Opinion | The Next Step in Protecting Asian Americans

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After the Asian American and Pacific Islander community raised concerns that they weren’t part of the Biden administration’s agenda even after long-standing anti-AAPI xenophobia and violence spiked during the pandemic, the White House responded. President Joe Biden appointed Erika Moritsugu as deputy assistant to the president and Asian American and Pacific Islander senior liaison; the administration also established a revamped Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders out of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — with a broad and ambitious mission to tackle community equity, justice and opportunity.

Congress, too, took action to protect the AAPI community, passing a bipartisan bill that makes it easier to report hate crimes by improving outreach and adding tools in multiple languages.

This is progress. But it’s only a first step. Both Congress’ bill and the White House’s new initiative paint with too broad a brush and fail to focus on three groups within the AAPI community that are uniquely vulnerable to acts of hate, discrimination and violence: women, small businesses and older adults. If leaders really want to protect and boost opportunity for AAPIs, their future initiatives should laser focus on these members of the community.

Both the White House’s initiative and Congress’ legislation aim to address hate crimes and improve data collection about hate incidents, which have been on the rise during the pandemic, but they neglect to focus specifically on women, who report twice the amount of violence, hate, harassment and discrimination than men do.

To overcome these barriers, Congress and the administration should build on its bipartisan bill and specifically provide targeted federal funding directly to long-standing AAPI civic groups with the right cultural fluency, subject matter expertise and track record of delivering services to AAPI women, such as Asian Americans Advancing Justice and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum.

AAPI women also disproportionately carry the burden of economic loss compared with men. By January 2021, there were 514,000 fewer AAPI working women than before the pandemic. This trend is growing grimmer as women have been forced to care for children, elderly parents or sick family members. And it’s in sharp contrast to pre-pandemic figures from 2014 to 2019 which saw the number of AAPI women part-time entrepreneurs increase 63 percent, compared with other part-time entrepreneurial communities at 32 percent.

Targeted economic investment could halt the mass exodus. Money and investments in child care, day care and elder care programs, as highlighted in the proposed $3.5 trillion budget plan, should be set aside to support women entrepreneurs and other working women so they can stay in the workforce and keep their businesses running. Initiatives like this should specifically be directed to women of color and would boost AAPI women small business operators.

It’s not just women entrepreneurs; AAPI-owned small businesses on the whole were hit harder than those run by any other group last year — a business decline driven both by the pandemic and increased vandalism. The Asian/Pacific Islander American Chamber of Commerce and Entrepreneurship found that 80 percent of surveyed businesses experienced “negative effects,” from September to November 2020, with 10 percent permanently shuttered and almost half unable to keep employees on payroll. It’s gotten slightly better this year according to National ACE and Reimagine Main Street’s April to June 2021 survey. However, 1 in 5 AAPI business operators and owners do not expect their business to make it through the year. These businesses also are less likely to have experienced signs of recovery and expect a longer road to recovery than white or Hispanic peers. And almost a third of all self-reported acts of hate have come at places of business. One in four AAPI-owned small businesses say they experienced vandalism or threats against their business and 2 in 5 say they were blamed for Covid-19.

While the Biden administration expanded the Paycheck Protection Program to offer aid to smaller and minority-owned businesses, only 2.5 percent of the total number of approved PPP loans in the program’s final round went to AAPI applicants (of those that reported data on race). And those represent only a small fraction of AAPI small businesses, which are heavily in the retail sector (17 percent) and the hospitality and food industry (26 percent). Now that the PPP program has expired, Congress and the administration should work to provide meaningful community services to AAPI small businesses, which will likely continue to experience discrimination and longer-term Covid-19 effects.

Biden’s executive order acknowledges the devastating economic losses AAPI small businesses face and pushes for expanding economic opportunity, access, workforce training, consumer protection and anti-discrimination in the workplace. The framework is well-meaning and broad but lacks significant details. To stop this economic spiral, the federal government needs a clearer road map, should deepen its partnership with states and should work closely with governors and mayors to provide the necessary targeted economic relief.

Federal policymakers can look to California for some guidance on how to directly respond to AAPI economic crisis. California has been the site of 40 percent of self-reported AAPI acts of hate and discrimination nationally. This month, the California state legislature passed and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the $156.5 million API Equity Budget, which includes $20 million in grants to AAPI small businesses and community hubs, such as the state’s Chinatowns, Japantowns, Koreatowns, Little Saigons and Little Manilas. Federal investment could support AAPI places of commerce that would benefit from directed relief.

And then there are older AAPI adults, who have been the victims of a disturbing number of violent attacks — some of which have been captured on camera while bystanders do nothing.

There are concerns that as the country becomes safer from the virus and older adults return to public spaces, acts of violence and hate may increase. Local communities and civic organizations have recognized this and have established bystander training sessions and safety programs. Yet our government has not stepped in to provide direct and specific support to programs like these. Congress should fund additional bystander training sessions, safety programs, information campaigns and even civic community self-defense, such as Seniors Fight Back.

But struggles for older AAPI adults go beyond just hate. They need physical and mental health services. According to the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging, older AAPI adults, especially foreign-born ones, have long experienced an overall lower quality of life than the general elderly population — including higher poverty rates. According to data from 2015 and 2017, over 23 percent of older Cambodian American adults were living in poverty and Vietnamese, Hmong and Indonesian Americans 65 and older had a poverty rate of 17.9 percent, more than double the poverty rate for the general elderly population. Older AAPI women have some of the highest rates of suicide. The situation has likely gotten worse during the pandemic. Older AAPI adults not only face a significantly higher risks of dying from Covid-19 than the general population, but language barriers and xenophobia have also increased their isolation.

Furthermore, in some areas of the country, like San Diego, analysis of very limited data has revealed that vaccination rates for older AAPI adults might be lower than the national average. While the Biden administration and Congress have committed to better understand which specific communities require more attention and outreach, they should provide in-home vaccinations with in-language support for older AAPI adults who are scared of going outside as the country emerges from the pandemic.

AAPI women, small businesses and older adults faced significant challenges even before the pandemic. Broad and general support from the White House Initiative is not enough. The Biden administration and Congress should deepen its investment to these communities in the American Jobs Plan and the upcoming budget to ensure that there are meaningful resources to substantively respond to hate and inspire economic recovery.

Only through meaningful action can we hope to stem the tide of AAPI hate, learn from horrible tragedies like Atlanta and show our hurting AAPI community that they are valued in Washington.