Verbal attacks
At the post office, a Caucasian female of older age yelled out racial slurs against the Chinese at me.
Acts of hate in the neighborhood
A man put a bike tire with "Made in China" and a Corona beer bottle in front of my neighbor's house. My neighbor is Chinese American and we suspect this was a racially-motivated act relating to COVID-19.
Unwelcome stares
While I was grocery shopping, a white woman fake coughed both times I passed by her while staring at me.
"We should not be afraid. We should be angry. Really, really angry."
My friend and his girlfriend were in a parking lot in San Jose and an older woman in a Ford Fusion stopped to yell racial slurs at them. They ignored her which apparently pissed her off. They are ok, but I'm really mad about it. We should not be afraid. We should be angry. Really, really angry.
Bigotry in my backyard
My next door neighbor says in my surveillance camera, "You are dead!" I reported this to the Police Department. After the police are gone, he continues with racial slurs. Now he says, "Chinese disease. I live next to a Chinaman. Oh my God. It is a Chinese disease. That's what President Trump says." I am very upset that I have to deal with this ignorance and bigotry in my backyard.
Aggressive driving
I was driving on the highway (right lane) when a truck with two white guys got in the left lane to get past me. However, they slowed to idle my same speed. I saw this out of my peripheral view, so I began to slow so they could pass. However, they slowed too. Then I sped up, and they sped up too. I looked over and the passenger was just staring at me with a “go to hell” glare.
I was wearing a mask, so I guess I expected some anti-Asian mask wearing sentiment as I get back out from the lockdown. The driver then pulled in front of me in my lane and slammed their brakes. By this time I expected this, so I was able to avoid a collision, but was not too far from hitting their truck. I was grabbing for my phone to try to start to record, but then they sped away. I thought after, what would have happened if we had a collision. Potentially verbal assault and who knows if it could have gotten physical. I’m a 6’1” 235 lb half Korean, half white male with plenty of power to defend myself, unless god knows if they’d of taken it to an extreme with firepower (hypothetical).
The point is, in today’s climate you just don’t know what’s going to happen, that’s the scary part. Being harassed on the highway for being an Asian wearing a mask. Be careful out there and watch your surroundings.
Repeated racist verbal attacks
After a few days of coronavirus outbreak, [a woman] yelled out racist remarks while holding hands with her toddler son in the parking lot. Yesterday, her husband was with his daughter. The daughter who yelled out Anti-Asian sentiments was with her dad. Today, the whole family joined together to threatened the Asian person to not call the police and provoke the Asian person to talk out of her own free will so they can do more damages. They won't stop even after the police came. The family won't take anything that they did seriously and no consequences followed. They are righteous when they are wrong. I hope they will be arrested. They have a very bad attitude that they are righteous with when they are racist.
Verbal harassment at gas station
I was at the gas station down the street from my apartment in Highland Park when a man pulled up behind me and got out of the car mumbling about Wuhan and Chinese people. He seemed a little manic and unstable so I tried to leave the gas station as soon as I could.
When I turned to glance at him, he had his phone out at chest level as if being covert, seemingly filming me. When we briefly made eye contact he said "f*** you" as he continued to film me. Each time I made full eye contact, he turned his back from me and continued to mumble as if trying to hide that he was filming. I felt unsafe so I got in my car and quickly snapped a picture of his license plate. I really didn't know what else to do. It had me fuming...there's so many Asian American communities in Alhambra and SGV which are neighboring Highland Park - I was thinking about their safety and how this man might've already harassed them.
A culture of racism
In a live-streamed video of USD 309's Board of Education meeting, President of the board, Dan Schweizer, made a racially charged statement in regards to the increasing price of anti-virus software that "we gotta keep them Chinese out of our back door", before immediately acknowledging the inappropriateness of the comment, stating "that's right, I said it on YouTube, you can come and get me".
I'm a 2012 graduate of the USD 309 school district, and am an Asian-American myself. Attending a school system in a rural area of Kansas, I was one of the few Asian-Americans who attended the school, and as a result faced regular discrimination and racial remarks during my time there by both my peers and faculty members. People would make fun of me using math stereotypes, driving stereotypes, stereotypes involving Asian genitalia, and called me derogatory names such as "chink", "gook", "zipperhead", and most commonly a "dirty Jap". One faculty member went so far as to jokingly ask me, in front of the entire class, if I could come over sometime and "take a look at his rice cooker sometime" because it was broken. I was actually unaware of a majority of these stereotypes and names until students in my former high school started using them to refer to me and my siblings. It always confused me as to why people treated me this way because I'm half-Japanese and half-white, yet it seemed to be ignored that I was a mixed race individual, and that treatment makes me very concerned for Asian students who attend the school district now, and for those who will attend in the future. I'm well aware that I'm afforded a significant amount of privilege in this country because I'm partially white and a male, and the fact that I was still treated the way I was in high school, I can't imagine the treatment that a student who is not mixed like me would experience.
This incident with the President of the Board of Education at my high school has allowed a lot of unresolved emotions surface in me in regards to my time in the school district, and makes me disappointed to see that the culture of racism and discrimination in USD 309 is still very much alive. If leaders in our education system can't be held accountable for racial remarks, then I have little hope that others in the same district are being held to high standards on the topics of racism and discrimination. The live stream of the incident can be viewed here, with the remark occurring at the 28:05 mark: https://youtu.be/Et7ze3Y4rfs?t=1670
Trump Press Conference
Weijia Jiang, a White House correspondent for CBS News, asked the President why he sees coronavirus testing as a global competition when more than 80,000 Americans have died. "Maybe that's a question you should ask China," Trump told Jiang, who was born in China and immigrated to the United States when she was two years old. "Don't ask me. Ask China that question, OK?"
Gum wads found on minivan
Our Japanese American family went shopping at Sam’s Club in Orlando. When we finished shopping, we found two gum wads pressed onto our minivan’s exterior. We know it’s because of the social climate due to the pandemic. My dad just took it off and we carried on.
Misconceptions and ignorance
During the news of the closure of non-essential businesses in Nevada, my apartment complex sent out a general email noting that there was a first confirmed case of COVID-19. A majority of residents I spoke to on my walks with my dog (from 6 feet away) told me they hoped that whoever it was, gets better (since the name listed on the apartment-wide announcement was anonymous). However, a few neighbors had called me on my phone and asked if it was I who had COVID-19 because they presumed I was "Asian" and more "accessible" to the virus because of their assumptions on where I might shop, eat, socialize, etc. In my own apartment complex, where I've called home for the past year or so, I didn't know that I would be surrounded by misconceptions, hate, prejudice, and plain ignorance. Nevada is a diverse state, and I was not expecting to be surrounded by such negative assumptions about who I am, where I go to get groceries, and how I live my life. This form of "attack" is not as violent or physical like many of the cases we now see in the news. However, this type of prejudice-filled thinking is what brings many people to attacking Asian American Pacific Islanders across the country.
Racism has many forms and transforms itself in many ways - even in intimate settings like at home. I hope the attacks, prejudice, and racist-filled thinking stops.
Online harassment during an Asian American-led webinar
Attended a webinar organized by the Coalition of Asian-American Leaders called Countering Xenophobia and Anti-Asian Discrimination During COVID-19. A group of Zoombombers began unmuting themselves. One said "shut the f***up" while a person was presenting. When all the mics were muted, they began writing hate speech in the chat including: ‘stfu ching chong F*** JEWISH PEOPLE F*** SPICS DISGUSTING WET BACKS … CHING CHONG EAT BATS **** F*** U ASIAN”
Spat at while on a walk
I was walking down the street in Manhattan with my partner and a woman wearing a mask turns to us, pulls down her mask, and says with disgust “the virus came from China.” We were in shock, and that’s when she spat in our direction. She kept walking and when I realized what happened, I called her a racist and I couldn't hear what she said but she said something back and kept walking, and that was the end of the interaction.
"Your people disgust me"
I was walking back from getting groceries when I saw an older gentleman approaching so I started walking closer along a building wall to practice social distancing. I became a bit more on guard as I noticed he kept staring at me and wasn't moving farther away. As he approached me, he snarled "your people disgust me" and spat on the ground at me.