ASIAN AMERICAN'S EXPERIENCES OF RACISM AND XENOPHOBIA DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Abstract

There has been a sharp rise in anti-Asian racism since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Though the speed and severity of it might have surprised some, this hate and xenophobia is not novel; anti-Asian sentiments have existed in the United States since the mid-19th century, and many of the country’s earliest immigration policies was designed to restrict Asian migration. This history has largely been cut from American history, and what remains has been whitewashed through the lens of the "Model Minority” myth – a narrative steeped in anti-Blackness that defines Asian Americans only by their relative economic success and denies their experiences of race and racism. Many scholars have recently studied how this rise in anti-Asian discrimination has affected Asian American and Pacific Islanders’ (AAPI) mental health, but few have focused on their participants’ lived experiences in said research. This study sought to fill this gap in the literature by centering AAPI’s experiences of racism during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to connect it back to the often-unspoken history of anti-Asian discrimination. The study was built around a qualitative descriptive framework that focused on rich description. A total of five AAPI people were interviewed virtually. Some common themes were experiences of microaggressions, increased feelings of fear and anxiety, a sense of othering and feeling like they were "guests” in the US, the support they received from their community and significant others, solidarity with Black Lives Matter (BLM), and contending with anti-Blackness in their family. Though the sample size was small, the findings of this study illustrate the racial reality of AAPI people’s lived experiences during the pandemic. I conclude that this study illustrates that AAPI need to be included more in race scholarship outside times of crisis, and that future research involving AAPI must challenge and reject the "Model Minority” myth.