Anti-Asian violence, brutal physical assaults, and heinous murders of Asian Americans during the pandemic have captured the nation’s attention, but far more common are incidents like the one I experienced. Last year, 33% of Asian Americans have been called names or insulted, 30% have been the target of offensive physical gestures, 11% have been coughed on or spit on, and 30% have been on the receiving end of the xenophobic taunt, “Go back to your country!”

Asian Americans who have lived through two and a half years of exhaustion, mourning, anger, and fear, see themselves in these statistics. For many non-Asian Americans, however, they come as a surprise.

In part, the surprise stems from the absence of the fraught history of Asian Americans in narratives of America, including the collusion of science, medicine, and law in medically scapegoating Asians as vectors of incurable diseases. And in part, it is because the most popular narratives of Asian Americans tout their high level of education, median household income, and intermarriage rates. More than one-quarter of Asian Americans are interracially married, and among the U.S.-born, the share is nearly double that. Based on these indicators, some social scientists conclude that Asians are following in the footsteps of their European immigrant predecessors and are the next in line to become white.

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