Asian Americans reported being targeted at least 2,400 times this year

A center tracking reports of racism and discrimination against Asian Americans says it has received 6,603 firsthand complaints since last year.

Stop AAPI Hate began tracking violence and harassment on March 19 last year as more Asian Americans were verbally and physically assaulted while erroneously being blamed for the Covid-19 pandemic. More than a year later, anti-Asian violence continues to increase nationally with horrifying assaults reported in cities like San Francisco and New York City.

There were at least 2,410 anti-Asian hate incidents in the first three months of this year, according to Stop AAPI Hate’s latest report, released Thursday. That’s more than half the number of incidents that took place last year and were reported to the group.

Stop AAPI Hate said they recently saw a significant increase in the number of reports they received. In March, they received more than 2,800 complaints about incidents that took place in 2020 and earlier this year.

The organization has previously said it doesn’t independently verify any of the reports it receives, but that its total number of incidents only includes those reports that came with a description.

The majority of the incidents — about 65.2% — were cases of verbal harassment, while shunning or avoidance made up about 18.1%. About 12.6% of the incidents involved physical assaults, according to Stop AAPI Hate.

Meanwhile, incidents involving civil rights violations, including workplace discrimination and “refusal of service and being barred from transportation,” made up 10.3% of the incidents while online incidents are 7.3% of the complaints, the organization said.

More than a third of the incidents — 37.8% — took place in public streets and parks and 32.2% were in businesses.

Among those saying they’ve experience hate, 43.7% identify as Chinese, followed by 16.6% who are Korean. Vietnamese and Filipinos make 8.8% and 8.3% of those reporting the incidents, respectively.

Asian women are reporting more assaults

Several Asian American women were attacked in cities across the US within the last week, continuing a trend that started months ago.

The majority of incidents — 64.8% — tracked by Stop AAPI Hate were reported by women, the organization said.

In San Francisco, a man was arrested Tuesday after two Asian women were stabbed while waiting for a bus, police said. Meanwhile in Baltimore, a man was arrested and accused of beating two Asian American sisters with a cinder block piece at a liquor store.

In New York, where at least 80 anti-Asian hate crimes were reported in the past four months, police said two Asian women were attacked by a person wielding a hammer.

The true scope of the anti-Asian hate crimes is difficult to quantify due to poor data collection and because some victims are hesitant to report crimes.

The Justice Department and FBI are required by a 1990 federal law called the Hate Crimes Statistics Act to publish an annual report on hate crime statistics. While the report is considered the most comprehensive look at hate crime across the country, law enforcement agencies are not required to submit their data. Many agencies do not, creating an incomplete nationwide data set.

Researchers at the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino analyzed preliminary data from more than a dozen of the nation’s largest local law enforcement agencies. Police in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Seattle, Dallas and San Jose, California, reported an increase in anti-Asian attacks last year compared to the past five years, the study shows.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated when the Stop AAPI Hate report was released. It was released on Thursday.