Asian Americans Are Overwhelmingly Concerned About Experiencing Pandemic-Related Hate Crimes
by Evangel Penumaka
Note: this piece is part of a series on anti-Asian racism and hate crimes, focusing on national voter attitudes concerning anti-Asian racism. The other two forthcoming installments in this series are about national voter attitudes on what the government should do to combat anti-Asian hate crimes, and how voters in California feel about anti-Asian racism and hate crimes.
Introduction
Ever since former president Donald Trump railed against the “China virus” when the coronavirus first sent America into lockdown, Asian Americans have been the victims of numerous hate crimes. The nonprofit Stop AAPI Hate estimates over 3,795 of such incidents occurred between March 19, 2020 and February 28, 2021, an estimate that is likely undercounted due to under-reporting. The violence the AAPI community has faced was brought into national spotlight following the murder of eight people, including six Asian women, in a mass shooting in Atlanta, Georgia on March 16th, 2021.
As this tragedy propelled more reporting of the ongoing violence against Asians, particularly from major cities such as San Francisco and New York, Data for Progress wanted to examine how salient the issue was among likely voters. We were interested in how concerned likely voters were about the ongoing and increased hate incidents, and how concerned Asian American voters themselves were about experiencing similar incidents. We surveyed a national sample of 1,400 likely voters from March 26th to March 29th on their attitudes towards hate crimes against the AAPI community.
We find that the majority of likely voters are concerned about the ongoing hate crimes that the Asian American community is facing. Among Asian likely voters, experiencing hate crimes and discrimination specifically due to the pandemic is among the most salient concerns, compared to other fears and losses that Black, Latino and white likely voters express concern over facing.
Perceptions on Discrimination Faced by Asians
We find that people of color across racial groups perceive discrimination against Asians much more than white people do. The plurality of likely voters believe Asians face some discrimation (42 percent), while about a third perceive Asians as facing a lot of discrimination (33 percent). In contrast, 54 percent of Asians believe that Asians face a lot of discrimination — a 21-percentage-point difference from the average. The majority of Latino respondents (55 percent) also perceive Asians as facing a lot of discrimination, compared to Black voters (44 percent), and white voters (27%). There is less consensus among Democrats nationally: 46 percent believe Asians face a lot of discrimination while 40 percent believe they face some. The plurality of Republicans (46 percent) believe Asians face some discrimination. In contrast to general perceptions that Asians don’t face a lot of discrimination, Asian and Latino perceptions here stand out and bring to attention each group's awareness of their own positioning and other group’s positioning in the U.S.’s racial hierarchy.
Salience of AAPI Hate Crimes
We next examined how much awareness and concern voters had about the increases in anti-Asian hate crimes.
Likely voters showed lower awareness about the recent acts of anti-Asian violence: 39 percent have heard or read a lot. However, concern about anti-Asian hate crimes is nonetheless high by a 48-point margin. While the majority of groups by race express concern over these incidents, this is again highest among Asians: 93 percent of Asians are concerned over the increases in hate incidents and violence, with 64 percent expressing that they are very concerned.
Our findings reflect that a majority of likely voters are tapped into this issue. At the same time, this is slightly muted in contrast to the overwhelming worry Asian Americans face over these traumatic experiences.
Concern Over Pandemic-Related Discrimination
We lastly examined levels of concern about experiencing hate crimes and discrimination specifically due to the pandemic. For this question, we also included other relevant concerns that people may have because of the pandemic including: job and income loss, losing access to health care, experiencing hate crimes and discrimination, losing loved ones, increases in personal debt, and transmitting the coronavirus. The following results examine the top three issues with the highest net concern.
We find that the majority of white likely voters are most concerned over losing loved ones (74 percent), transmitting the coronavirus (65 percent) and loss of income and jobs (61 percent). We find higher levels of concern among Asians, Black people and Latinos on differing issues. Asians express high levels of concern over experiencing hate crimes and discrimination due to the pandemic at 83 percent. Surprisingly, Black people and Latinos all express similar concern over experiencing hate crimes and discrimination at 80 percent and 82 percent, respectively. Among Asians, however, experiencing hate crimes is the top concern, while among Black people and Latinos the top concern is losing loved ones.
These findings show that all across the United States, Asian Americans feel such outsized concern and alarm over potentially being the victims of hate crimes, that this fear outstrips the already heightened concern of succumbing to the coronavirus that all voters are experiencing. While the pandemic has posed challenges to everyone, Asian Americans face an additional, traumatic worry over being subjected to violence and discrimination because of their race and ethnicity — incidents that have been emboldened by the pandemic. The Biden administration and Congress are taking steps to address this nationally, however, we need continued advocacy for the safety and well-being of Asian Americans — advocacy that the Asian American community cannot shoulder by themselves.
Evangel Penumaka (@evangelpenumaka) is a polling analyst at Data for Progress.
Methodology
From March 26 to March 29, 2021, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1400 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points.