The Pandemic And Racist Attacks Are Devastating America s Chinatowns
The coronavirus pandemic and a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans have significantly impacted the economies and cultural fabric of Chinatowns around the country, and are gravely harming the vitality of some of them, though rallying efforts are underway.
While racism is nothing new for Asian Americans, who have historically been the victims of the racialization of disease in the U.S., the length and intensity of this pandemic has fueled an economic disaster that is increasingly posing an existential threat to Asian American Pacific Islander neighborhoods.
Occurring parallel to a pandemic that has claimed 582,296 lives in the U.S., according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, the pandemic itself has disproportionately impacted Asian Americans in San Francisco, with the demographic accounting for 13.7% of the cases but also 52% of the deaths as of M