Blog Post 4: What Other People Are Saying
The first article is a scientific journal written by Yan and Lening Zhang, that documents statistical information on the timeline of anti-Asian hate crimes. This article details chronological increases and decreases throughout history in which Asian-Americans have been targeted, as well as comparable data that used other minority groups as reference. This source specifically addresses the historical data that supports my research question’s main idea of Asian hate crimes. However, this article vastly differs from previous articles as it does not include an emotional/opinionated appeal of any kind.
The second article is an NBC New York article that expands on studies showing a recent rise in hate crimes due to the pandemic. It should be noted that this article in itself refutes the idea that was previously implemented by Michelle Kim’s (as well as Zhang’s) article that Asian hate crimes are not reported by mainstream media sources--as this article is a report by mainstream media. Once again, this article pushes the idea written throughout all four articles I’ve sourced that a major contributing factor to the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes is the recent rise of COVID-19.
The article written by Zhang is highly credible, as all of the information is either sourced from scientific journals/studies or primary sources such as personal research. The background of the authors could be called into question as they may have personal biases due to their racial background, however, this is unlikely due to the various citations (ex: (Messner, Mchugh, & Felson, 2004; Tabachnick, & Fidell, 2007).) and procedural methods that follow theoretical models (de Sena, 1990; Rieder, 1987; Suttles, 1972). and classifying systems--such as NIBRS Incident-Level Extract files.
The article written by NBC New York highlights primary sources such as videos of direct hate-crimes/attack. The article also directly quotes individuals, such as is done in the following: “"Over the last year, NYPD statistics showed an eightfold increase in hate crimes reported by Asians, which means there’s far more that were unreported," Kwok said. “ The credibility of the citations are also clearly explained throughout the article, as this speaker, Chris Kwok’s credentials as Board Director and Issues Committee Chair are explained to build his reliability. Overall, this source includes primary sources to explain its main purpose while providing direct citations, dates, and quotes of credible sources.
Thus far, all four sources have greatly expanded my perspective on the topic of what contributes to the recent rise in Asian hate crimes, with two of them (Stupski and Kim) providing manners in which we can solve these issues. The NBC New York and Zhang articles both provide great long-term explanations of Asian hate crime fluctuations, explaining the relevancy of disease spread said in NBC’s, “"Anti-Asian hate and violence are not new. Historically, diseases and outbreaks have been used to rationalize racism and xenophobia against Asian Americans and against other perceived “out” groups.” Thus, this could be used to explain one of the two main contributing factors to Asian hate-crimes: xenophobia derived from health concerns; However a second, even more agreed upon factor which all four articles touched upon was political input. The research conducted by Zhang, recorded in his article shows ““more than 2,100 anti-Asian American hate incidents related to COVID-19 were reported across the country over a three-month time span between March and June.” Similarities between Zhang and Michelle Kim’s articles show a connection to hate crimes stemming from white supremacy. However, the two article types vary greatly, as Michelle Kim’s stems from personal biases and experiences while Zhang’s studies “ found that hate crimes against Asians, Latinos, and Blacks are most frequent in predominantly White areas with increased in-migration of minorities.” None of the articles directly quote each other, however they share similar ideas and statistical information points in the same direction.
Sources:
1) Zhang, Yan, et al. “Hate Crimes against Asian Americans.” American Journal of Criminal Justice : AJCJ, Springer US, 7 Jan. 2021, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7790522/.
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