Vice President Kamala Harris said that Asian Americans, facing a rise in anti-Asian racism over the past year, have “the right to be recognized as Americans, not as the other.”
In a speech Wednesday for the virtual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Unity Summit, Harris denounced the rise in racist attacks on Asian Americans since early 2020, often related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I know this past year has been marked by pain … when we saw the targeting, when we saw the hate, when we saw the viciousness of it all,” said Harris, who is the first Asian American and Black vice president. “As a member of this community, I share in that outrage and grief.”
Harris cited statistics from Stop AAPI Hate, a coalition of Asian American advocacy groups, which recorded some 6,600 reports of racist violence against Asian Americans from March 2020 through March 2021. People reported being targeted with racial slurs, spat on and physically assaulted. Women made up nearly two-thirds of those reporting attacks.
“Asian Americans have the right to be recognized as Americans, not as the other. Not as ‘them,’ but as ‘us,’” Harris said at Wednesday’s event, organized by the progressive AAPI Victory Alliance. “In America, a harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us.”
Harris touted President Joe Biden’s expected signing of the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, legislation from Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) that would seek to expedite the review of COVID-19-related hate crimes and improve how people report such incidents. Some Asian American groups have raised concerns, however, that by zeroing in on hate crimes, the bill does not address the root causes of anti-Asian racism and violence.
The vice president urged people to “turn that pain, that righteous anger” in response to the rise in anti-Asian hate “into power.”
Pointing to the hundreds of bills nationwide that Republicans are pushing at the state level to restrict voting rights, including voting by mail, Harris noted that Asian Americans disproportionately vote by mail-in-ballot.
“We must fight against those attacks,” Harris said. “We must see these efforts for what they are … they are an attempt to suppress the right to vote.”
Harris then pushed for senators to pass the For The People Act, which was already passed by the Democratic-led House and would override Republicans’ voter restriction efforts, including by mandating that states offer no-excuse absentee voting.