Can the US be called civilized society given its racism?: China Daily editorial

The shootings at three spas in Atlanta, Georgia, in March 2021 that claimed eight lives, including those of six women of Asian origin, were another tragic evidence of the rising anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States.

Racism is not new to the US. The discrimination and exploitation of Indigenous people, African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans go back centuries. And many of today's white politicians continue to believe in racial superiority, though they hide their real self behind masks.

However, when they used the novel coronavirus as an excuse to spread the virus of racial hatred, leading to heinous crimes against Asian Americans, they unwittingly ripped those masks with their own hands. The Atlanta shootings, distressingly, were a continuation of the anti-Asian hate crimes which US politicians such as previous president Donald Trump had tacitly encouraged.

The situation was expected to change with the change of administration. But it hasn't, due mainly to the Joe Biden administration continuing Trump's China-containment policy. That the incumbent administration identifies China as the top threat to the US is another reason for the rising hatred toward Asian Americans.

The Atlanta shootings and the series of violent attacks on elderly Asian Americans over the past two years are just the tip of the iceberg of the crimes and discrimination against the generally peace-loving group.

In a report published on Nov 18 last year, the Stop Asian American and Pacific Islander Hate said it had received 10,370 reports of hate incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific islanders. And New York Police Department data, issued on Dec 8, 2021, showed that anti-Asian hate crimes in the city increased by 361 percent, compared with the previous year.

Although the US claims to uphold equality and tends to lecture other countries on human rights, the discrimination and crimes against Asian Americans, African Americans, Latinos and Indigenous people show that it remains a white Anglo-Saxon country, as a report published by the China Society for Human Rights Studies said on Friday.

Apart from the Asian Americans' repressed silence, a key reason why the racial discrimination against Asian Americans has not attracted enough attention is that the mainstream society has been using different ploys to cover up such incidents.

Asian Americans are not called a "model minority" for nothing; they have made remarkable contributions to the US' socioeconomic development.

Unfortunately, despite their valuable contributions to US society, they are still regarded as "outsiders" trying to exploit the US system for their own benefits.

The deep-rooted malice toward Asian Americans, which has its origin in white supremacism, continues to plague US society despite the Civil Rights Movement.

And as long as racism exists in the US, it cannot call itself a civilized society.