JUDY WOODRUFF: Now to the rise in attacks against Asian Americans across the country.
Hate crimes against Asian Americans in major U.S. cities surged by nearly 150 percent in 2020,
even as overall hate crimes fell.
Stephanie Sy has the story.
STEPHANIE SY: Fresh produce, hot pastries, curbside conversations, the familiar sights
and sounds of a bustling morning in Oakland's Chinatown, now pierced by a palpable tension.
Volunteers in bright orange vests dot the streets,
fanning out on day-long patrols, after a spate of attacks rattled the community.
Longtime Oakland resident Kazuko Hishida said the patrols help.
KAZUKO HISHIDA, California: And, of course, I feel a little safer myself. It's all about
keeping an eye out for each other. I had a major meltdown on February 17, when
I heard the latest incident. And I just -- I couldn't deal anymore.
STEPHANIE SY: The most high-profile attack happened in January in the heart of Chinatown.
A 91-year-old man was captured on video being shoved to the ground.
The violence got worse around the lunar new year in February, when elders are known to carry
envelopes of cash. It's another elder, 75-year-old Joe Ma, who started the safety patrols.
JOE MA, Volunteer Patrol Leader (through translator):
There are a lot of different ethnicities in Oakland Chinatown, and, usually,
it's very harmonious. But with coronavirus and the economic situation, people are getting desperate.
STEPHANIE SY: Ma started walking the streets last March.
DONALD TRUMP, Former President of the United States: I can name kung-flu.
STEPHANIE SY: Then-President Trump repeatedly highlighted the origins of the pandemic.
DONALD TRUMP: Our war against the Chinese virus. It's got all different names. Wuhan.
STEPHANIE SY: Kim Tran researches issues of race and social justice movements.
She remembers when she noticed a national trend.
KIM TRAN, Consultant and Researcher: There was a Burmese family in Texas who
was stabbed inside of a Sam's Club. And that really changed how I engaged with being in public.
So, we started changing whether or not I would walk the dog alone. My mom has stopped going
to the ATM by herself. And there is a very palpable climate of fear.
IONA CHENG, California: I was walking on the sidewalk down that street,
and it just happened just right over there.
STEPHANIE SY: That fear hadn't yet hit Iona Cheng in late December of last year.
She was running errands near her apartment in downtown Oakland.
IONA CHENG: We were just walking along the sidewalk. And as soon as they got close to me,
they grabbed me and pulled me to the ground.
STEPHANIE SY: She was left bruised and badly shaken. The police officer
who responded to Cheng saw race as a factor right away.
IONA CHENG: She told me that I was the first Asian American woman attacked that evening,
and that they were attacking multiple Asian American women.
We were being pegged as a vulnerable group for an easy target. I think, because of various cultural
reasons, there's reluctance to speak out and to be stoic, right, to not try to cause trouble.
STEPHANIE SY: The racial motivations behind many of these attacks are unclear,
but the group Stop AAPI Hate has logged nearly 4,000 anti-Asian incidents since the start of
the pandemic, an assault in San Francisco that killed 84-year-old Vichar Ratanapakdee,
another in Oakland just last week that left 75-year-old Pak Ho dead.
But most of the incidents are verbal assaults, which Cheng says she's been through as well.
IONA CHENG: I was running here in Oakland. A car had come up. And the man in the car
yelled "coronavirus" at me.
Later, I was really upset. It was hurtful. I was angry.
STEPHANIE SY: Back in Chinatown, Sakhone Lasaphangthong begins making the rounds
at 6:00 every morning, greeting elders on their morning walks.
SAKHONE LASAPHANGTHONG, California: Good morning.
STEPHANIE SY: And scrubbing the graffiti that's been scrawled on
the walls of businesses overnight. Now, more than ever, he stays vigilant while he works.
SAKHONE LASAPHANGTHONG: There's a store across the street with all the boxes.
Somebody tried to run her over before, and I was just across the street, and I chased them away.
STEPHANIE SY: He's a community ambassador, a position funded by the Oakland Chinatown Chamber
of Commerce, and one that put Lasaphangthong on a new path when he was released from prison.
SAKHONE LASAPHANGTHONG: Seeing the grandmas and grandpas doing their tai chi and walking
and minding their business, and just trying to live out the rest of their life in peace,
that's what makes me want to, like, protect them.
STEPHANIE SY: Shop owners say they welcome the volunteer patrols, but they're no substitute
for law enforcement. And they say police have often taken too long to respond to incidents.
During our time here, we saw very little police presence in Chinatown.
LeRonne Armstrong is Oakland's police chief.
LERONNE ARMSTRONG, Oakland, California, Police Chief:
I believe that these are crimes of opportunity.
STEPHANIE SY: He says the rise in anti-Asian violence mirrors a drastic spike in violent
crime and homicides throughout the city. He points to poverty, which the pandemic has only worsened.
LERONNE ARMSTRONG: But that doesn't take away the fact that there are
people that have been victimized. And so while we might talk about numbers,
numbers, at the end of the day, are human beings. These are people.
STEPHANIE SY: Armstrong says the department has taken steps to increase
security for Asian Americans, like placing a Chinese-speaking liaison in Chinatown.
But others say the issue has deeper roots that can't be addressed with more policing. The rise
in anti-Asian sentiment has highlighted racial tensions that existed long before the pandemic.
KIM TRAN: There is a nasty American impulse to pit us against each other.
And it goes at -- one of the most obvious moments is the 1992 uprisings in Los Angeles.
STEPHANIE SY: Korean businesses vs. African Americans oppressed by police.
KIM TRAN: Yes. And there has been real harm. But there's also been these really
cool moments of solidarity that have happened.
If you look at the way that Asians for Black lives showed up in 2014, 2015,
we can turn also to Black folks running campaigns to fund-raise in Chinatown.
STEPHANIE SY: That solidarity was on display on the streets of Chinatown.
But Tran says this moment reveals a deeper truth,
that Asian Americans have long been left out of the conversation around racism in America.
KIM TRAN: There's white folks, there's Black folks, and
we really have failed to talk about anyone who is not in one of those two groups.
What we're seeing now is, Asian Americans are a surprise in terms of the racial discourse of this
country. And it's because of that failure. It's because we have really only had the conversation
in this one way, where it's a racial binary.
I'm really hopeful that this moment means that we will have a continued conversation
about what it's like to be an Asian American, as a racialized community in America.
STEPHANIE SY: It's been months since Iona Cheng was mugged near her home in Oakland.
How are you feeling these days? What's your sense of safety?
IONA CHENG: I still would prefer not to go out by myself. And that makes me angry at some point,
because I feel like I'm an independent person. I feel like I'm strong. And I
hope at some point I will not have to feel that way where I don't feel safe in my neighborhood.
STEPHANIE SY: Fear's grip on Cheng and other Asian Americans holds tight for now, even as hopes rise
that, with the recent violence, Asian Americans will be embraced by a wider racial reckoning.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Stephanie Sy in Oakland, California.