A Preliminary Exploration Of Hate Crimes Against Asian Americans

Hate crimes is also called "bias crimes", for its essence is the crimes resulted by prejudice. As one of ethnic minorities in the United States, Asian Americans had been seen as "foreigners" who could not be assimilated into mainstream society. In history and reality, Asian America was faced with prejudice, discrimination and racial violence. The history of Asians immigrants to the United States began in the middle of the 19th century, and the early Asian immigrants made up the labor shortage in western cities of the United States. During the late 19th century, because of the propaganda of politicians and media, Asian Americans were seen as frightening "yellow peril" by the mainstream society. Exclusion Chinese and Japanese became an important content in American political life in the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. In the 1960’s, with the Asian Americans’ remarkable achievements in the fields of economy and education, the mainstream society entitled Asian Americans "model minority". The honor of "model minority" indicated that the stereotype of Asian Americans was changed and Asian Americans social status was improved, but it concealed the social problems of the Asian Americans community. More importantly, the title of "model minority" caused contradiction between Asian Americans and other ethnic minorities, which brought about ethnic tensions between African Americans and Asian Americans. Asian Americans became victims of hate crimes mainly for racial and religious prejudice. Hate crimes against Asian Americans concentrated on Asian populated areas, the more Asian Americans population, the higher number of the crimes. Hate Crimes against Asian Americans focused on destruction/damage/vandalism, intimidation, simple and aggravated assault. Campus became prominent locations of hate crime against Asian Americans, most Asian students experienced hate crimes by classmates. In addition, the implemented methods of anti- Asian Americans groups and crimes performed an diversified trend. Since the 1980’s, race competition,the change of social economic development situation and international relations became main factors influencing the quantity of Anti-Asians hate crimes. Vincent Chin Case,1992 Los Angeles riots and the shooting event in the Sikh temple are three typical hate crimes against Asian Americans, the first two were racial hate crimes and the third one was a religious hate crime. On one hand, hate crimes caused property loss and harmed the victim’s physical and mental health, on the other hand, it had a passive influence on the environment of campus, the Asian community and the whole country, which was not conducive to the improvement of intergroup relations and social stability. Fortunately, in the 21st century,Asian American groups continued to grow stronger. By enlarging political participation, promoting hate crime laws,they curbed hate crimes, improved images of Asian Americans, and defended their rights and racial equality. Asian American groups, other ethnic minorities groups, gay groups and other rights organizations cooperated to help the passage of hate crime laws, which contributed to collect the data of hate crimes and to punish hate crimes. In the process of protesting hate crimes against Asian Americans, different Asian races strengthened their awareness of identity of "Asian Americans", and improved their political consciousness and ability to participate in politic.