A recent letter published by the Enterprise contained hate speech against the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Community. Referring to COVID-19 as the “China virus” is a racist slur and is part of a strategy to deflect from the tragic failure of the US government to contain the deadly virus. There is a direct connection between hate speech and hate crimes, including physical attacks, verbal assaults, workplace discrimination and online harassment.
Asian American civil rights groups documented 2,120 hate incidents against Asian Americans during the first three months of the pandemic, and forty percent of the attacks occurred in California. As CBS News reported, “Of the 832 incidents reported in California, many included anti-Asian slurs and references to China and the coronavirus.” One in four young Asian Americans have personally 
experienced anti-Asian hate during the pandemic.
In March, anti-AAPI slurs were painted on a shipping container at Toomey Field on the UC Davis campus, in an attempt to stir fear in the AAPI community and fuel racism.
Each year the City of Davis remembers and honors Thong Hy Huynh, a Vietnamese American youth murdered in a racist attack at Davis Senior High School in 1983. The community of Davis and Yolo County must take a stand against all manifestations of hate speech and the violence it fuels against our community members.
In the memory of Thong Hy Huynh, our community must take action to say, “Never again!” Racist hate speech has no place in Davis or Yolo County. It is shameful the Enterprise published a letter with this anti-Asian slur. We demand a retraction and an apology.
Tahnee Sweeney
Davis
Joanna Friesner, PhD
Davis
Esther Wright
Davis
Jen Soong
Davis
Rachel Warren
Davis
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Seems to me that whenever an external letter (or any other document) is referred to on this blog, a link should be included (rather than expecting readers to find it, themselves).
Seems like a basic/essential practice, to do so. Even more so, when the entire article is based upon the external source.
On about March, before the CDC reversed itself on masks, when a comment was made in comments here that Asians were hogging all the masks, I was in Safeway and estimated 90% of the people-who-appeared-to-me-to-be-Asians in the store were wearing masks. And 1 white guy. When I looked into this, I found in many Asian cultures mask-wearing is a courtesy to others, so as to not spread virus’, especially in a pandemic. So really, everyone else are the arseholes – and those attacking Asians are not only wrong as violent racists, but have the transmission blame bass-ackwards.