For more than 12 months, Asian-Canadians and Asian-Americans have been targeted for harassment, assault and worse. In the early days of the pandemic, it was words. Then actions. Then violence. And all along they have found it difficult to get a real, comprehensive response from police or government—often being forced to document their own assaults and collect databases with entries from community members to be taken seriously.
And then Tuesday night in Georgia, eight people were shot, allegedly by the same man. Six of those eight people were Asian women. In the aftermath, police are still hesitant to label this a hate crime, but anybody who has been watching the steady rise in both the number and intensity of these incidents recognizes what's happening. So the question now is who will step up to help? What can we do? And where does this end?
GUEST: Amy Chung, freelance reporter and writer