There has been an increase in bullying against young students in elementary schools and high schools and junior highs across the country because of the pandemic, specifically for Asian-American, Pacific Islander students. There was a recent survey that came out earlier this year that said that one out of four Asian-American, Pacific Islander teenagers have reported being either verbally or physically harassed and bullied because of the coronavirus specifically because of the pandemic.
And I think had Asian American, Pacific Islander history been taught mandatory in our schools from day one, that number would have been zero today, and that’s why I write these books because we need to get that number to zero, and we need this bullying to stop. The best thing I think teachers can do, aside from obviously making sure their students feel that they are in a safe, protected environment and by stopping immediately anything that they see that is anti-Asian racism, is to educate because you have to educate to stop the hate.
And you have to – you can’t just do one paragraph about the Japanese being illegally incarcerated during World War II or just a quick sentence or here’s a photo of the Chinese laborers from the railroads. We can’t be a paragraph anymore. We have to actually be a course. And three states so far have now issued mandates that Asian-American, Pacific Islander history must be taught in kindergarten through twelfth grade public schools. We have to be humanized. We have to stop erasing our past or erasing our history, erasing our contributions and our voices in this country.
And I do want to say too very quickly that the AAPI community is going through a little bit of growing pains because we’re a very diverse group of many different countries. Just, you know, just ’cause you’re Chinese may not mean that you identify with someone whose family is from the Philippines. Or if you are, you know, from Pakistan or India or, you know, Korea, like, you know, we have many, many different countries and cultures and languages. So, people also have to understand how rich and diverse the Asian-American, the Asian diaspora is as well. That’s a big thing that we also have to acknowledge.
