Jennifer Heikkila Díaz, a New Haven resident, has always experienced anti-Asian hate throughout over 15 years in Elm City. But it wasn’t until when COVID-19 heightened the violence in past years that she second-guesses herself walking in the city in a way she had never before.
“I’ve definitely felt that way more now where it’s like, ‘maybe I should go with somebody else,’” said Heikkila Díaz, 43.
With former President Donald Trump calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” and “Kung Flu” hate crimes against those of Asian descent have spiked over 70%, according to the FBI.
On top of facing microaggressions and misidentification, Asian Americans in Greater New Haven reported an increase in their safety concerns. That’s why they said it’s time for them to come together to support their community.
Psychotherapist Raven Lee, who used to work in Cheshire, saw an uptick in Asian clients seeking therapy last year because of the prevalence of such violence. The increase was despite counseling being taboo in most Asian cultures.
“I think it’s just safety, going out (concerns), especially in the city,” were the major issues sending clients to the 26-year-old social worker. “(They want) to feel comfortable, want to be able to leave their homes and feel comfortable and feel safe and not feeling fearful or feeling scared.”
However, many found the nationwide rise in hate crimes after COVID-19 unsurprising because racism against Asian Americans has always existed throughout the country’s history.
While 81% of Asian Americans reported that violence against them in the U.S. increased since the pandemic began, over 60% of them experienced some form of racial or ethnic discrimination before the pandemic, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center.
Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, 48, said hatred is “a part of everyday life” for him.
Growing up as a son of Chinese immigrants in Connecticut, Tong was a target of constant mockery, jokes and ridicule. As an adult, he said he is facing similar treatments.
“I am routinely referred to as an agent of the Chinese Communist Party,” Tong said. “I have been called names like ‘Kim Jong Tong.’ I’ve been called the ‘Manchurian attorney general.’”
University of Connecticut’s Director of Asian and Asian American Studies Institute Jason Chang, said the fact that the former president blamed the Chinese for the COVID-19 pandemic fits a historical pattern.
Different groups get singled out or scapegoated for particular issues, Chang said — Chinese and Japanese Americans during trade wars, Southeast Asian Americans amid the Vietnam War and Muslim Americans over 9/11.
“Here in the United States, I would say that we’re looking at the connection of the rise of xenophobia linked with the Trump administration as kind of encouraging this kind of behavior and scapegoating,” Chang said.
Indeed, Pew Research found that 20% of Asian Americans said Trump was one of the reasons for the uptick in violence against them.
Chang notes that Asians, particularly Chinese, were blamed for several epidemics in the 19th century from smallpox to cholera. Chang said people have now rebooted verbatim arguments from that time about Chinese and disease.
The prevalence of racism in a pandemic always makes the pandemic worse.
Jason Oliver Chang, UConn’s director of Asian and Asian American Institute
Being categorized as outsiders
Besides becoming more conscious about security, local Asian Americans said they usually face indirect discrimination and are often misidentified because of their small population.
New Haven’s Heikkila Díaz, a non-profit worker and educator, said most incidents happened to her in subtle ways that often made her feel like she was “the other.”
“The way that people will start a conversation with me saying ‘do you speak English,’ that’s their first question,” Heikkila Díaz said. “They lead with that in a way, where it’s already othering me and already saying, ‘you’re not up here,'” referring that she was not as equal as Native English speakers.
Growing up in Hamden, Yale biology and education student Mariam Khan said she faced discrimination for being Muslim and South Asian American. A lot of it became internalized, the 19-year-old said.
Khan used to feel “worried and tense” when asked of her hometown because she would have had to say she was from Pakistan with Pakistani parents.
“This is in a wave of … Islamophobia (and) … media mischaracterization of what Islam is,” Khan said. “Saying that I was part of that identity always felt almost painful.”
Even though Khan said she graduated from Hamden’s school system as a proud South Asian American, it involved a lot of advocating for herself, educating others of what Islam is and battling stereotypes.
What helped Khan empower herself was finding local Muslim groups, whose members can resonate with her journey as a minority in the predominantly white community.
“I came out of these experiences being more proud to be Muslim and South Asian that I wouldn’t expect when I was younger and dealing with a lot of the pushback and a lot of the issues that came alongside being part of a marginalized identity,” Khan said.
Yi-Chun Tricia Lin, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Southern Connecticut State University, described her 17 years in New Haven as an “isolating experience.”
“You’re often misidentified and that itself can be also vexing,” said Lin, 61. “People come up to me, immediately, they will say the three words in Mandarin they know, they would just call you Chinese. Of course I’m not Chinese.”
Lin is a 17th-generation daughter of Taiwan who grew up under a regime that forced the islanders to identify themselves as Chinese. Her identity has evolved from being Chinese to Taiwanese, Chinese American, Taiwanese American, woman of color and Asian American woman.
She said she needs to educate people about her background, culture and identity or she would be looked at as “the other.” She said it’s sometimes “taxing.”
I also don’t want my background to be reduced to restaurants. I would just say it’s definitely work that comes with it, and especially if you don’t want to just be sitting back (and) just let people not recognize me.
Yi-Chun Tricia Lin, SCSU’s professor and director of women studies
Lin’s journey in academia has been filled with anti-Asian sentiment, she said, whether spoken or unspoken, explicit or implicit.
“Sometimes, (the way) I respond to a situation does not seem to conform to the idea of what Asian or Asian American woman should look like,” Lin said. “In other words, when I don’t correspond to what people seem to be the stereotype of me, that’s when I see some of the most violent responses.”
Lin said others would gossip about her, saying that she got the job because of affirmative action and that she was actually “incompetent.”
“I also prove to people that hire me with patronizing ideas that, ‘oh here we are, we are having a really convenient woman of color who would just shut up and do the bidding,’ and they all inevitably get me wrong every single time,” Lin said. “I have to stand out and educate them. It’s just come on, this is so racist.”
A community for Asian Americans in New Haven that never existed before
Greater New Haven never had an advocate or community support group for Asian Americans until recently. Heikkila Díaz and her friends, Christine Kim and Annie Lin, came together in light of the shooting at an Atlanta spa in March, in which six of the eight victims were Asian women.
The friends founded “aapiNHV,” which has grown to 69 members. Because many ethnicities fit under the umbrella of AAPI, Heikkila Díaz said they are trying to take it slow so the group becomes sustainable and deliberate in terms of what they want to be and do.
“We didn’t want to decide right away: ‘Hey here’s our stamp, this is what we’re about,’ because we wanted to make sure that we also spent time getting to know more people in our community,” she said. “(So we can) find out what are the things that this group could be for us that would be of support that would be ways for us to support each other and then also to work across communities of color.”
The group meets twice a month over Zoom. Members take turns sharing their stories or something that resonates with their experience. Heikkila Díaz said this space was needed and that members do feel the affinity, so they keep coming back to participate.
Beyond meetings, the group is also working on other initiatives such as its vaccine disparities campaign and Asian-owned small businesses outreach. These works the group is doing are to help AAPI overcome language and cultural barriers, Heikkila Díaz said.
An Oct. 16 protest in New Haven echoed the need for a safe space for minority communities to come together and reflect.
“It’s either we have to perform our pain or we have to hold that in and we can’t show it,” said Chidima Anekwa, a co-organizer of New Haven’s Blacks, Asians and Trans Power Rally. “We just wanted (them) to come as (they) are and do what (they’re) comfortable with.”
Sunehra Subha, a protest co-organizer, said minorities shouldn’t have to package their identities to belong and need groups that recognize “the intersection of race and sexuality.
I’m a queer Bangladeshi American, so whether that be being queer in my Bangladeshi community or being brown in the white queer community, I shouldn’t to deny either of those identities to belong to those groups.
Sunehra Subha, New Haven’s Blacks, Asians and Trans Power Rally’s co-organizer
When it comes to diversity under the term “Asian Americans,” Hamden’s Khan said having an open dialogue among people from different ethinic groups is a great step forward to bridge the gap.
“I don’t think COVID is leaving anytime soon, it’s already been two years, and even if it was, we really need to have that discussion and we really need to work to solve it together, not as these fragmented groups have different Asian American identities,” Khan said.
Effort to put ‘long overdue’ AAPI studies in Connecticut schools
Educators are trying to expand the teaching of Asian studies in schools.
Connecticut passed a bill in June requiring the state to create a model curriculum around minority studies — including Asian American and Pacific Islanders studies, LGBTQ studies and Native American studies by Jan. 1, 2023. It’s up to each school district to decide to adopt the model curriculum.
The bill was pushed by Make Us Visible CT, led by UConn’s Chang.
“We felt like this was a really good win for us because it would allow us to work with districts, work with different Asian American communities across the state to help them build their capacity to advocate for themselves in the school districts,” Chang said.
It would also let school districts work with specialists and academic experts to design a specific curriculum that fits the district’s ethnic composition.
Through offering AAPI studies, Chang hopes that it will replace all the age-old, harmful stereotypes of Asians being perpetual foreigners and disease carriers.
Melissa Kaplan, chair of the Hamden Board of Education’s (BOE) curriculum committee, said that courses about historically marginalized groups are long overdue.
“For years, Asian American history has been virtually nonexistent in textbooks or cordoned off to a narrow section at best,” Kaplan said. “Much of the framing has also sought to paint the U.S. as a savior for Asian immigrants, glossing over people’s agency and the government’s role in imperialism and exclusion.”
Kaplan explained that while the state requirement will depend a lot on implementation, the passage of the law sends a significant message that Asian American history is American history.
Education that centers around Black, brown, Asian and Indigenous histories is a tool for teaching democracy, she said, because it would build empathy and critical thinking, which could reduce bias as a result.
“While it is certainly far from the only thing that’s needed, this curriculum is viewed as one way to help prevent anti-Asian, anti-Latinx and anti-Black attacks moving forward,” Kaplan said.
Even though the Hamden BOE hasn’t approved such courses yet, Kaplan said this bill points to the important role that schools can play in providing important historic context that informs students and nurtures empathy.
SCSU’s Lin said education on diversity should begin as soon as a child is open to the world. Because racism is globalized, Lin said Asian Americans themselves are not exempted from such education because “we also harbor some of those sentiments.”
As someone who faced racism, Lin said these experiences don’t go away.
“They become your experience, they build your character, but the scar is always there and you somehow know that you’re looked at as the outsider,” Lin said. “But it’s OK. I’m not an outsider. I don’t write myself as an outsider. I know I contribute to whatever community that has the honor of having me there. My energy is never wasted.”