Ever since the pandemic started, the amount of hate crimes towards Asians have skyrocketed. Recently in Georgia, a white supremecist killed 8 people, 6 of which were Asian women and Jay Baker, a sheriff, wanted to claim the reason to this was because he was having a “bad day” and we then found out he had previously posted his xenophobic t-shirt blaming Covid-19 on Chinese people. In the past year, there have been thousands of hate crimes directed towards Asian people and it all started because people feel the need to blame Chinese people and other Asians for bringing in the virus along with calling it “The Chinese Virus”, “China Virus”, or the “Kung Flu Virus”.
The first thing to always do when you hear about news like this is to educate yourself. Remember, if you want to educate others through social media about this you can use the hashtag #stopasianhate. Do not use the hashtag “#asianlivesmatter” because neither of these issues are a trend and this isn’t to compete with other issues. Even if you didn’t mean the wrong intentions by putting that hashtag, change it to #stopasianhate.
What can we do about it:
- Sign petitions through websites like Change.org, you can find them under Stop Asian Hate
- Donations
- Spread News through Social Media
- Posting this to your instagram story will reach out to more people and have an idea of what’s going on if they don’t check out the news as often.