Anti-Asian violence: Some US-based S’poreans speak of mounting anxiety as they take steps to stay safe

• Singaporeans in North America are concerned about their safety amid the rising tide of anti-Asian abuse there
• This week’s deadly shootings at three spas in Atlanta follow other cases of violence against Asians
• Reports of anti-Asian hate crimes have spiked, stoked by rhetoric linking Covid-19 with the Chinese

SINGAPORE — The recent spate of violence against Asians in the United States has stirred mounting unease among some Singaporeans there, so much so that they are talking about arming themselves and their families with knives and other instruments to ward off potential attackers. 

Singaporean Josephine Sharp, 52, and her American husband have been urging their 20-year-old daughter, who is also a Singaporean, to be more alert to her surroundings and people who may look suspicious. 

“We have been teaching (our daughter) how to defend herself in case of violence,” said the sales associate, who lives in North Carolina.  

“My husband also gave her a foldable pocket knife for her protection.” 

Other US-based Singaporeans reported feeling a rising sense of insecurity and anger over the wave of attacks against Asians in the past year, as racial slurs and harassment of the community become increasingly commonplace.

This is, at least in part, stoked by a tide of nationalistic rhetoric in the US heaping blame on China for the Covid-19 pandemic.

The anti-Asian violence there — including a fatal shooting rampage at three spas in Atlanta this week — has spawned anxiety in a community that is already clear-eyed about discrimination against minorities after African American George Floyd’s death sparked nationwide protests last year. 

Tuesday’s spa killings left eight people dead, six of them Asian-American women. The white American gunman claimed that he carried out the attacks to eliminate his sexual temptations, but police have not ruled out the possibility that they were triggered at least partly by anti-Asian sentiments.

A day after the shootings, a 75-year-old Asian-American woman fended off a man who attacked her along a street in San Francisco. 

Last week, an 83-year-old Asian-American woman was spat on and punched in the face in an unprovoked attack in New York.

Mrs Sharp said that she felt “heartbroken, devastated, sad, insecure and unsafe” after learning about these attacks, which have been on the rise. 

Anti-hate group Stop AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) Hate recorded 3,795 cases of anti-Asian hate across the US in the past year through its self-reporting tool for harassment, discrimination and violent attacks. 

Another organisation, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said it registered 3,000 hate incidents since April last year — the highest in four years. Most of the violence was directed at women and elderly people.

The situation has led New Jersey resident and Singaporean Ariel Tung, 43, to urge her Asian friends to carry pepper spray if the states they live in permit them.

In several private discussion threads for overseas Singaporeans, some people have also spoken of the possibility of acquiring firearms for self-defence.

“It sickened me to know that many of those who were attacked were elderly and women,” said Ms Tung, a mental health counsellor who lives with her Indonesian husband.

“As an Asian, I was brought up to believe that we should respect and take care of our elderly, so these cowardly attacks against the elderly do not sit well with me.”

Asians form around 5 per cent of the US population, less than half the size of the African-American community.

Former preschool assistant Cheryl Lim, 43, who lived in the US for four years until 2017, said: “Now our Asian friends keep a low profile while out, watch each other's backs and carry pepper spray, and talk about buying guns for their safety.”

WAVE OF ABUSE

Frequent media reports on anti-Asian abuse, as well as statistics bearing out a rise in such behaviour, are consistent with the lived experiences of most of the Singaporeans interviewed.

While most Americans are friendly and welcoming, it takes only a small group of bigots to send ripples of fear and anxiety through the Asian community, they said.

Mrs Sharp recalled how some people had yelled racial slurs at her daughter during a visit to Charlotte, a bigger city in North Carolina than the state capital Raleigh, where they live. 

Since then, her family has avoided big cities if they could.

Ms Tung, who has been in the US since 2008, said: “My own experience with American people has been nothing but wonderful. Most of my close friends in the US are white Americans.

“But I recognise that racism in America does exist, and I do believe that the pandemic gave certain people self-justification to act on their anti-Asian sentiments.”

According to the Pew Research Center, a think-tank, more than three in 10 Asians (31 per cent) experienced slurs or racial jokes on account of their race or ethnicity since the start of the coronavirus outbreak. 

By contrast, 21 per cent of African-American adults, 15 per cent of Hispanic adults and 8 per cent of white adults faced such abuse.

In New York City alone, there were 28 hate crimes with Asian-American victims last year, up from three in 2019, based on data from the New York Police Department.

Yet the New York Times reported that none of these 28 incidents has been charged as hate crimes.

Some Singaporeans said it was hard to separate the vitriol faced by Asians from the divisive politics in the US of recent years.

Ms Lim, the preschool assistant, said that former US president Donald Trump’s four years of constant attacks against China gave rise to feelings of nationalism and allowed anti-Asian sentiment to fester. 

“The nail in the coffin was when Trump attributed Covid-19 to China and called it the China virus or the ‘kung flu’,” she said.

Nevertheless, Oregon-based Singaporean Andrew Ong, 45, said that Asians have always been targets of racists, even before the pandemic. 

He believed that anti-Asian sentiment has been amplified with the Democratic president Joe Biden in office.

“Now that Democrats are in power, we are targeted because Asians are hardworking and perceived to be wealthy, and the liberal (Democrats) are using all their power to redistribute the wealth,” said Mr Ong, a software engineer.

Politics aside, those interviewed said that it was key for Singaporeans living in North America, including in Canada where anti-Asian hate crimes are also climbing, to speak out against such acts of violence whenever they happen.

Said Ms Tung: “It is important that we voice how we feel about these attacks and not keep silent about them… and let people know these are cowardly, shameful acts.”