Jiwoo Park
Imagine what would happen if two Asians beat a white man to death. The perpetrators would not only be heavily chastised with life sentences in prison but also be regarded as the perfect evidence for the “Yellow Peril” ideal. Not to mention the rampant threats and insults that would be hurled at AAPI communities. However, when the roles are reversed, people suddenly become saints. When two white men cracked open the head of a Chinese American draftsman named Vincent Chin in 1982, they simply moved on after paying a $3000 fine. [1] (Note that this was the first ever incident involving an Asian American that went through the federal civil rights trial.)
The model minority myth - an unmerited stereotype that Asian Americans are hard-working, law-abiding people who are generally more successful than others - impinges on how the criminal justice system treats AAPI offenders. Asian American assailants are punished more similarly to White assailants and are generally given shorter sentences than Black or Hispanic assailants. Although this seems like a privilege, when it comes to deportation, Southeast Asian criminals are 3-4 times more likely to be targeted than any other immigrant groups. Some Asians, especially refugees, are forced to stay in the detention center for a removal order even after they have finished serving in jail. [2] This implies how the nation only wishes to provide a place for Asians who comply with the myth. On a similar note, recent research by Aliya Saperstein and her crew uncovered that each arrest causes an individual to be more likely racialized as Black and less likely racialized as White or Asian. [3] Such data indicates harmful stereotypes perpetuated not only towards African Americans but also towards Asian Americans. By failing to associate Asians with crimes, scholars overlook the urgency of studying the experiences of AAPI offenders in courts or prisons. For instance, many tables and graphs that exhibit racial disparities in the involvement of the criminal justice system refer to the AAPI population as “others'', or completely exclude them. (Although one could argue that this is because Asian Americans take up a small amount of the inmate population, they still need to hold the same degree of representation as other minorities considering that AAPI has been the fastest growing ethnic/racial demographic group in the U.S. for the past two decades.) Even Brian D. Johnson and Sara Bestsinger noted in their paper that “discrimination and ineqaulity among Asian Americans in the justice system remain virtually uninvestigated”.[4]
The Supreme Court is another segment of the structure that never gave enough attention to Asian Americans over the course of history. In 1854, California Supreme Court ruled in People v. Hall case that people of Chinese descent cannot testify against White citizens because the Blacks weren’t allowed to do so either. [5] In 1927’s Gong Lum v. Rice case, the High Court claimed that Asian Americans should attend segregated schools as the “prior rulings on black/white segregation applied to the yellow races as well.” [6] As you can see, Blacks came first (not for something good though) and Asians came after, like a younger sibling who receives second-hand clothes from the older one regardless of choice. The court did not regard AAPIs as individuals but just as another members of the non-White group that were acting as the bane of the country.
It is already so obvious that the justice system is egregiously terrible at protecting AAPI communities from hate crimes. In a survey done in April 2022, 43% of Asians responded that their local officials are “doing a very/somewhat bad job dealing with violence against Asian Americans” while 47% of white people noted that it is “not an issue in their community”.[7] Also taking into account that most counties in the U.S. have police that are whiter than the population that they serve for, we cannot exclude the possibility of such a phenomenon playing a role in the lack of efforts to stop the rabid attacks towards Asians. [8] The vast majority of hate crime offenders can get away without getting arrested or prosecuted because of the lack of evidence. Yes, you heard it right. As Helen Zia puts it, “If you don’t call somebody a name that White people recognize as a racial slur, it’s not racist”. This is why Robert Aaron Long, a white man who shot eight women all with Asian descent, was charged for murder but not for hate crime - all because there was not enough proof that indicated his racist motive. In fact, people of color, or even Asian Americans, are more often accused as the perpetrators. A Taiwanese man who wrote anti-Chinese graffiti was hauled into the court for committing anti-Asian hate crime, while a white man who violently shoved an Asian woman on the street wasn't (Both incidents happened in Queens, New York). [9] Does no one find this absurd?
Aggressive policing - patrolling with sticks and police sprays around to beat up anyone who gives the vibe of a potential hate crime offender - is not the answer. It will only hand more excuses for people to loathe minority communities. Instead, we should implement things that can shake up the very bottom of the foundation : a more racially diverse group of people appointed to operate the police, court, and jail systems and a more inclusive definition of hate crime. If media and education facilities can shed more light to the voices of AAPI individuals who are willing to divulge the unjust treatment received by the system, that would be even better. Subverting the criminal justice system is not something unreachable, but it definitely requires a considerable amount of demand from the citizens themselves. Now is the perfect time to create the watershed moment.
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References
[1] Kaur, Harmeet. (23/06/2022). Vincent Chin was beaten to death 40 years ago. His case is still relevant today. CNN News. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/23/us/vincent-chin-death-40-anniversary-cec/index.html
[2] Mung, Agnes. (03/2019). Immigration, Incarceration, Deportation : Asian Americans in Criminal Justice System. Digital Commons @ Cal Poly. https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/histsp/48/.
[3] Saperstein, Aliya et al. (01/2014). The Criminal Justice System and the Racialization of Perceptions. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Vol. 651. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24541696.
[4] Johnson, Brian and Bestsinger, Sara. (09/11/2009). Punishing The “Model Minority”: Asian-American Criminal Sentencing Outcomes In Federal District Courts. https://ccjs.umd.edu/sites/ccjs.umd.edu/files/pubs/3%20COMPLIANT-Punishing%20the%20Model%20Minority.pdf.
[5] The People Vs. Hall. Ancestors in the Americas. http://cetel.org/1854_hall.html.
[6] Ancheta, Angelo. (1998). Race, rights, and the Asian American experience. https://books.google.co.kr/books/about/Race_Rights_and_the_Asian_American_Exper.html?id=Uc_q6upNmugC&redir_esc=y
[7] Noe-Bustamante, Luis et al. (09/05/2022). About a third of Asian Americans say they have changed their daily routine due to concerns over threats, attacks. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/05/09/about-a-third-of-asian-americans-say-they-have-changed-their-daily-routine-due-to-concerns-over-threats-attacks/.
[8] Keating, Dan and Uhrmacher, Kevin. (04/06/2020). In urban areas, police are consistently much whiter than the people they serve. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/04/urban-areas-police-are-consistently-much-whiter-than-people-they-serve/.
[9] Hong, Nicole and Bromwich, Jonah. (26/10/2021). Asian-Americans are being attacked. Why are hate crime charges so rare?. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/nyregion/asian-hate-crimes.html.