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Hate crimes towards Asians are increasing across the United States, and as Champlain attempts to return to a traditional semester in the Fall of 2021, it remains to be seen whether attempts will be made to continue a dialog that addresses violence against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community (AAPI).
Anti-Asian hate crimes increased by nearly 150% in 2020, mostly in New York. The overall hate crimes over America have decreased over the past several years, while hate crimes towards Asians have increased.
Former Champlain College President Benjamin Akande condemned AAPI violence in an email on March 17, 2021, in which he stated that the Champlain community “should begin with a focus on what we can do to ensure that the root cause of events we’ve experienced in Atlanta and elsewhere do not take a hold in our community.”
New York City arose as a problem area for anti-Asian hate crimes a year ago, when cases rose to 28. New York was the worldwide focus of the primary wave of Covid flare-ups and encountered the most anti-Asian hate crimes of any major U.S. city in 2020 by a wide margin, spurred in part by rhetoric from the former White House administration that labeled the coronavirus as “the China virus.”
Separate reports delivered by the Stop AAPI Hate organization confirm that attacks on Asians escalated quickly in the beginning of the pandemic, and are rising again recently. While the center recorded a monthly average of more than 900 anti-Asian episodes of racial injustice between mid-March and mid-May 2020, that number stood at around 300 between mid-May and July and at around 140 between August and December.
In January and February 2021, the center recorded 250 reports per month as well as April. Stop AAPI Hate stated that verbal harassment was the most well-known occurrence recorded at 68% of all cases, followed by deliberate shunning, and physical attacks.
Current President Dave Finney has yet to address the rise in AAPI Hate Crimes, and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion has not yet announced any fall programming.
Written by James Zhang
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