LU DONG, JENNIFER BOUEY, GRACE TANG, STACEY YI, DOUGLAS YEUNG, RAFIQ DOSSANI, JUNE LIM,
YANNAN LI, STEVEN ZHANG
Enhancing Support
for Asian American
Communities Facing Hate
Incidents
Community Survey Results from Los
Angeles and New York City
S
ince the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, Asian American
communities have faced a new wave of anti-Asian hate throughout the United States (Chen,
Zhang, and Liu, 2020; Han, Riddell, and Piquero, 2023). Anti-Asian hate refers to incidents
of violence and discrimination against Asian or Asian American people, varying from
physical attacks and harassment to property damage and unfair treatment by institutional represen-
tatives. For example, Asian or Asian American people might experience harassment that includes
being the target of racial slurs or jokes, being told to “go back to your country,” or being blamed
for causing the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Stop AAPI Hate, 11,409 hate incidents were
reported to its online reporting system from 2020 to 2022 (Chan and Bastron, 2023). The major-
ity (88 percent) of these incidents involved harassment, and 23 percent included physical harm.
Notably, about one in five incidents were reported on behalf of others, highlighting the importance
of providing social support for the victims of anti-Asian hate incidents. More importantly, these
anti-Asian hate experiences negatively affect the mental health and well-being of Asian and Asian
American people, which suggests a need for support services for community members (Wang and
Santos, 2022; Cho et al., 2023; Li, Kang, Nguyen, et al., 2024).
The Stop Hate Community Survey conducted in 2021 in the San Gabriel Valley, a suburban
neighborhood in Los Angeles (LA) County that is home to one of the largest Asian communities in
the country, found that more than half (55 percent) of survey respondents reported feeling that there
was a lack of support in their community for victims of racial discrimination or harassment (LA
vs Hate, Asian Americans Advancing Justice—Los Angeles, and Asian Youth Center, 2021). This
Research Report
