TITLE
Recommendation to request City Attorney to prepare a resolution condemning hate incidents, xenophobic rhetoric, and harassment against Asian Pacific Islander Americans and work towards ensuring that APIA feel safe both during this COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
DISCUSSION
BACKGROUND
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, inflammatory and xenophobic rhetoric referring to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” or “kung flu” has put the Asian and Pacific Islander American families, communities, and businesses at risk for bullying, harassment, and hate crimes.
Many APIA in Los Angeles county and around the nation have been unjustly blamed for causing the pandemic and are targeted for discriminatory treatment, hostility, and violence. Yet, an estimated 2 million APIA are sacrificing their lives to make our country safe and are serving on the front line of this crisis as healthcare providers, as first responders, and other essentials roles. According to a report by the National Nurses United, nearly 31.5% of the nurses who have died of coronavirus in the United States are Filipino, even though they make up just 4% of the nursing population nationwide.
Racism and discriminatory treatment, hostility, and violence towards APIA have existed in this country for a very long time. Racism and its consequential acts of hate have fueled legislations such as the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the first law barring immigration solely based on race to the 1942 Executive Order 9066, the resolution that led to the relocation and incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry.
According to a Pew Research Center report, about three-in-ten Asian adults (31%) say they have been subject to slurs or jokes because of their race or ethnicity since the outbreak of the pandemic. The Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo, for example, was recently vandalized with items stolen and included an assault. In the City of Rosemead, Matthew Leung, an elementary school worker waiting at a...
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