President Joe Biden signed a hate crimes law Thursday aimed at protecting Asian Americans who have suffered a surge in attacks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Racism, Biden told Asian American politicians and senior members of Congress in a packed room at the White House, is "an ugly poison that has long plagued our nation."
Reeling off a list of violent incidents, which took place against a backdrop of anti-Chinese sentiment linked to the pandemic, Biden said the Asian American community had been made a "scapegoat."
"Too many Asian Americans have been waking up this past year genuinely fearing for their safety, just opening their door and walking down the street," he said.
Stop AAPI Hate, an activist group, says there were 6,603 hate incidents – mostly verbal insults – in the year from March 2020, but many more were likely not reported to police.
Going unmentioned by Biden was that his predecessor Donald Trump would frequently refer to the coronavirus as "the China virus" and "kung flu" – racist-tinged phrases that quickly became part of the right-wing lexicon.
The bill signed by Biden, after rare, overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress, improves access for reporting such crimes and seeks to smoothen procedures for the authorities to respond.
"I mean this from the bottom of my heart: hate can be given no safe harbor in America," Biden said. "Silence is complicity. We cannot be complicit."
In March, a 65-year-old Filipino-American woman was punched and kicked by a man in broad daylight in New York City.
The attacker yelled, "You don't belong here," then kicked the woman several times on the head and stomach.
Reports showed that no one came to the victim's aid, and a doorman who witnessed the attack in front of a building where it happened closed the door on her.
In February, a 61-year-old Filipino-American was attacked in a subway – his face slashed from ear to ear – also in New York City, prompting the Philippine Embassy in Washington to send a note verbale to the US State Department.
The embassy also advised Filipinos in the United States to exercise "utmost caution" amid rising incidents of hate crimes against Asians in the country.