ISU Professor Speaks On Injustices Asian Americans Face

Photo courtesy to ISU

NORMAL, Ill.- A Research Series from ISU’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology seeks inclusion with a talk by professor Nobuko Adachi.

More than 58% of Asian Americans say they have been victimized and have experienced racially insensitive incidents.

Adachi says an article about a 16-year old Asian American who was beaten convinced her and several colleagues to look into why hatred escalated when COVID began. 

“His classmates accused him of having the coronavirus and because of that the result was him having to go to the emergency room. He was wounded very badly,” said Adachi.

Adachi says words like “China Virus” and “Communist” used by the Trump Administration are dangerous.

“He had failed and around that time the pandemic started and that’s why he used ‘Chinese communist’ and ‘Chinese virus’ as a scapegoat.

Asian-Americans make up 5.6 percent of the U.S. population. Adachi says it is about time people realize how Asian Americans suffer.

“Those kinds of things traumatize our life. It’s a big thing for individual people. But because people think that ‘it’s not a bad enough thing to vocalize’ that’s the kind of another reason people don’t vocalize because people just look at us like that.”