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This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at TAMU chapter.

Tired. 

Out of the quagmire, tangled rubber band ball that is my mental state after constantly seeing and dealing with situations like the terrorist attacks in Atlanta on March 16, that is the only word I can come up with. Completely understated, yet simple, it’s a word that many POC use to express their anguish after tragedies like this one. We are tired of having to fight to exist equally and peacefully. I am not grieving for my own community, but I grieve alongside the AAPI community, who had members of their family taken from them. 

It would be a dumb move to equalize POC struggles to each other, as they all affect us differently in regards to our communities, but one notable frustration I have noticed we share, especially in regards to the rise in AAPI hate crimes in the past year, is not being listened to until a tragedy happens. The frustration of allies claiming to assist in amplifying your voice and fighting on your behalf, only to show up when it’s too little, too late, is a tenfold stab in the back. 

The AAPI community has been addressing the rise in hate crime and anti-AAPI sentiment since the beginning of the pandemic, but it has not garnered major media attention until now. A quick Google search with defined timed periods can show you that websites like STOP AAPI HATE, smaller media websites, and even the Illinois state government put resources and forms to report AAPI hate crimes weeks and months after the March lockdown, which is considered the unofficial start point to COVID-19 in the United States. President Biden signed an executive order protecting the AAPI community in his first days in office. So what gives? Why is this sudden news to you?  

I often see in helpful guides for allies that reaching out to your POC friends during hard times makes you a good ally. I’m not going to speak on behalf of anyone but myself at the moment, as I think everyone takes ally support differently regardless of ethnic/racial group, but to me, being an ally doesn’t just mean asking me if I’m doing okay after something bad happens on a grand scale. 

I’ll give you a personal example: I told my friends this past January that I would be delaying my return to college for another week due to the inauguration of President Joe Biden. My worry was the January 6th riots at the U.S. Capitol might inspire some “political action” during the inauguration, in the form of Trump supporters attacking me and my family on the drive up from my hometown. I’ll let you do the math, as I am done speaking about orange man. My friends, knowing of the political climate I’ve had to deal with as a Latina for the past 5 years, said they understood the prioritization of my safety, and that of my parents, that I had to make. 

What my friends did not bother to check up on with me later was the movement of materials for the Border Wall, which had construction paused via executive order, in my hometown, where contracts had been made to start construction of the wall prior to its halt. Advocates in my community were asking for President Biden and members of Congress to push for cancelation of the border wall contracts. 

No, maybe I didn’t speak about this to my friends directly, but I shared the videos of the supplies and posts from these advocates asking for cancelation on behalf of my community. I’m well aware they saw that and likely skipped through it. I’m not butthurt by this, but it proves my point: I highlighted an issue in my community, that of which is 95% Hispanic, and it was ignored by my ally friends because there was no potential for death or injury to my community. 

So, were you listening to AAPI voices before something bad happened?

Were you listening to the AAPI community when they said that hate crimes towards them have gone up drastically within the last year, with the NYPD reporting a 1900% increase? (Source: TIME)  Have you read that their elders fear speaking up about this? Have you read about how Former President Trump’s use of improper terminology for COVID-19 amplified this? Were you paying attention to the needs and voices of the AAPI community before last Tuesday? 

The general public’s treatment of this incident ricochets the details of other white supremacist attacks: The issue is not properly brought into the spotlight until lives are taken despite the issue being spoken about from the targeted community beforehand. The terrorist is spoken about more than those who had their lives taken. Police empathize with terrorist(s) and try to explain their actions, shifting the crime away from accusations of racism and hate crime charges. The general public cries about it for a bit, and then once things calm down, issues that minority communities are facing get generally overlooked until another tragic event of white supremacy happens again. Repeat cycle. 

This is the kind of monotony that leaves me with a million words I don’t know how to say.

I truly tire of having to spell it out, but we want to be listened to ALL THE TIME. POC want you to listen to the problems our communities face, even when there’s not another attack at spas in Atlanta, or another shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, or another shooting at a church in Charleston, and we want you to do something. Join protests. Support our businesses. Stop a situation when you see one happening. Right now, we all need to amplify the AAPI community and their needs. Listen to them, their history of racism, and the issues and stigmas they face today. Don’t sit and turn a blind eye to them once you think the dust on this situation has settled. 

The 8 lives that were taken from us in Atlanta should not be another incident of statistics. I refuse to let it be that these 8 people had everything they did in their lives diminished to one moment of hatred. Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Sun Cha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Tan, and Daoyou Feng all deserved to go home peacefully last Tuesday. Do not forget them. 

Here are some resources to donate, articles from AAPI voices, ways to help the AAPI community, and links to report AAPI hate crimes:

To donate:

From AAPI voices:

How to Help the AAPI Community:

To Report an AAPI Hate Crime/Attack:

Hey, I'm Alyssa! I'm an International Studies major from Laredo, TX. I spend most of my time cramming (or pretending to) in Evans Library. When I'm not doing that, I'm eating, listening to music, or watching 1 of 3 Netflix Series for the nth time.
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