Violent attacks against Asian-Americans on the rise

The other day, I read a very disturbing news report about an elderly Filipino who was attacked at a subway train in New York City. The 61-year-old confronted a man whom he noticed was kicking his bag. The next thing he knew was that he was already hit in the face and when he touched it, he noticed that he was severely injured with blood dripping profusely. His facial injury, caused by a box cutter, required a hundred stitches. What is equally worse in this unfortunate incident is that none of the poor man’s fellow passengers came to help him or stopped the attacker.

This case is not isolated. Throughout the country, there has been a growing increase of violence, in some cases fatal, towards the Asian-American communities. Observers noted that this level of violence has started since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic which has been directly attributed to China being the origin of the coronavirus. In New York City, there is a police office dedicated to this set of crimes under the jurisdiction of Asian Hate Crimes Task Force. It only shows how serious this situation is and we must all be vigilant against it.

Not all violence against Asians and Asian Americans rise to the level of a crime. In most cases, it is as simple as a condescending look, verbal slurs, vandalism, being told to “go back to your country”, and just being discriminated against because of one’s looks and language. Majority of those cases are not reported because we Asians just bear it all in order to avoid further trouble. Maybe, having been used to it, some of us are at a point where we are numbed to the intolerance and just take it as being a “foreigner” in this country.

Which should not be the case. Mostly educated, professionals, and high-income earners, Asians make up a key portion of the general population and contribute largely to the overall economy. We should be respected not because of what we bring into the American society, but because we deserve the same rights, privileges, and duties just as like any other human being. These rising cases of violence against our community should be a focal point upon which we Asians, regardless of one’s country of origin, must unite. It doesn’t matter whether you’re Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Filipino, Indian, all must join together to peacefully confront this xenophobic bigotry.

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I already received my two doses of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine about two weeks ago. I was expecting my body responses to appear as what could be the normal reactions. By the way, I don’t call it side effects. I call it body responses so as not to elicit a negative connotation to the term “side effects”. I only had pain in the injection site and sleepiness. I slept the whole day after each of my shots, which led me to quip that it is better sleep the entire day than for eternity due to COVID-19.

I strongly suggest that you take the vaccine shots. From what I have seen and heard from my friends in the healthcare community, infection of COVID-19 cases within and among healthcare workers has steadily declined since we have been vaccinated. Peer-to-peer transmission of coronavirus between co-workers in the hospital setting has been trending down. This is such a welcome news for our frontline healthcare workers.