Peach & Lily founder Alicia Yoon on anti-Asian violence—and what we can all do to help.
I’m an Asian American Beauty Entrepreneur—And I’m Afraid to Leave My Apartment Right Now
I think about my life in the pandemic era from a number of different vantage points. As a New Yorker, I still take a moment at 7 p.m. to reflect on how we cheered our essential workers last spring, a bright memory in an otherwise dark year. As a business owner who has led my skin-care company, Peach & Lily, through difficult and uncertain times, I’m proud of my team for rising to the challenge and emerging stronger than before. As an almost first-time mom, I consider how a pandemic pregnancy is inconvenient on good days and isolating on bad ones, while also appreciating that remote work means more time to prepare for this life-changing event.
But as an Asian American, the only thing I can think about right now is why I’m afraid to leave my apartment.
Violent hate crimes against the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community have been dramatically rising over the last year. Our most vulnerable—the elderly, women, and children—are being targeted. Just over the past week in New York City, an elderly man was bloodied on the subway, and another punched in the face on the Lower East Side; a woman was thrown to the ground in Midtown, another was hit in the face with a metal pipe on the Lower East Side, and a third was punched repeatedly after attending a protest against Asian hate with her daughter in Union Square. On Monday, a 65-year-old woman was kicked and stomped on the sidewalk a block from the apartment I left at the end of January. These attacks echo many others in New York and across the country, including the devastating shootings in Atlanta which left 8 dead, including 6 Asian women.
According to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 149% from 2019 to 2020, while StopAAPIHate.org has catalogued over 3,800 racist incidents since March of 2020, a shocking number that the organization also describes as “massively underreported.” But let’s be clear: anti-Asian racism and violence isn’t new. It emerged in the 1800s, when large numbers of Asian immigrants first started to arrive in the U.S., and it sadly persists today. Asian Americans continue to face racist aggressions and micro-aggressions. I can’t tell you how many times I have been accosted and harassed with racial slurs, or made to feel like a foreigner in my own country. Since the pandemic began last March accompanied by racist descriptions like “Kung Flu,” the floodgates of hate and violence have opened even wider. For the first time after decades of living in NYC, I’m afraid to go outside alone. I’m Korean, a woman, and a target.
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Alicia Yoon
