Understanding the Geographical and Temporal Evolution of Asian Hate in the United States

Though Asian immigrants have been part of the United States for more than a century, Asian communities are often still viewed as foreign, have been accused of stealing job opportunities from the rest of the American population, and are consequently a vulnerable community. The initial breakout of Covid-19 started in Wuhan, China, leading to a rise in hate crimes towards Asians in the United States. Criminal activities have evolved from online harassment to severe physical attacks and violence, threatening the lives, safety, and property of the Asian community. However, up to now, most reports about Asian hate crimes are from public media, and we lack a deeper understanding of the impact and extent of this social phenomenon. Using data gathered from police departments in major American cities, as well as data from the FBI dating back to the 1990s, this paper traces the evolution and frequency of Asian-hate-related crimes compared with other similar racial crimes, e.g., anti-black crimes. Although the number of Asian hate crimes surged during the pandemic compared to the past, the frequency was still much less than for other racial crimes during the same period. We also plotted the geographic distribution of Asian hate crimes and the country's racial crime rate over time. We found a pattern of hate crimes propagating from more populated regions to less populated regions. We conclude that though the media heavily reported the Asian hate crimes during the pandemic, the situation may not be as bad as what the public, especially Asian communities, perceives. We hope to use this work to provide more data-driven, rational insights of the problems and relieve frustration among Asian communities.

Introduction

Although Asian immigrants have settled in the United States from the last century, the Asian communities are still viewed as foreign and vulnerable among many residents and have often been accused of stealing job opportunities from the rest of the American population. The initial breakup of Covid-19 started in Wuhan, China, consequently leading to the national hate crimes towards the Asian communities in the United States. Criminal activities have evolved from online harassment to severe physical attacks and violence, threatening the life and possession safety of the Asian community. 

Background

However, up to now, most reports about Asian hate crimes are from public media, and we lack a deeper understanding of the impact and extent of this social phenomenon on the civil life of US residents. In this study, datasets were gathered from the NYPD between 2019 and 2020, and FBI dataset for each state between 1991 and 2018. They were then processed in order to determine trends of anti-Asian discrimination across each state.

Process

By using publicly available datasets from the NYPD and FBI, information was gathered about the dates, severities, and biases of many hate crimes throughout the USA from varying date ranges. The NYPD contained information about 91 hate crimes that occurred in NY from 2019-2020, with exact dates and locations of the precincts and the biases that lead to the hate crime and the ethnicity of the perpetrator and the victim. The FBI dataset contained information about 2*105 hate crimes from 1991 to 2018 and recorded the years, states, ethnicity, and biases. While it does not contain more recent data or the exact dates, its sheer scale makes up for it. After the datasets were processed using Pyplot, traditional bar and line graphs and heat maps were made to interpret the results and finally answer the research questions.

Results

1. An increased presence of the Asian population positively correlates to a higher amount of anti-Asian crimes.

The heat map shows the natural log of the total number of anti-Asian victims within each state, from the years of 2015 to 2018. The correlation coefficient between the average amount (2015 to 2018 FBI data) of anti-Asian crimes rate within each state and the Asian population percentage (US population data), and determined by the Pearson correlation to be 0.276, with a p-value of 0.052. 

1. Anti-Asian crimes tend to propagate from more populated regions to less populated regions.

Shown as the figures above, we created run charts of anti-Asian crime rates for each state over the year (FBI data). Then, we calculated the tangents of trendlines as the trend of anti-Asian crime in a region. We use the log of the 2019 population data for each state (census data). The Pearson correlation value between the trend of anti-Asian crimes and regional population was -0.379 which is a negative value, with a p-value of 0.009. 

1. Despite the increasing anti-Asian bias fueled by social media during the pandemic, the frequency of anti-Asian crimes was not as high as people thought. 

右图是 2020 年纽约反种族犯罪的条形图(NYPD 数据来自 2020 年)。在不同的原因中,反犹太犯罪排名最高,反亚裔犯罪频率排在第五位,其次是反白人。

未来的工作

1. 这种方法目前的局限性包括使用的数据集数量有限,因此我们可以使用更新的数据来精确确定 Covid-19 对美国区域层面反亚裔犯罪率的影响。

1. 确定不同种族和少数族裔的仇恨犯罪之间的任何潜在关联,例如反犹太和反亚裔。