U.S. Asian American community faces impact of pandemic combined with racism: report

People walk in a street in Chinatown in Manhattan of New York, the United States, June 24, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

Anti-Asian racism is deeply rooted in American society, dating back to before the original Asian Exclusion Act of the 1880s, but it has risen during the pandemic with anti-Asian rhetoric from politicians.

NEW YORK, April 14 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Asian Americans have faced a triple threat of racial prejudice, mental health concerns in the community and economic loss, according to a new report from the Institute for Asian American Studies at University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston).

Fifty four percent of Chinese respondents and more than a third of Vietnamese respondents said people acted afraid of them because of their race, public media organization GBH NEWS in Boston, Massachusetts, cited the report on Wednesday.

More than a quarter of Vietnamese respondents said they felt threatened or harassed because of their race, and 15 percent of Chinese respondents said the same, according to the UMass Boston survey.

The report was the first to reach out to the Asian American community in the area using a multilingual questionnaire, reaching 199 respondents from various parts of Boston, Malden, Quincy, Everett and Cambridge.

Anti-Asian racism is deeply rooted in American society, dating back to before the original Asian Exclusion Act of the 1880s, but it has risen during the pandemic with anti-Asian rhetoric from politicians, Jyoti Sinha, founder of the South Asian Workers' Center and a professor at UMass Boston, was quoted as saying.