US society wrong to unleash anti-Asia hate

This photo shows the White House and a stop sign in Washington DC, the United States. [Photo/Xinhua]

Just in the recent past, two new anti-Chinese hate incidents have been identified with the left in the United States. The cases are different, but the bias is not. One stems from liberal educators who kept secret the notifications of students who had attained National Merit Scholar status in order to advance equity (dictated by the deep state and opposed to the equality of opportunity that is an American tradition).

The second is the case of Asians killed during the Chinese New Year celebrations in Los Angeles.

The first involved mostly Asian students — 75 percent of the victims are of Asian origin with the majority of them being Chinese — who excelled in their high school in Virginia. Left-leaning schoolteachers and principals withheld news of the merit scholar list ostensibly to not offend students who were not high achievers and to advance equity.

Many of the students who were kept in the dark about their merit status were cheated out of money in the form of a scholarship and/or an accolade that would have helped them get admission to a good university and likely a scholarship. The students were not informed on time to meet university application deadlines as the official merit lists were kept at the school or were with teachers or school officials for a week or more.

The students were "robbed" and their academic career scarred. Most were discriminated against because of their race and because they are intelligent, hardworking and driven to excel.

Critics argue that this policy is not only racist, but also demeans the US and puts the country at a disadvantage in global competition against China and other countries at a time when the US is in decline and fast losing its status as a great power.

Some even compare it to Hitler's pogroms of Jews during World War II, which forced many Jewish scientists to migrate to the US where they helped build the atomic bomb, which brought the war to an end, and later played a crucial role in the US' space program that led to American astronauts landing on the moon. Similarly, many Chinese scientists have returned home in recent times because of the anti-Chinese hate crimes and the Biden administration's anti-China policies.

What the school administrations and teachers did is said to have advanced the American Teachers Association's liberal ideas. Yet the incident came to light only after students at Thomas Jefferson High School in northern Virginia, the top high school in the US according to the US News and World Reports, complained to the higher authorities about the discrimination. But many say that this has been happening in schools elsewhere in the US for some time now.

However, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, a conservative Republican just elected to office, took measures to make the practice unconstitutional, for which he has been widely applauded so much that some people have said he has a chance of becoming the Republican Party's candidate for president in 2024.

The second anti-Asian hate incident occurred in Los Angeles. In a violent attack on a Lunar New Year event, 11 people were killed and nine injured. Since the perpetrator was a person of Vietnamese origin who subsequently killed himself, details about his motives are not certain.

The history of anti-Asian killings and racial discrimination against Asians in Los Angeles is legend. According to the Los Angeles Times, anti-Asian hate crimes increased 177 percent in Los Angeles in 2021, with some California officials calling it an "epidemic of hate". The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism says Los Angeles is the number one city in the US when it comes to the number of hate crimes.

Many crime suspects in Los Angeles are not prosecuted owing to the extremely liberal policies of the city government under district attorney George Gascon, who was elected with the help of George Soros, a financier with leftist views who contributed $2 million to Gascon's election campaign.

Gascon's policy of going soft on many perpetrators of hate crimes has hit Asians hard, with many protesting against him and his administration. Defending the police, to many Asians, has become an excuse for not enforcing the law when the victims of hate crimes are Asians with people of Chinese origin being at the top of the list.

USA Today reported that Monterey Park, the small suburb of Los Angeles County sometimes called the Chinese Beverly Hills, where the incident occurred, was the site of a disproportionate number of incidents of anti-Asian violence and crimes.

Monterey Park is known in Los Angeles as an Asian haven, with two-thirds of its residents being Asians, almost 50 percent of whom are Chinese. The mayor is Chinese as are a number of other city officials. Many say a large share of business in the city is conducted in Mandarin. Monterey is a prosperous place, and eschews teaching woke and following leftist ideals, provoking the left in Los Angeles.

The media often reports that hate against Asians intensified after previous US president Donald Trump said the novel coronavirus originated in China, and called COVID-19 the "kung flu" and launched the trade war with China. A Pew Foundation poll, however, showed this is not a serious concern to Americans.

No wonder students at Harvard, led by Chinese students, sued the university for racial bias, alleging that the number of Asian students would be double in the university if it were not for the racial bias in the admission policy. While Trump supported their suit when he was in office, in a similar suit filed by students at Yale during Biden's tenure, the Department of Justice refused to hear the case.

Behind the anti-Asian, anti-Chinese in particular, hate crimes is the ill-will espoused by the mainstream media toward China, alleging that China is trying to destroy the liberal world order, spying on the US, stealing US technology, and perpetrating human rights abuses. This is blatant provocative propaganda, aimed at inciting anti-Chinese sentiments in the US which must be exposed for what it is.

The author is the Stanley J. Buckman professor (emeritus) of International Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the author of more than 35 books on the Asia policy of China and the US.

The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of China Daily and China Daily website.