From a letter drafted by Professor Sylvia Chong (American Studies/English), signed by 1492 students, staff, and faculty, and submitted to UVA President James Ryan, Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Kevin McDonald, Provost Elizabeth Magill, Vice Provosts Louis Nelson and Maite Brandt-Pearce, Dean Ian Baucom, Associate Dean Keisha John, and Faculty Senate President Joel Hockensmith, following anti-Asian hate crimes in Atlanta and across the US. You can find the full document and list of supporters here.
UVA in solidarity with victims of anti-Asian violence
We, the undersigned members of the University of Virginia community, write to express our outrage at the recent spate of anti-Asian violence in the U.S., especially in the wake of yesterday’s murder of eight people in Atlanta, Georgia, a growing list of elderly Asian Americans assaulted and killed in California and New York, and the numerous Asian businesses vandalized and workers harassed across the country.
Such anti-Asian violence comes from a deep fount of racism and xenophobia in the U.S., not least of which is the legacy of slavery and the dispossession of Native lands since the founding of our University. Such racism and xenophobia have risen exponentially since the COVID-19 pandemic, as people, including our political leaders, have sought to blame Asians and Asian Americans for the public health as well as economic crisis that our country is facing. But this anti-Asian violence is not new, as the 2015 murders of three Muslim American UNC students, as well as the mass killing of Sikh Americans at a gurdwara in Wisconsin in 2012, and the stabbing of a Burmese American family at a Sam’s Club in Texas in 2020 have shown. And although the perpetrators of the recent anti-Asian killings have been of different races, the overall problem stems from the same sources of white supremacist anger and resentment that spurred the Unite the Right riots in Charlottesville in 2017.
With the recent violence, some of our families and friends now fear leaving their homes; others walk with anxiety that an unprovoked attack or slur could come from every passing figure; and many are filled with worry that they or someone they know will be the next victim. As we know from the history of other racial violence such as lynchings and race riots, the point of such violence is to send a message to everyone in that community that you are not welcome, your life is expendable, you are next. While we acknowledge that social class, age, language ability, and immigration status have made some Asian Americans more vulnerable, we also understand that none of these privileges earns anyone immunity from harm.
We urge our University community to come together and proactively address the sources of such hatred and protect those targeted by such violence, and to do so without engaging in any zero-sum racist strategy that pits Asian Americans against other minorities and groups engaged in their own struggles against racism and oppression. We hope that the University will continue to invest in anti-racist education that helps to undo the invisibility of Asian American peoples, to work to make the University a more welcoming place for Asian and Asian American students, staff, and faculty, and to foster a sense of intersectionality in our shared struggles.
P.S. We also urge you to read this letter <https://docs.google.com/document/d/13m-PfiA5js_ofTdj4frzL9lo_ebk7DpIbqUE4AdO5QA/edit> signed by ten different UVA Asian/Asian American student organizations, which eloquently expresses their own devastation and exhaustion over these acts of anti-Asian violence. We want to amplify these student voices (many of whom have also signed onto this current letter) and call attention to their perspective.