DALLAS — Sharmila Bose says she feels close to the issue of anti-Asian hate because of an incident in August 2022, when a group of South Asian women was targeted in a racism-fueled attack.
“The hate crime that happened to these four women happened less than a mile from here, a lot of us know them personally,” Bose said at a hate crime seminar, organized by South Asian American Voter Empowerment Texas, at the Plano ISD Sockwell Center.
Bose, of Plano, said she was happy to hear from local authorities who said during the meeting they are still working on the case. She, however, said she thinks more must done to address incidents that do not rise to the level of what is legally considered a hate crime.
“Just because it’s one degree less than a crime, (doesn’t negate the fact that) the person who is traumatized is traumatized, so what do we do about that?” said Bose, who is a member of the voter empowerment organization.
Recently released data from the FBI showed a drop in the number of reported anti-Asian hate crimes in recent years, but researchers and advocates say it’s an incomplete picture of what Asian Americans are experiencing.
Many Asian Americans, especially those perceived to be of East Asian descent, were subject to pandemic-related racism. Those who have studied the trend have said multiple factors are believed to have contributed to the spike in anti-Asian sentiment, including initial news coverage of the pandemic, misinformation about the origins of COVID-19, and political rhetoric on the illness.
Three years removed from the pandemic, advocates say they’re now concerned about additional root causes they’ve identified as a source for anti-Asian sentiments.
What the FBI data shows
The data on the FBI’s national hate crime website showed an increase in 2022 to 11,613 total reported hate crimes from 10,875 in 2021. As of Dec. 28, the agency’s statistics for 2022, first released in November, showed about a 33% drop in the number of anti-Asian incidents compared to data from 2021.
The 2022 statistics represent “data received from 14,660 of 18,888 participating law enforcement agencies in the country that year,” while the 2021 data is based on data from 15,131 of 18,921 participating agencies. Information on the website is updated as more data is submitted to the FBI.
Katherine Chaumont, an FBI spokesperson, acknowledged that a drop in the number of reported hate crimes does not directly translate to a decrease in anti-Asian sentiments.
“We don’t always know what those numbers mean, and the numbers are important for us because it’s how we dedicate resources, how we’re spending time on education and working in the community,” Chaumont said.
Many of the incidents reported to federal authorities do not rise to the level of what is legally considered a hate crime, Chaumont said. Those include reports of offensive language, which is protected by the First Amendment, she added.
While those reports are accounted for by the FBI, they are not shared with other organizations, she said.
“Our mission is to uphold the constitution and we’re going to uphold freedom of speech and protection of people’s free speech rights in that, so we aren’t tracking those cases or those incidents, obviously,” Chaumont said. “We’re focused on the criminal aspect, not First Amendment-protected speech.”
One of the ways the FBI is combating hate is through an awareness campaign focused on public art, Chaumont said. For Hate Crime Awareness month in October, the FBI Dallas field office worked with the city of Bedford’s cultural arts office to display art at a city-managed traffic box. In 2022, the office unveiled a new mural in Oak Cliff as part of its awareness campaign.
“We get to have dollars to spread our awareness message,” Chaumont said. “It was not just our Dallas office, it was throughout our field offices and I feel like we’ve made such a big impact on what we’ve been able to do and the creativity in all of the offices.”
Beyond legal definitions
Stop AAPI Hate has been tracking the rise of hate acts against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities through a self-reporting system. Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the coalition has received more than 10,000 reports, according to its website. Unlike law enforcement agencies, the organization also publishes incidents that may not rise to hate crime laws.
“FBI numbers will never fully capture the extent of racism our communities are facing,” said Stephanie Chan, director of data and research for the California-based nonprofit.
Chan said the organization believes many incidents go unreported. The reasons behind underreporting can range from a lack of information, fear of law enforcement or both, Chan said.
The organization defines “hate act” as an “umbrella term” to describe bias-motivated criminal offenses as well as those incidents that may not rise to a criminal level, Chan said. From 2021 to 2022, Stop AAPI Hate saw a decrease in the number of hate acts reported to the organization.
“We did see a high number of reports, especially in 2020 and 2021. We saw a drop of reports in 2022, but, again, we likely think that’s a drop in reporting as opposed to thinking that these [hate acts] have disappeared,” Chan said.
A Pew Research study released in November showed that more than half — 58% — of 7,000-plus people who identified themselves as Asian or Asian American said they experienced discrimination or unfair treatment because of their race of ethnicity. The study also looked at how ethnicity, national origin, age and racial identity factored into their lives.
About 63% of respondents reported experiences related to the “model minority myth,” or the view that all people of Asian descent are “educationally and economically successful, hardworking, deferential to authority, unemotional and lacking in creativity,” according to Pew Research.
Additionally, about 78% of all respondents, including those who said they were born in the U.S., reported that they had been treated like a foreigner, the study states.
The study explores how anti-Asian discrimination is perceived by the people targeted, said Mark Lopez, the director of race and ethnicity research at Pew Research Center.
“Our data doesn’t necessarily contradict or dispute data from law enforcement,” Lopez said. “They are more like different pieces of the puzzle; they show different parts of the whole picture.”
Uniqueness in Texas
The FBI’s data did not show a significant change in the number of Texas anti-Asian hate crimes reported in 2021 and 2022. Additionally, Stop AAPI Hate’s reporting center has received 412 reports from Texas from 2020 to 2022, according to its website. At least 105 of those incidents came from Harris County, the website showed.
Although it’s unclear how many of the incidents reported to the FBI or Stop AAPI Hate came from North Texas, at least two acts of violence, including the one in Plano, were described as hate-motivated by local police. The other incident was in May 2022, when a man, who police say was having delusions about people of Asian descent, walked into a hair salon in Dallas’ Koreatown and shot three women of Korean descent.
Some in the Asian American community have also said they were alarmed that half of the people killed in the Allen outlet mall shooting May 6, 2023 were of Asian descent.
Recent legislation in some states, including Texas, that targets segments of the Asian American population could fuel more incidents, said Shanti Elise Prasad, advocacy manager for Chinese for Affirmative Action.
During the 88th regular session of the Texas Legislature, Senate Bill 147 — which sought to limit the way people of Chinese descent could purchase or own land in the state — led to protests in multiple cities.
The senate bill, along with its companion bill in the House, failed in Texas, but similar legislation passed after it was introduced in Florida.
“Those things trickle down into the wider community and that creates this atmosphere of hate and harassment,” Prasad said. “So it kind of starts at the top there with political figures and high-profile people who are spewing this type of hate and when there are laws that unjustly target certain races.”
Anti-Asian hate fueled by Islamophobia
Some in North Texas’ South Asian community say they are now troubled by reports of rising Islamophobia, and are worried they will be targeted.
That’s exactly what happened more than 20 years ago when Mark Stroman, a white supremacist, shot three people in separate incidents as revenge for the 9/11 attacks.
In the days following Sept. 11, 2001, Waqar Hasan, a Pakistani immigrant, was shot to death by Stroman. Then, on Sept. 21, Rais Bhuiyan was working at a Dallas gas station when Stroman walked in and asked him where he was from before shooting him in the face. Bhuyian, a Muslim man of Bangladeshi descent, survived the shooting. On Oct. 5, Stroman shot and killed Vasudev Patel, a Hindu man of Indian descent.
Stroman was arrested the day after the third shooting, found guilty in 2002 and was executed by legal injection in 2011.
William White, the director of Council on American-Islamic Relations Houston, said the organization saw a significant spike in the number of Islamophobic incidents following the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7. The organization received 300 reports of Islamophobic incidents in October alone, White said. The majority of those recent reports have involved “reaction to assumed or open support for Palestine,” he added.
“It ranges from elementary school kids being bullied, or adults being bullied in grocery store parking lots or being harassed at work,” White said.
White said CAIR-Houston has tried to share information about how and when people should report crimes to authorities, community organizations or both. There is a “general problem of underreporting in the Muslim community,” White said.
“People [targeted in these instances] are in fear of whatever scenario they’re faced with, whether that be at work, school, or just in the public,” White said. “That’s a huge problem that we’re facing with this office. Somebody will call us and say something had happened, and when it comes time to file something and get something on the record, they no longer want to proceed.”
White stressed that what is considered anti-Asian should not be limited to a “Eurocentric” view of what is and isn’t Asian.
“The Asian population in the United States is far more inclusive than just Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean or Japanese,” White said. “I think that’s a very European view and it’s not being inclusive at all of the Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, and others.”
Chanda Parbhoo, founder of SAAVETX, the nonprofit that organized the hate crime awareness event in Plano, said the group condemns antisemitism and Islamophobia alike.
Americans of South Asian descent, Parbhoo said, are targeted in Islamophobic acts because of their skin color and appearance. She said it’s affected her community for decades, dating back to the U.S.’s disputes with Iran almost 50 years ago.
She feels much more empowered today than she did in the late 1970s, and said she hopes people in the South Asian community in North Texas know that there are groups like SAAVETX that can offer resources related to hate crimes. She also wants people in the broader Asian community to have conversations with elected officials.
“There is a consistent rhetoric around immigrants and how they’re taking our jobs and causing crimes — that bleeds into every community,” Parbhoo said. “As soon as you start building a rhetoric around communities of color, it is going to filter down to society and people are going to feel negative toward people of color.”
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