Op-Ed: If you’re not angry, you probably weren’t taught history properly

By: Gitanjali Mahapatra

April 21 2021│8:03 p.m.

When the first report of an anti-Asian hate crime was published I wasn’t surprised. I remember feeling resigned to the fact that these kinds of attacks would probably escalate as the coronavirus would spread its way through the United States.

Fast forward to April of 2021, the rate of assault on Asians is so high that New York City’s police force had to create a new category for crime: coronavirus-related hate crimes.

Similar to the rise in hate crimes against Asians in the months following attacks on 9/11, anti-Asian sentiment spiked after COVID-19 became a global threat. The difference, however, is that the hatred is now focused on East Asians rather than Middle Eastern and South Asian immigrants.

While hate crimes against South Asians has dropped significantly, the residual effects of fear and distrust have resulted in mass Islamophobia and the overzealous racial profiling of brown individuals. My family and I have planned to be four hours early at the airport on the off-chance we get selected for a “random security check.” True to the unconscious bias left from the fallout of 2001, we’ve been pulled aside every time.

East Asian discrimination isn’t a new phenomena either. It has been buried and ignored for generations. With the occasional flare-up every decade to remind the general population Asians are people of color too.

In 1854, People v. Hall set a precedent that prevented Asians from testifying against white citizens due to their “unreliability” and lack of loyalty to America. That sentiment still remains strong.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first official act of discrimination to be enforced by government. It was lifted in 1942 after the Magnuson Act was passed. Just in time for World War II to lead to the mass incarceration of Japanese immigrants in internment camps.

After the war, came the threat of communism from China and Vietnam. Asian-Americans weren’t afforded civil liberties and rights until the Civil Rights Act of 1954 was passed.

The following decades brought the model minority myth, creating a divide between Asian communities and other people of color. Cases like Vincent Chin’s murder in 1982 sparked a movement of Asian communities.

The problem isn’t just the fact that these cases and atrocities were committed. The problem lies in the fact that the American education system does not teach children about what Asian-Americans have been facing in this country for over 200 years.

The strength of the public education system is dismal to begin with. Asian history taught in American schools starts with Chinese immigrants moving here during the Gold Rush and ends with the internment of the Japanese community during World War II.

A white-dominated society has filled in the gaps to create a stereotype about Asians as individuals who have never faced discrimination. We are smart, mysterious, math and science experts who will probably end up being top engineers or doctors.

Obviously that’s a false belief. The stereotype is easy to believe if you only look at the wage gap and education statistics. On average, the Asian worker makes the same dollars per hour or more than white people in the same position. The Hechinger Report found that White and Asian students graduate at around the same rate in four year universities, but there is a 16% difference in the graduation rate between them and Black and Hispanic students.

I grew in an Asian community, but I didn’t learn much about Asian-American history and discrimination until I took a university course in Asian-American history in politics. If it takes me, someone already immersed and invested in Asian culture, so long to figure this out, how does an outsider have any chance?

And I haven’t even mentioned that the Asian-American class I took was taught by a white man. I’m not discounting the value of the course, but even in higher education, it’s difficult to find culture teachers that have real, personal experience with their subjects.

Education is the primary force of change when it comes to unlearning unconscious bias. But what happens when the bias runs so deep that we can’t see how much it has erased our history?

Long story short, the rise in anti-Asian sentiment regarding the coronavirus pandemic is a direct result of America’s lack of education, sensitivity and the desperate need for a non-white scapegoat.