Los Angeles Times has reported, a survey of police departments in 16 major U.S. cities found a total of 122 anti-Asian hate crimes last year, a 149 percent increase from the 49 in 2019.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many associate the coronavirus with Asian people, and have especially blamed Chinese people. The discontent towards Asians by some communities was so severe that the White House issued a memorandum condemning racism against Asian Americans.

I have read many horrible stories of senseless attacks against Asian people, like elderly Thai immigrant Vicha Ratanapakdee who died after being violently pushed to the ground, or 75-year-old Xiao Zhen Xie who was punched in the face while waiting to cross a street.

Even though I personally haven’t experienced any racial discrimination myself, I’m afraid that the wave of anti-Asian racism is far from over.

This is not the first time in American history that there has been discrimination against Asians. Asians were once called the “Yellow Peril,” and there was widespread violence and even riots against the Asian population in major cities, like Los Angeles in 1871 and San Francisco in 1877. Anti-Asian sentiment continued to rise, eventually culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and in 1924, immigration from east Asia was banned entirely. Although no longer valid, this remains the only law approved by the U.S. government to target a specific ethnic group, and still remains in Chapter 7 of Title 8 of the United States Code.

It’s a permanent scar in the U.S. legal system, and a bleeding wound in the heart of Asian communities.

Today we stand on the same crossroad again, and those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The unprecedented level of anti-Asian sentiment is rising at an alarming rate during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unless we take swift actions to stop such a trend immediately, I fear that we Asians might face a much more terrible fate soon.

The only way to stop anti-Asian racism is to eradicate all racism in our society and racial discrimination should have no place in our nation. First of all, we should improve how children are educated and fight against any form of racism in schools. Ethnically diverse classrooms are crucial for children to be more inclusive and to interact positively with other ethnicities or backgrounds so that they will be less likely to judge others by their race or consider them as “alien.” We also need to put more educational and scientific resources in school so that people could gain more understanding of multiculturalism and collaborate. On the other hand, constructive dialog between different ethnic groups is important to the wellbeing of our society and effective communication could further advance the tolerance of different cultures, reduce misunderstandings, and reconcile the existing racial gaps in our society aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we should demand more actions from the federal and state governments to provide better training to law enforcement and to handle cases involving minorities in a more careful and sensitive way.

Racial profiling must be prohibited and anti-racism laws should be strictly enforced. Everyone should be treated fairly and equally under law in order to make our government trustworthy and our country safer to embrace all of the people.

I remember what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

I still have this dream and want to make it come true.

That is why I protested.

Richard Jiang is a 7th grader at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School