An Asian American citizen as the state’s chief law enforcement officer is needed to build trust “especially when it comes to the strained relationships between law enforcement and immigrant and color communities,” California State Assembly member David Chiu said during a news conference Wednesday.
In the Atlanta area, where the Asian community has grown and become more politically influential in recent years, the killings have rekindled fears that some people may have subsided as the end of the pandemic is in sight. When the pandemic started, Ms. Hsu, the lawyer, said she almost expected people to throw insults at her for being Chinese-American. She said she had resigned her guard in the past few weeks.
“We’re getting out of the pandemic, there’s a new president, we don’t hear every other word” kung flu “and” China virus, “” she said, referring to some of the derogatory terms that Mr. Trump was used to refer to the coronavirus. “I was really drawn to think that it was somehow safe to go outside again.”
Now she is on high alert again.
Suraiya Sharker, a community organizer of the Atlanta chapter of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, said she received calls from several members of her organization who were tearful after the shootings.
Ms. Sharker, 22, is particularly concerned about her parents, who moved to the United States from Bangladesh when they were 4 years old, because of their demographic vulnerability to attack. As a first generation immigrant, their English is not perfect. You work in a fast food restaurant in suburban Atlanta where, as Ms. Sharker said, a customer once threatened her father in a disagreement over the bill and customers refused to be served by their mother because they were wearing a hijab.
But as much as she and other Asian Americans are more cautious now, they are also more forceful, she said.
“This,” she said, “was an awakening for many to say,” Enough is enough. “
