There Have Been More Than 9,000 Anti-Asian Incidents Since Pandemic Began

There have been more than 9,000 incidents against those of Asian descent since the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to a group dedicated to fighting Asian hostility. Stop AAPI Hate said it received 9,081 reports of anti-Asian incidents, which range from verbal remarks to physical violence, between March 2020 and this June. The data was almost evenly split between 2020 and 2021, with most of the incidents involving verbal harassment and shunning. A large majority of the reports—63 percent—were made by women, and most of them occurred on public streets or at businesses.

It comes after a wave of racist attacks against Asians after the initial Chinese outbreak of the coronavirus, even as President Joe Biden signed legislation dedicated to fighting them. “When you encourage hate, it’s not like a genie in a bottle where you can pull it out and push it back in whenever you want,” Manjusha Kulkarni, a co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, told the Associated Press. “There’s too much perpetuating these belief systems to make them go away.”