Asian-American students: Pandemic has increased anti-Asian racism, violence

Locally, Asian-Americans share similar stories of experiencing racism, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic. Yet they say they feel very little support from the community.

Students at Cary Academy say they feel privileged to be in a diverse and welcoming environment at school – and in the Triangle more broadly.

Still, they have not been immune to racism and micro-aggressions.

"People saying things, especially when COVID started, about how Chinese people were the start of the virus," said Angelina Chen. "Or [telling us ] go back to where you came from."

According to Vicki Jin, the trend of casual racism has been there since she was very little.

"It made me not necessarily like my identity and want to separate myself from being Asian," she said.

Now Vicki Jin and Angelina Chen lead a group on-campus to help Asian-Americans cope with these challenges.

"We’re basically a safe space, an affinity group, for people to come to during club meetings and especially in the last year, I would say that we’ve needed this safe space more than ever," said Jin.

With increased media attention to anti-Asian sentiment, especially after the killing of six Asian women in Atlanta, students like Alex Lim want the issue to remain in the spotlight.

"I hope that people will start to talk more and have conversations about what it means to be Asian," said Lim.

Chen said she believes anti-Asian American sentiment is often swept under the rug or overlooked because generally Asian-Americans are perceived as "more docile."

The students think real change could happen – but only if people keep listening.

"What I don’t want to happen is for this to be a two month trend and then it dies out," said Lim. "We don’t get to stop being Asian after two months. So I want it to be something that continues, something that is still important."