@RusA #9858787 Yes, if I were not a white male, I would be afraid to walk around in public these days. Black and Hispanic people have always had to deal with being harassed by people who want to take out their frustrations on them, and since 9/11 such people have also been targeting anyone who looks "Muslim", including Sikhs and Palestinian Christians, both of whom get harassed. But now, in the last year, there has been a rash of verbal and physical attacks on Asians by people who blame them for covid-19 and all the social restrictions that came from it, loss of jobs, businesses closing up, all the rest. This is something new, because Asian-Americans as a group have always been "the model minority" - quiet, responsible, well-educated, and not prone to getting into trouble. Thank goodness Asian-Americans are standing up for themselves and making a public issue out of this. For one thing, it proves that they are real Americans who react to oppression the same way the rest of us do: stand up in front of a TV camera and say we're not going to take it anymore.
One thing that irritates me about this, is that the media have brushed off the old "Asian and Pacific Islander" label, like there's only one kind of people from India to Hawaii, who all have the same interests and concerns. I certainly don't have to tell you how ridiculous that is! This category used to be part of the government's racial bean-counting, when you had to check off a box on documents about what race you belonged to, but they changed it forty years ago. Apparently National Public Radio and CNN never got the memo.
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@RusA #9858787 Yes, if I were not a white male, I would be afraid to walk around in public these days. Black and Hispanic people have always had to deal with being harassed by people who want to take out their frustrations on them, and since 9/11 such people have also been targeting anyone who looks "Muslim", including Sikhs and Palestinian Christians, both of whom get harassed. But now, in the last year, there has been a rash of verbal and physical attacks on Asians by people who blame them for covid-19 and all the social restrictions that came from it, loss of jobs, businesses closing up, all the rest. This is something new, because Asian-Americans as a group have always been "the model minority" - quiet, responsible, well-educated, and not prone to getting into trouble. Thank goodness Asian-Americans are standing up for themselves and making a public issue out of this. For one thing, it proves that they are real Americans who react to oppression the same way the rest of us do: stand up in front of a TV camera and say we're not going to take it anymore.
One thing that irritates me about this, is that the media have brushed off the old "Asian and Pacific Islander" label, like there's only one kind of people from India to Hawaii, who all have the same interests and concerns.