Lawmakers condemn anti-Asian rhetoric at hearing following shootings

The House Judiciary Committee’s civil rights subcommittee on Thursday held a hearing denouncing the concerning rise of violence and discrimination against Asian Americans during the pandemic and highlighting the incendiary rhetoric that many believe has contributed to increased bigotry.

It was the first meeting Congress has held on anti-Asian bias in the country in more than 30 years, and comes two days after a string of shootings in Atlanta by a white man on Tuesday night left eight people dead, including six Asian women.

“For many Asian Americans, Tuesday’s shocking events felt like the inevitable culmination of a year in which there were nearly 3,800 reported incidents of anti-Asian hate incidents that grew increasingly more violent over time as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened,” subpanel Chairman Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said in his opening statements, referring to a recent study from the nonprofit Stop AAPI Hate.

A separate study from California State University’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism showed that while overall hate crimes dropped slightly in 2020, hate crimes against Asian Americans in 16 of the country’s largest cities skyrocketed nearly 150 percent.

“When politicians use terms like ‘China Virus’ or ‘Kung Flu’ … is the effect — intentional or not — of putting a target on the backs of all Asian Americans,” Cohen said.

Former President Trump often described the coronavirus as such and many Republican members of Congress have continued to use the racist and incendiary terms.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) — who both spoke at the hearing — torched such rhetoric on Wednesday, in the aftermath of the shootings.

“What we can say and should say clearly and unambiguously is that blaming the AAPI community for a public health crisis is racist and wrong, and continuing to treat our fellow Americans as others only furthers divides our country,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) said.

The hearing featured two panels: one with Asian American members of Congress and another with lawyers, scholars and public figures.

The overwhelming consensus among speakers was that Asian American hate has a long systemic history in the U.S.

Many speakers highlighted past laws that openly discriminated against Asian Americans, including the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, the Immigration Act of 1924 and the nationwide internment of Japanese Americans during the second World War.

Erika Lee, award-winning author and director of the University of Minnesota’s Immigration History Research Center, said during her testimony that it’s “vital” to realize the rise of hate incidents against Asian Americans are “not random acts perpetrated by deranged individuals.”

Rather, Lee characterized the hate acts as an “expression of our country’s long history of systemic racism targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.”

“Unfortunately, it is very American,” Lee said.

Republican members of the panel offered their condolences to the families of the victims of Tuesday’s violence, but opted to spend much of their allotted time to talk about the overall proliferation of crime in the country and the discrimination against Asian Americans in the classroom.

In particular, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) drew the ire of his Democratic colleagues with his opening statement, in which he blamed the pandemic on the Chinese Communist Party and argued that any policies that would criminalize hate speech would infringe upon free speech.

“We shouldn’t be worried about having a committee of members of Congress policing our rhetoric, because some evildoers go engage in some evil activity as occurred in Atlanta, Georgia,” Roy said.

“Who decides what is hate? Who decides what is the kind of speech that deserves policing?” Roy questioned.

Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) in particular pushed back against Roy’s sentiments.

“Your president, and your party, and your colleagues can talk about issues with any other country that you want, but you don’t have to do it by putting a bull’s eye on the back of Asian Americans across this country,” Meng said, choking up in the process. “This hearing was to address the hurt and pain of our community, to find solutions and we will not let you take our voice away from us.”

“This hearing was to address the hurt and pain of our community and to find solutions,” says Rep. Grace Meng in forceful response to Rep. Chip Roy’s opening remarks on “policing of rhetoric” in hearing.

“We will not let you take our voice away from us.” https://t.co/oaHKPQWuSd pic.twitter.com/ggr3IbcZ6z

— ABC News (@ABC) March 18, 2021

Last Thursday, Meng and Rep. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) introduced the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which would specifically combat the proliferation of hate incidents against Asian Americans by designating a dedicated Justice Department official to “to facilitate the expedited review of COVID-19 hate crimes and reports of any such crime to Federal, State, or local law enforcement agencies.”

Atlanta law enforcement officials have shied away from calling the killings a hate crime, instead referencing the shooter’s alleged “sex addiction” in a press conference Wednesday.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D), whose district covers southeast Atlanta, remarked in the hearing that whether they were “sex-based or race-based,” the killings were undoubtedly “hate-based” and targeted against Asian women.

“If genocide against Native Americans and slavery are our nation’s original sin, then harassment and violence against Asian Americans is its progeny,” Johnson said.