An attendee, identified as Emily, at left, holds a candle to candlelight for Michelle Gow in Portsmouth Square in San Francisco, Calif. Tuesday, January 18, 2022.
Stephen Lam | Getty Images
after some time Deloitte consultant was Michelle Go pushed to his death Under a moving R train in January, another New York City resident vowed to take the subway.
Instead of taking the number 6 train to your desk dime bank In midtown Manhattan, the woman, an Asian American manager in her late 30s, moves to work. The fear she can’t fully move, she said, is that she’ll be alone on a stage with an unsuspecting man, and she’ll face the same fate as 40-year-old Go.
“You don’t feel like the city cares or is willing to do anything about it,” said the woman, who requested anonymity. “You don’t feel safe. I don’t want to be the next headline, so I move on.”
One of the many things that has been lost since the coronavirus pandemic began more than two years ago is a sense of security in public places. Asian Americans have felt the loss more intensely Because of the increase in the incidence of prejudice. there has been 10,905 Instances reported by Asian American and Pacific Islanders from the start of the pandemic to the end of 2021, according to advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate.
Women accounted for 62% of reported incidents, according to Stop AAPI Hate, which was created in early 2020 to document the rise in harassment and violence related to COVID.
As an employer – particularly in financial services, consulting and law – try again A sense of fear is common among AAPI women to call employees back to office this year, according to jo-n uExecutive Director of the Asian American Federation.
“As the city began to open up, I had a lot of conversations: ‘I’m expected to be at work, and I’m scared. I’m scared to ride the subway,'” Yu said.
random cruelty
The onset of the coronavirus in 2020 led to an increase in random attacks against Asian Americans. Some were captured on grainy surveillance video, allowing the events to go viral and gain local news coverage.
afterwards eight people The March 2021 killings on a shooting spree in the Atlanta area—most of them female AAPI spa employees—garnered national attention, a worrying trend. While events helped inspire the new generation Number of activists, and there will be attacks. A few weeks after Go’s death in January, 35-year-old creative producer Christina Yuna Lee was stabbed To death in her Chinatown apartment.
Then there were seven AAPI women in March attacked During a two-hour spree in Manhattan. Sixty-one-year-old Guiying Ma, who was hit in the head with a stone while sweeping her sidewalk in Queens, Succumbed for his injuries and died. and a 67-year-old Yonkers woman was beaten 125 times In the head in the vestibule of his apartment building.
The attacks drew national attention to AAPI’s concerns for the first time in decades: senseless, seemingly random homicides and attacks on women like these are evidence of racial and gender bias that is difficult to dispute.
“It is a bitter time, as our issues are finally getting some attention,” said Cynthia Choi, a San Francisco-based activist who co-founded Stop AAPI Hate. “Part of me is like, ‘Why do Asian women have to die for us to take these issues seriously? ,
Cynthia Choi, co-executive director of the Chinese for Affirmative Action, during a press conference with Governor Gavin Newsom and other Bay Area Asian American and Pacific Islander community leaders amid an increase in racist attacks nationwide, in San Francisco on March 19, 2021. speak during , California.
Dai Sugano | MediaNews Group | Getty Images
The largest category of incidents tracked by Stop AAPI Hate involved verbal harassment (67%), while the second largest category involved physical assault (16%). According to the organization, about half occurs in public places, including roads, public transport and parks.
“We have to understand that we have a problem with street harassment and violence against women,” Choi said. “It’s something we’ll have to navigate long ago. There are probably unprecedented levels of hate based on our race or gender, or both, that have been exacerbated by COVID-19.”
Over 70% Asian American Survey The Pew Research Center said last month that they worried they might be threatened or attacked because of their ethnicity, and a majority of those surveyed said anti-AAPI violence is on the rise.
‘Even in daylight’
The experiences of half a dozen AAPI women living in New York, Chicago and San Francisco vary widely. Car-based commutes or offices that were completely taken away caused some people to feel a little anxious on a daily basis. Others felt that the pandemic only highlighted the concerns they had always had as minority women.
Most had adjusted their lives in some way or another to deal with anxiety. Mai Ann Lay, a New York-based recruiter, says she rarely leaves her apartment; When she does, she’s armed with pepper spray.
“It really sucks, because I used to walk everywhere with AirPods, listening to serial killer podcasts,” Le said. “Now if I go out, I have to keep a mace in my pocket at all times, even in broad daylight.”
“I never felt scared before the attacks in Manhattan,” he said.
Another woman, an Aetna employee who commutes to her company’s offices in downtown Manhattan from Park Slope, Brooklyn, said she began taking Krav Maga self-defense classes after the AAPI attack last year. Training “helps you feel more confident,” she said.
Others have been unaffected by the attacks. A 45-year-old investment banker said she takes extra precautions when taking the subway from Soho to her firm’s Times Square headquarters. She says she is “over alert” on the train and has her phone on hand in case she needs to make an emergency call.
Though that didn’t stop her from coming to town three or four times a week, she says Michelle is an almost daily reminder of Go’s death.
“Michelle was in finance and consulting and she died in my metro station,” said the managing director. “But I had the same ill reaction to all [the incidents],
The AAPI attacks are also part of a larger story of American violence. Last year, 12 city set new records for murders. alone in the last two weeks, a Goldman Sachs employee was murdered in broad daylight On the subway, 10 people were shot dead in a racially motivated attack at a Buffalo supermarket, and 19 children and two teachers were killed in a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, an elementary school.
‘Hard to go back’
The decline in public safety is one factor that complicates pressure from employers to bring more employees back to offices. The continued spread of the latest coronavirus variants is another. And finally, as hybrid work becomes the standard, substitute employees will no longer accept full-time office positions, according to the Dime executive.
“Once you get a taste of flexibility, it’s hard for people to go back,” she said. “We’ll recruit for positions, and when you tell people it has to be full-time in person, you’ve lost a lot of candidates.”
As a result, just 8% of Manhattan office workers came back Full-time as per Partnership for New York City. Employers have gratefully adopted the hybrid work model, resulting in 38% of employees staying in the office on an average workday.
But that means the city’s subways are still closed well below Pre-pandemic rider levels, which contributed to safety concerns, she said.
“The city is not as safe as it used to be,” the dime executive said. “If it’s night time, I’m taking a UberThats all there is to it.”