The pandemic appears to have sparked a rise in anti-Asian bigotry

A LONE GUNMAN shot up three spas in Georgia last week killing eight people, six of them Asian women. Although law enforcement has yet to find evidence that the attack was racially motivated, officers have yet to rule it out. The incident has drawn attention to a worrying rise in anti-Asian sentiment in America since the pandemic struck just over a year ago. Over the weekend, as protests against Anti-Asian violence were held around the country, the New York Police Department responded to five attacks against people of Asian descent. In one incident, a 54-year-old woman walking home in the Lower East Side was struck in the face with a metal pipe. The suspect was reportedly heard saying, “I came here to fuck up Asians”.

Polls suggest that Asian-Americans are the targets of a growing number of racist incidents. In a poll conducted last year by the Pew Research Centre, a think-tank, roughly one in four Asian-Americans reported fearing that someone might threaten or physically attack them because of their race or ethnicity in the past year. These numbers are higher than for any other racial group—a significant finding, considering that the history of racial attacks in America mostly involves whites targeting blacks. One in three Asian-Americans reported being the target of slurs or racist jokes, and 39% said that people have acted uncomfortably around them.