Link to article: http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-04/06/c_139862533.htm
At a press briefing when asked to comment on a New York Times article on anti-Asian violence in the United States, foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian stated that the U.S. needs to honor its commitment to protecting human rights and crack down on discrimination and hate violence against Asian Americans.
Especially since the outbreak of Covid-19, which was first discovered in Wuhan, China, there has been a consistent increase in cases of hate crimes against ethnic minorities including Asians in the United States. Even former U.S. politicians have made xenophobic remarks and spread false information, leading to systematic racial discrimination and hate crimes against Asian Americans.
Spokesperson Zhao claims that racism in the U.S. exists in a systematic and consistent manner; neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan openly advocate white supremacy and inciting racial discrimination. China hopes that the U.S. can find a way to effectively protect the rights of ethnic minorities and free them from discrimination and hate crimes. Nobody deserves to live in fear of violence.
This article is important because of the recent increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans, and the need for absolute change they have incited. In February, a Chinese man was walking home near Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood when a stranger suddenly ran up behind him and plunged a knife into his back. Last month, a white man was charged with fatally shooting eight people, including six women of Asian descent, at spas in the Atlanta area. Although these crimes were racially motivated, proving a racist motive can be particularly difficult with attacks against Asians. There is no widely recognized symbol of anti-Asian hate, like a swastika. “There’s a recognizable prototype with anti-Black or anti-Semitic or anti-gay hate crime,” said Lu-in Wang, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “They’re often more clear-cut.”
This article relates to what we’ve been learning in class because geopolitics plays a role in racism in America. Non‐white immigration to the United States has not only changed our perception of race and racism in America but has emphasized the specific ways in which ethnicity complicates representation for racial and ethnic minorities, including Asian Americans. Asian-Americans are already sharply divided because of the wide ideological and generational differences within a group of dozens of ethnicities, which makes it more difficult in itself to curb the violence.