The COVID-19 Hate Crime Act: Anti-Chinese Sentiment and Xenophobia in Times of Austerity

DOI

10.2991/assehr.k.220504.082How to use a DOI?

Keywords

COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act; racism; xenophobia; Sinophobia; hate crimes; anti-Chinese sentiment

Abstract

On March 16, 2021, the fatal shootings that took place at three massage parlors in Atlanta, Georgia, targeting women of Asian descent took away 8 innocent lives. However, this is only one of the tragic incidents that caused racial animus occurred during the pandemic. An upsurge of anti-Asian sentiment was detected in the early days of the pandemic, leading to a bipartisan effort to fight bias-driven incidents against Asian Americans led to Congress’s passage of the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act. This paper conducts a descriptive study to examine the efficacy of the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act through literature review, mainly focusing on three themes: historical, political, and social. The paper first evaluates the design of the bill, then analyzes and explains factors that hinder its effectiveness, and lastly, proposes alternative solutions. The paper finds that the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act serves more of a symbolic purpose, a needed wake-up call, but inadequate to bring the progress Asian communities need and to temper the deeply rooted xenophobia.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Chu Li
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/06/01
TI  - The COVID-19 Hate Crime Act: Anti-Chinese Sentiment and Xenophobia in Times of Austerity
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 8th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 448
EP  - 454
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.220504.082
DO  - 10.2991/assehr.k.220504.082
ID  - Li2022
ER  -