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What Congress is telling the world is that being a person or company that simply has origins in Asia is enough to be labeled a national security threat—no evidence required. That is racial profiling and an affront to the Constitution.
Today, the Supreme Court upheld Congress’s wrongheaded decision to ban TikTok in a unanimous decision. The ban on TikTok is set to take effect on Sunday January 19, 2025.
Ahead of this misguided ruling, 15 racial justice nonprofits submitted an emergency filing to the Supreme Court, explaining how the TikTok ban violates the rights of 170 million U.S. users and echoes a disgraceful history of anti-Asian racism.
It is no secret that our government wrongfully uses “national security” as a weapon against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. Stop AAPI Hate’s research highlights how the government routinely scapegoats our communities for economic downturns, public health crises, and national security threats—often without any evidence.
When our government engages in anti-Asian racial profiling and biased enforcement, it encourages everyday people to do the same.
In the case of TikTok, the government claims that a ban is necessary to protect U.S. national security against China. However, the government also filed an affidavit in open court, signed by a senior U.S. national security official, stating there is “no information” that China had ever tried to use TikTok for nefarious purposes in the United States.
In other words, what Congress is telling the world is that being a person or company that simply has origins in Asia is enough to be labeled a national security threat—no evidence required.
That is racial profiling, plain and simple. And it is an affront to the Constitution.
It is disappointing, though unsurprising, that our government is targeting Asian American communities solely because of our race and national origins. Since our nation’s founding, our government has repeatedly trampled on the rights of Asians, Asian Americans, and other minority groups by relying on so-called “national security” concerns as a basis for outright racial discrimination.
Take, for example, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Japanese American incarceration during World War II, and government-sanctioned racial profiling and surveillance of innocent Muslim communities following the 9/11 attacks. More recently, we saw the China Initiative, a Department of Justice operation from 2018 to 2022 that unjustly targeted Chinese and Chinese American academics, ruined careers and livelihoods, and chilled scientific research.
Every time the government insisted that such laws or programs targeting Asian Americans were necessary, it reinforced the pernicious “perpetual foreigner” stereotype or the idea that all Asian people in America are inherently suspicious and disloyal to the United States based on our ancestry, skin color, or religious faith.
Those laws and programs were based on fearmongering and scapegoating. All three branches of government—the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court—eventually admitted that Japanese American incarceration violated the Constitution. Both the House and the Senate officially apologized for the Chinese Exclusion Act and other discriminatory laws. And the DOJ eventually shut down the China Initiative, acknowledging it perpetuated a discriminatory double standard against people with any ties to China, though President-elect Donald Trump wants to revive it.
Our government never seems to learn and instead continues to pass laws motivated by anti-Asian prejudice, like this TikTok ban.
The TikTok ban has real human costs. The ban will silence 170 million U.S. users, including communities like ours that rely on TikTok to build solidarity, share valuable information, practice their faith, and engage in free expression.
But what worries us even more is how the TikTok ban fuels hateful rhetoric and actions against Asian Americans. It is clear that Congress targeted TikTok because the company is Chinese. Other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube collect vast amounts of user data and have had major privacy and security issues—yet the government is not applying the same level of scrutiny on those companies.
When our government engages in anti-Asian racial profiling and biased enforcement, it encourages everyday people to do the same. We saw this exact ripple effect of hate during the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the start of the pandemic, then-President Trump spewed racist, anti-Asian rhetoric blaming Chinese people for the virus, fueling a torrent of hate against AAPI communities. In fact, from 2020 to 2022, Stop AAPI Hate received over 2,000 reports of hate acts in which offenders mimicked Trump’s language. His rhetoric emboldened people to spit racist vitriol at our community members as we shopped for groceries, dropped our kids off at school, and took the bus to work. They shouted that we were diseased and told us to go back to our country. Since our founding in March 2020, we have received over 12,000 reports of anti-AAPI hate acts from across the country—and we know racism and discrimination increase when politicians target our communities.
That’s why AAPI communities must tell our leaders that we disagree with the TikTok ban. This decision is not only an affront to our civil liberties and free speech, it is also an affront to our safety. We need leaders who will defend our rights and safety—not strip it away.
Racist and misogynistic verbal attacks on Asian American women leads to greater violence. It’s up to all of us to demand change.
No Asian American woman, regardless of political party or loyalties, is spared from being the target for anti-Asian, anti-immigrant racism and misogyny.
Now that Vice President Kamala Harris has entered the presidential race, the onslaught of racist and misogynistic attacks she has endured will surely only intensify. As the first Black American and first Indian American woman to serve in her office as Vice President, her eligibility to hold the office of the president is already being scrutinized.
And it certainly didn’t take long for members of the far right to focus their hate-fueled attacks on one of their own—the wife of Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance. Despite being a highly-educated, successful corporate litigator and mother, Usha Chilukuri Vance and her children have incurred the wrath of many online. For her Indian ancestry. For her faith. For the names given to her children.
I can’t say that it comes as any real surprise. We’ve seen it time and again, an experience common for both high-profile Asian American women, as well as everyday people in our communities. These kinds of racist, xenophobic attacks are not new and they are not exclusive to Vice President Harris or Vance.
We’ve seen it time and again, an experience common for both high-profile Asian American women, as well as everyday people in our communities.
This has held true for former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, Congresswoman Judy Chu, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, and so many others.
We know that the vast majority of women in our communities report experiencing racism and discrimination. Yet, anti-Asian “jokes” continue to be a seemingly accepted mainstay of popular culture and politics. Too many people feel comfortable maligning Asian Americans and immigrants in the name of political gain.
The “model minority” myth is dangerous for many reasons. It not only has been used to create and deepen the divisions among Asian Americans and other people of color, but it also continues to harm Asian Americans within our own communities. It invisibilizes the lived experiences and realities that many Asian Americans face.
When we talk about Asian Americans, that includes more than 50 ethnic groups who speak more than 100 languages. It erases the experiences of Asian American women who are overrepresented in frontline and low-wage work and the millions of Asian American women who experience some of the widest wage gaps while also serving as caregivers to children and elderly family members.
We must continue to cast light upon the ways in which Asian American women are talked about, stereotyped, invisibilized, hypersexualized, and dehumanized.
The myth has also created the illusion that Asian Americans - if we work hard enough, if we don’t complain, if we align ourselves with white communities and people in power - can overcome being regarded as perpetual foreigners. Upholding the model minority myth can be tempting when you have been indoctrinated by a society with a history of pitting racial groups against one another. Being considered exceptional can provide perceived safety and belonging to people who want to build a life for themselves and their families.
But the model minority myth is a lie and for too many people in this country, Asian Americans will always be regarded as invisible, at best, and expendable or a threat, at worst.
Many of the attacks on Harris, Vance and other Asian Americans have been centered around the “Great Replacement Theory,” which has been accepted by many white nationalists as a conspiracy to replace white, Christians with people of color and immigrants. It is often described as an “invasion” and recently has been the underpinning of the way some people talk about the southern border or the influx of Indian immigrants into the U.S.
As a society, we cannot simply brush off verbal attacks and racist misogyny as acceptable speech. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw that racist rhetoric of the “China virus” contributed to increased violence and hate-induced attacks against Asian Americans, including the murders of six Asian American women in Atlanta, devastating the lives of their families and the communities in which they lived.
Acts of verbal abuse and violence lead to the acts of physical abuse and violence against members of Asian American communities. We must continue to cast light upon the ways in which Asian American women are talked about, stereotyped, invisibilized, hypersexualized, and dehumanized.
Working towards real systemic change in a world that recognizes and addresses the real harm caused by anti-Asian and racialized misogyny will take all of us speaking up against these kinds of attacks that have been allowed to go on for far too long.
Hate crimes threaten the health and wellbeing of individuals and by extension, the community, instilling fear based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, religion, and disability.
Where will the next punch land? A month ago, an Asian elder was punched while walking in Chinatown in downtown Los Angeles. In another incident, eggs and derogatory remarks were hurled at a group outside of the UCLA campus. It’s not just in California. States such as New York, Massachusetts, and Oregon are seeing a rise in crimes against the Asian community.
Reported crimes against the Asian community have increased 167% between 2020 and 2021, according to the FBI.That doesn’t count the many, many instances in which victims fear to report these incidents.
In the past 12 months, nearly three out of four Chinese Americans have experienced racial discrimination, and two in three feel a need to stay vigilant about hate crimes and harassment. As both a public health researcher and an Asian-American who has suffered such harassment, I believe we need to start treating racism as a new public health crisis, one that causes irreparable harm to the mental health of our community.
I recall the impact of hate all too well. As a child, classmates asked me whether I could see, because they said, “Your eyes are so small.”
Treating racism as a public health crisis starts with the recognition that racism affects our entire community, not just individuals. Focusing on policy and systems change must be heeded rather than focusing on punitive punishment against individuals.
I recall the impact of hate all too well. As a child, classmates asked me whether I could see, because they said, “Your eyes are so small.” In high school, a classmate told me regularly, “I want to beat your face” when I asked a question in class because I looked “annoying” to her. In my 20s, a group of men followed me, dispensing derogatory Asian slurs, while asking me to “get into their car for a little fun?”
If we wish to stop anti-Asian crimes, we cannot sit back and continue to be bystanders. We must address it head-on. This means:
During public health crises, public health departments often form special units or task forces to focus on the problem. If we treated hate crimes the same way, we would see more racial justice councils (RJCs), like those now emerging in Oregon, or through organizations like the Massachusetts chapter of the National Social Work Association.These councils support state legislators or other groups focusing on hate crimes by ensuring policies are driven by data and that recommendations are provided to the governor and state legislature on core racial issues, including criminal justice, housing, economy, health equity, education, and environmental justice.
RJCs are important steps toward building trust within the community, and toward holding leadership accountable by using data-driven resources. RJCs, like the one in Oregon, come from organizations and businesses who bring in a racial equity lens.
Hate crimes threaten the health and wellbeing of individuals and by extension, the community, instilling fear based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, religion, and disability. A key tenant within public health focuses on structural change—the passage of stronger laws against hate crimes will reduce fear while also demonstrating commitment towards protections for vulnerable groups.
Although 49 states have passed some sort of legislation on hate crimes, these laws are haphazard at best, depending on inconsistent definitions of hate crimes. Fortunately, states are beginning to pass stronger laws against hate crimes. For instance, Oregon recently passed laws granting hate crime victims paid leave and rental assistance. Michigan recently passed legislation to expand hate crime coverage to include protections based on sex, sexual orientation, age, gender identity, or physical or mental disabilities. If hate crimes were treated like a public health crisis, stronger responses like these new, more powerful laws, would become the rule.
Data informs solutions for public health, by improving the health of populations as a whole. Likewise, we need consistent data on hate crimes. Even when states do have hate crime legislation, they do not track data equally. Currently, 18 out of those 49 states and territories that have laws in place do not require data collection on such crimes, according to the Justice Department.
Without proper data, it is impossible to quantify the volume of hate crimes. Inconsistent hate crime laws result in unjust court battles, unfair hate crime coverage, and insufficient efforts to address the crimes.
It’s true that there’s increasing awareness of hate crimes against Asian Americans, as evidenced by President Joe Biden signing the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act into law in 2021. The law makes it easier to report hate crimes, boosts public outreach, directs the Department of Justice to expedite hate crimes reviews, and increases funding for local and state governments for crime-reduction programs.
Despite all this, crimes against the Asian community have continued to increase dramatically. Treating hate crimes like a public health crisis would be an important step toward ending an epidemic that affects the well-being of everyone.