“Prior to this I didn’t feel the whole Asian hate component. It wasn’t affecting me or anybody I know,” Yu said. “Now it’s like, there is a bit of fear and anxiety. What’s going on?”

Yu isn’t alone. A survey released last week by the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs finds that 1 in 4 Asian Americans surveyed in Los Angeles said they have experienced a hate incident since the pandemic began. And a new online poll by the research firm AAPI Data found that 1 in 6 Asian Americans nationwide experienced race-based violence in 2021.

And last week, I wrote about Yongja Lee, 65, a Korean American liquor store owner in Long Beach who was stabbed in the neck and is now paralyzed from the neck down.

A flood of racist invective lobbed from a presidential pulpit at the start of the pandemic triggered a rash of street violence and open hostility toward Asian Americans. The violence has reached Asian Americans of all stripes: immigrants, their children, Republicans, independents, Democrats — anybody who could be mistaken for Chinese. It has sparked political reverberations in the Asian American community that will be felt for years.

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