Violence Against the Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Community
Dear friends of AACC,
The Asian Pacific Islander Desi American community at large continues to face ongoing violence, hateful words and acts of bias, and in any many cases amongst the most vulnerable. As we still mourn the eight lives lost from the mass shootings in Atlanta, six of them Asian women, we find that anti-Asian acts of hate and rhetoric persist.
We unequivocally condemn these intimidation attempts, threats, injuries, assaults, and murders fueled by anti-Asian racism, misogyny, and white supremacy. We condemn ALL violent and hateful acts and share in the interconnected pain that impacts any targeted group or individual. Harm to one community brings harm to all communities.
Last week, within processing space gatherings, our community mourned together, sharing in our pain, and together we acknowledged how our APIDA histories, perspectives, voices and stories have largely been untold and invisible in a multitude of environments, impacting how many non-APIDA individuals often misunderstand our experiences. We, with our allies, also found healing in the sharing and listening and valued our time together.
The care and safety of our communities is also our highest priority. We will continue to offer weekly processing spaces for those who wish to be in community together to share and process.
Future Processing Spaces:
- Wednesdays, weekly, at 3pm-4pm from March 29 through May 5. Open to APIDA staff and students and allies. (https://go.rutgers.edu/AACCprocessing)
- Monday, March 29 from 7pm-8:30pm – Asian Student Council and AACC hosted processing for APIDA students and student allies. (Register at https://go.rutgers.edu/APIDAspace)
Bias Reporting and Counseling/Wellness Services for Students:
- Rutgers-New Brunswick: Dean of Students, Counseling, Alcohol and Other Drug Assistance Program and Psychiatric Services (CAPS)
- Well-Being Resources for Students
Resources:
- Stop AAPI Hatetracks and responds to incidents of hate, violence, harassment, discrimination, shunning, and child bullying against the APIDA community in the US. In the last year 3,800+ incidents occurred.
- Self Evident: Asian American’s Stories is a podcast that aims to challenge assumptions about Asian Americans.
- PBS’ Asian Americansis a five-part documentary series on the history of Asians in America.
- Asian Americans Advancing Justice – AAJC offers a tool for reporting hate incidents and develops projects, training, education and advocacy to advance civil and human rights for Asian Americans.
- Learn what makes a hate crime from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Additional resources to consider:
- The Stanford Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project covers Chinese American history during the construction of the transcontinental railroad.
- Densho: Resources Guide is a digital archive of testimony from survivors who had been incarcerated in the Japanese American concentration camps during WWI
- South Asian American Digital Archivecovers South Asian American history in the early 20th century
- ChangeLab: A Different Asian American Timelineoffers a series of five timelines that examine broader relationships of imperialism, capitalism, race, and migration in American history, from 1441 to the present.
- Book: “Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning” by Cathy Park Hong is a collection of essays about the nuances of the Asian American experience.
- Book: “Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White” by Frank Wu examines stereotypes, such as the perpetual foreigner and the model minority myth, and tackles issues including affirmative action, immigration and interracial marriage.
- Learn about coded languagefrom the National Education Association’s EdJustice.
Collectively, we recognize that we all must do more to reflect on the complexity of racism, adopt of posture of learning to self-educate and educate others, and pursue justice work through allyship and building solidarity. As the great APIDA activist Yuri Kochiyama stated, “Our ultimate objective in learning about anything is to try to create and develop a more just society.”
In Solidarity,
The AACC team
