Legislators Condemn Violence Against Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders
State Representatives Andy Fugate and Cyndi Munson, on behalf of the Democratic Caucus, released the following statement condemning violence and lifting up Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans.
OKLAHOMA CITY — State Reps. Andy Fugate and Cyndi Munson, on behalf of the Democratic Caucus, released the following statement condemning violence and lifting up Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans.
According to “Stop AAPI Hate,” a nonprofit that tracks and advocates against the violence, there have been more than 3,000 reports of violence against the AAPI community since the start of COVID in America.
Statement:
“We lift up the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. Too many are hurting today due to callous, inexcusable acts of hate. There is no place in modern society for racism or violence.
Diversity is not a weakness. It is but our greatest strength. Having different backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives is how humanity grows. Our ingenuity and creativity as humans are held back by every disgusting comment or violent act in the name of racism. This must stop.
On this issue specifically, blaming the fallout of COVID on a demographic of Americans is willfully, disgustingly ignorant. Furthermore, it fails to hold relevant parties accountable. It wasn’t Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who failed to protect Americans by implementing safeguards to limit the spread. It was ineffective government leadership.”
Racial Trauma
Racial trauma, or race-based traumatic stress (RBTS), refers to the mental and emotional injury caused by encounters with racial bias and ethnic discrimination, racism, and hate crimes [1]. Any individual that has experienced an emotionally painful, sudden, and uncontrollable racist encounter is at risk of suffering from a race-based traumatic stress injury.
Examples Of Individual Racism
Following the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S., there were nearly 1,500 reported incidents of anti-Asian racism in just one month. Reports included incidents of physical and verbal attacks as well as reports of anti-Asian discrimination in private businesses.
In 2018, 38 percent of Latinx people were verbally attacked for speaking Spanish, were told to “go back to their countries,” called a racial slur, and/or treated unfairly by others.
Over the course of one year, Twitter saw 4.2 million anti-Semitic tweets in just the English language alone. These tweets included anti-Semitic stereotypes, promotion of anti-Semitic personality or media, symbols, slurs, or anti-Semitic conspiracy theories including Holocaust denial.
Examples Of Systemic Racism
Black people make up 12 percent of the country’s population but make up around 33 percent of the total prison population . This overrepresentation reflects racist arrests and policing as well as racist sentencing practices in the criminal justice system.
Previous and current policies of racial displacement, exclusion, and segregation have left all BIPOC less likely than whites to own their homes regardless of level of education, income, location, marital status, and age.
The erasure of Asian Pacific Islanders (APIs) in the “Asian or Pacific Islander” category by U.S. Census data severely restricts access to opportunities in these communities by concealing the unique barriers faced by APIs that are not faced by East or South Asian communities.
Historical occupation segregation has made Black people less likely than Whites to hold jobs that offer retirement savings which are prioritized by the U.S. tax code [10]. This helps create a persistent wealth gap between White and Black communities where the median savings of blacks are on average just 21.4 percent of the median savings of whites.
Lack of cultural competency in therapy training, financial incentives, and geographical isolation have created barriers in providing appropriate mental health resources in Native American communities. Rates of suicide in these communities is 3.5x higher than racial/ethnic groups with the lowest rates of suicide.