Story at a glance
- The coronavirus pandemic has been tied to major spikes in assaults on Asian Americans, rooted in racism as well as the belief that China is responsible for the pandemic.
- Congress is considering the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which would expedite the process for investigating hate crimes specifically tied to coronavirus.
- The bill, proposed by Democrats, will require bipartisan support to overcome the filibuster rule.
Almost a month after Congress held the first anti-Asian discrimination hearing in decades, lawmakers are considering new legislation related to the recent surge in hate crimes against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
With the Senate split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, it will take a bipartisan effort of at least 60 senators to even debate the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act under the filibuster rule, which has been the subject of much political conversation since the election.
“It’s my intention to make the first amendment a bipartisan one, but I can’t do that unless our Republican colleagues allow us to debate the bill,” Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) told reporters.
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Several Republican senators told reporters that they expect the bill to make it to debate, Reuters reported, but lawmakers are likely to propose amendments, such as the “No Hate Act,” which would fund training for law enforcement agencies on reporting and investigating hate crimes.
Last year, hate crimes hit the highest level in more than a decade, according to the FBI, and data from the National Crime Victimization Survey suggested the actual number was higher.
These crimes often go unreported or are misreported, and the agency is still working to improve participation in their data collection process, which is voluntary. More than 15,000 law enforcement agencies contributed data this year, according to the FBI, but just more than 2,000 — or 14 percent — of participating agencies actively reported at least one hate crime.
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More than half of the 7,314 criminal incidents and 8,559 related offenses reported to the FBI were motivated by bias against race, ethnicity and ancestry, part of a growing trend that experts have tied to the coronavirus pandemic. The bill would expedite the review of reported COVID-19 hate crimes, which are motivated by “the actual or perceived characteristic (e.g., race) of any person” as well as “the actual or perceived relationship to the spread of COVID-19 of any person because of that characteristic.”
Physical and verbal attacks as well as vandalism tracked by the New York Times have involved racist and false claims associating Asian people with COVID-19, mirroring language used by former President Trump — such as “Kung-Flu” and “Chinese virus.” The language of the bill acknowledges that not all targets are even Chinese, although the attacker may have perceived them as such, conflating the identities of the largest and most populous continent in the world.
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