Data from the web portal Stop AAPI Hate notes that more than 11,000 acts of hate against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have been reported to the site since March 2020, including discrimination, bullying, harassment, shunning, or assault. Many of these acts of discrimination may be civil rights violations, but go unreported nonetheless.
A new report from the organization concludes that more than half of AAPIs have experienced some form of discrimination.
Manju Kulkarni, who co-founded Stop AAPI Hate in 2020 with fellow civil rights activists Cynthia Choi and Russell Jeung, told Ethnic Media Services that she has not seen a decrease in the number of hate incidents reported to the portal in 2022. “The numbers reported to us have stayed pretty steady,” she said.
The community continues to live in fear, said Kulkarni. “We have significant concerns about the 2024 election in the current political landscape, and believe hate crimes and incidents will continue to be an issue.”
Many AAPIs do not report hate attacks, said Kulkarni, adding they are fearful of law enforcement or protecting their immigration status. Seeing a hate crime report in the media sometimes alerts them to reconsider their own brush with hate and whether it may have also been a crime, she said.
Kulkarni also noted that the majority of reports on the portal consist of hate incidents which do not involve a criminal element. “Most law enforcement agencies neither have to collect hate incident data, report it, or make referrals to other agencies. It creates a gap for community members who don’t know where to turn,” she said.
