White House Outlines Plan To Protect Asian Americans From Racism

Lydia O'Connor
·Reporter, HuffPost
·2 min read

President Joe Biden’s administration released a detailed plan Tuesday outlining how it will prevent and respond to growing violence and racism against the Asian American community.

The announcement follows a string of high-profile attacks against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, including a mass shooting in Atlanta.

“Across our nation, an outpouring of grief and outrage continues at the horrific violence and xenophobia perpetrated against Asian American communities, especially Asian American women and girls,” the White House said Tuesday.

Planned actions include reinstating the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, which crumbled under former President Donald Trump, and hiring a director for the program; building out the COVID-19 Equity Task Force committee to address xenophobia against AAPI people, which Trump fueled by repeatedly calling the coronavirus the “China virus” and other racist names; and allocating $49.5 million from the American Rescue Plan to serve AAPI survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Long Island resident Patricia Shih holds a sign saying, "Stop the Hate" during a March 27 rally in Hauppauge, New York, to support the Asian community amid a rise in racist attacks. (Photo: Newsday LLC via Getty Images)
Long Island resident Patricia Shih holds a sign saying, "Stop the Hate" during a March 27 rally in Hauppauge, New York, to support the Asian community amid a rise in racist attacks. (Photo: Newsday LLC via Getty Images)

The plan also calls on several actions from the Justice Department to combat anti-AAPI racism, which today released a memo detailing plans for a 30-day review of its policies, including determining how it can better track hate crimes and prioritize criminal investigations into those matters.

Earlier this month, a group called Stop AAPI Hate said it had tracked around 4,000 incidents of anti-Asian racism in the past year. More than 500 of those incidents occurred in the first two and a half months of 2021 alone. In another report this month, the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, found that hate crimes targeting Asian Americans rose 150% in America’s largest cities last year, even as overall hate crimes decreased.

The latest high-profile attack saw a 65-year-old Asian American woman in New York City on Monday repeatedly kicked by a man as two people nearby, who appeared to be security guards, did not intervene.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.