New Survey from Momentive and AAPI Data Offers Important Correctives on Hate in America
Momentive Inc.
Momentive Inc.

Data reveal hate crimes broadly affecting Asian, Black, and other communities of color; Asian American men also report significant hate incidents

SAN MATEO, Calif. and RIVERSIDE, Calif., March 16, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- One year ago, on March 16, 2021, a lone white gunman entered three spas in the Atlanta area and killed eight people—including six Asian American women, one white woman, one white man—and injured one Hispanic man. The Atlanta killings built on a backdrop of increased violence and hate incidents targeting Asian Americans, with findings from our survey last year indicating that about one in six Asian American adults had experienced hate incidents since the start of the pandemic.

New data on the anniversary of the Atlanta spa killings reveal that hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) remain a serious issue. With 16 percent of Asian American adults and 14 percent of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islander adults reporting a hate incident since the beginning of 2021, these proportions suggest that nearly 3 million AAPI adults have experienced a hate incident in a little over a year.

The 2022 survey data reveal that Asian Americans are not alone in experiences of hate violence. Critically, all non-white groups report experiencing hate crimes or hate incidents in the period from January 2021 through early March 2022—from 17 percent among Black adults, to 16 percent among Asian Americans, 15 percent among Native Americans, 14 percent among Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, and 13 percent among Latinos. Only 6 percent of White adults report experiencing a hate incident over the same period.

As we reflect on the anniversary of the 2021 shootings of 6 Asian women in Atlanta, it is also impossible to ignore the role of gender in shaping how we understand hate crimes and hate incidents. The 2022 Momentive/AAPI Data survey results show that Asian American women and men experience hate crimes and hate incidents at similar levels—28 percent and 30 percent, respectively, report having ever experienced hate incidents and 16 percent, or about one out of six in each group, report having experienced hate incidents since the beginning of 2021.

This pattern, consistent over the past two years, is different from data from community reporting websites showing twice as many incidents involving Asian American women than men. This suggests that Asian American women are more likely than Asian American men to file incident reports with community organizations. More generally, accounts of self-reported incidents fail to capture the full scale of anti-Asian hate incidents—thus, for example, the Stop AAPI Hate organization had logged about 11,000 hate incidents involving AAPIs as of December 2021, far short of the 3 million estimated incidents based on our survey findings.