At a rally held in Lower Manhattan on Saturday, a phalanx of public officials decried the recent spate of hate crimes that have targeted Asian-Americans. The rally was spurred, in part by the murders of eight people at three massage parlors in the area of Atlanta, Georgia last Tuesday, six of whom were Asian women. But it also drew impetus from a recent series of violent (but less lethal) hate crimes in Lower Manhattan and around the City.
The event was organized by Jenny Low, a Lower Manhattan elected District Leader, and a candidate for City Council, who recalled the history of anti-Asian bigotry and violence in America, “from the Chinese Exclusion Act, and the Japanese internment camps during World War Two, to the burning of Chinatowns, up to the lives lost in Georgia.” She added that, “Asian men and women walk around with targets on their backs. We are part of this country. We are immigrants who helped build this country. And unless you are Native American, you are descended from immigrants, too.”
Ms. Low invited State Assembly member Yuh-Line Niou to speak. She began, “those women in Georgia who died looked like me, my mom, my aunts, my sister, my niece. They looked like us.”
“I’m so tired of begging for people to see us as human beings,” she continued. “My mom was a night-shift nurse—somebody who took care of other people. The federal government didn’t help us, and neither did the state or city government. We were part of a community where neighbors helped each other.”
“Here in my district,” she continued, “just today, another Asian-American elderly gentleman was attacked, 65 years old, another hate crime.” This appears to have been a reference to a Saturday incident at the corner of Houston and Allen Streets, in which an Asian man was beaten while parking his car. This followed a Friday attack in Tribeca, on the No. 1 train (as it pulled into Franklin Street station), in which a rider confronted a 68-year-old passenger and called him a “mother-fucking Asian,” before beating him into critical condition. On February 26, another Asian man was approached from behind by a stranger at the corner of Worth and Baxter streets, where he was stabbed multiple times without warning. In each of these incidents, there was no obvious traditional criminal motive, such as robbery, which raises the possibility that race hatred may have been factor in the attack.
According to the New York Police Department, there have been at least 28 incidents of hate crimes against Asians in New York City since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. At least some of these appear to have been inspired by the false narrative that the ongoing pandemic was caused by China.
“I was told that I eat bats,” Ms. Niou continued, in a reference to the possibility (being investigated by medical researchers) that the flying mammals are a vector for the coronavirus. “People thought that was okay, to call the only Asian-American woman state legislator and say that. I was also told that I should get my wok and fry up a cat and a dog. Somebody else thought that was okay.”
“You know what broke my heart the most?” she continued, visibly moved. “Listening to the recordings of those 911 calls in Georgia, where the operators couldn’t understand the people pleading for help. This hurt me, because that’s how my mom talks. That’s how we sound.”
She recalled her own childhood, saying, “every time we moved, my mom was given the night shift as a nurse. That’s how my mom made sure we had everything we needed.”
“I can’t help thinking that these women were somebody’s mother, somebody’s sister, somebody’s daughter,” Ms. Niou reflected, beginning to weep, in a strikingly personal display of raw vulnerability from a public official. “Working to bring home money so they could give opportunity to somebody they loved.”
“Asian women’s bodies are objectified, so that violence can be perpetrated against us,” she continued. “We are fetishized and sexualized to hurt us. Because the more they can see us as objects, that’s more reason why they think they can hurt us.”
“Anti-Asian racism isn’t new,” Ms. Niou added. “It is state-sanctioned. All racism is state-sanctioned. This country was built on our blood. On the backs of immigrants. On the blood, sweat, and tears of immigrants.”
“The system is not ‘broken,’” she said, invoking a widely circulated trope. “The system does not need to be ‘fixed.’ It was built this way. It was designed this way. It was intended to hurt particular people, while helping other very specific groups of people get away with this. This is a system we need to dismantle. This is a system we need to remake it in our image, so it can work for all of us.”
“I don’t think that a bigger police budget is going to help us,” Ms. Niou noted. “I don’t think that anything that perpetuates this system is going to help us. Instead, look at the system. Ask why there are only two Asian-Americans in the higher ranks of Police Department. Look at who is at the table at every single agency. Why is there no language access?”
“One in four Asians in New York City lives in poverty,” she observed. “That makes us the most impoverished group in all of New York State. But we get the least in social benefits. When I went to Albany, we didn’t have a single line item for Asian communities in the state budget. We now have $300,000, which is supposed to be a start. But the State’s budget is $174 billion.”
“I am never going to accept that this is okay,” she concluded. “We deserve to exist. We deserve to be here. We deserve to be heard. We don’t need to ask for permission.”
Matthew Fenton
