A pregnant protester is pictured with a message on her shirt in support of abortion rights during a march on June 24 in Seattle. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear)
Several Asian American leaders and civil rights groups are criticizing last week’s historic Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade as “devastating” and “backwards.”
The 6-3 vote essentially reverses a five-decade-old historic court precedent that granted women the constitutional right to obtain an abortion.
Seattle University law professor Sital Kalantry—an expert in human rights and feminist legal theory and Indian American—said, “With the roots of Roe v. Wade pulled from the ground, rights that depend on the right to privacy protections are called into question. In Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion, he notes that in future cases, they should reconsider a woman’s rights to contraception, gay people’s right to intimate acts, and non-heterosexual people’s right to marriage.”
The Japanese American Citizens League decried what it called a “heinous decision.”
“This ruling marks a dark turn in our nation’s history, and further drives home the point that women and those with female reproductive organs remain second-class citizens,” it said in a statement.
“The implications of this act stand to not only impact cisgender women, but the trans community, communities of color, and many others who are affected by systemic oppression and rely upon rights not explicitly granted in the constitution. The SCOTUS has not only ripped away a constitutional right, but sentenced millions of people to inhumane living conditions, and in some cases, death.”
A day after the Supreme Court ruling, a large crowd of Asian Americans gathered at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for a multicultural march in support of racial justice and reproductive health rights.
The Unity March included more than 50 Asian American nonprofit organizations and other diverse groups. The D.C. event was billed as the first national rally to be led by Asian Americans.
Anh Nguyen, 17, a member of OCA-Greater Houston, an Asian American advocacy group, held signs that read “Proud to be Asian” and “Climate Justice = Reproductive Justice.”
Paul Cheung, a spokesperson for the march, said that the overturn of Roe v. Wade will hit Asian American communities especially hard.
“This is another example of how historically marginalized communities like Asian Americans are having their rights diminished,” Cheung told NBC News. “This is not the end. The Unity March is a call to action to advance meaningful change for Asian American and other historically excluded communities to ensure the safety, security, and prosperity for all of our communities.”
The Guttmacher Institute, a research group supporting abortion rights, says poor or low-income women represent 75% of abortion patients.
Isra Pananon Weeks, interim executive director and chief of staff of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF), said many Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women work in low-wage, front-line service jobs with no health insurance or paid medical leave.
Abortion care is “riddled with language barriers, cultural stigmas, and low rates of insurance coverage among our most vulnerable community members” and traveling and getting an abortion was already “difficult if not impossible,” Weeks said.
“Gutting Roe cuts off access to abortion care and puts the well-being and financial stability for millions of AAPI women and families at tremendous risk,” Weeks said.
John C. Yang, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said his organization filed an amicus brief in this case with NAPAWF “because of our concern for the Asian American and broader immigrant community. Given that Asian Americans are among the fastest-growing populations nationwide with nearly two-thirds of the population being foreign-born, we have grave concerns about the impact this decision will have on our communities.”
Yang added, “We will need to come together to find a way to support our communities while we explore every course of action to reclaim this fundamental human right.”
King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg has joined more than 80 other prosecutors nationwide to not prosecute abortions.
“As King County’s Prosecuting Attorney, I want to reassure the people of King County that my commitment on the issue of reproductive rights is unwavering,” he said in a statement. “I have never—and will never—use my discretion to criminalize personal medical decisions. As a private and concerned citizen, I will also continue to support other organizations fighting for human dignity and fundamental privacy from governmental overreach into our lives.”
Satterberg and other like-minded prosecutors—collectively representing nearly 87 million people from 28 states and territories and the District of Columbia, including nearly 27 million from 11 states where abortion is now banned or likely to be banned—argued in a joint statement that using limited criminal justice resources to prosecute personal healthcare decisions runs counter to their obligation to pursue justice and promote public safety.
This story is part ofThe Aftermath, a Vox series about the collateral health effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in communities around the US. This series is supported in part by theNIHCM Foundation.
Jenny H. loved going out to volunteer in San Francisco, her home city for the past three decades. She even liked getting there and the opportunity to strike up a conversation with strangers while on the bus. But now she no longer feels safe on public transportation. She’s stopped volunteering. She hardly goes out. She struggles even to get to her doctor’s appointments.
Jenny H., who did not want to be identified by her full name for fear of being further targeted, is in her 60s and is Chinese American. She reports having been attacked numerous times, including being shoved so hard near a metro station in 2020 that she lost consciousness and suffered broken bones. Another time, years before, she was hit in the face on the bus, resulting in permanent eye injuries that still require checkups every three months.
With the precipitous rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans over the past two years, she is now “living in a constant state of fear,” she told Vox through an interpreter. “It changes the way I live. ... I don’t want to go outside.”
Despite chronic pain and her eye injury, she now waits until a family member can escort her to medical appointments, or relies on the kindness of a 30-year-old civil engineer from the local Chinatown Volunteer Coalition to accompany her.
Jenny H. is one of countless Asian Americans who have struggled with accessing health care in the wake of pandemic-fueled, racially motivated violence.
Discrimination against Asian Americans, which has affected the community since the first major wave of Chinese immigration to the US in the 1800s, has increased across the country in the past two years following President Donald Trump’s 2020 claim that the pandemic was “China’s fault” and his racist branding of Covid-19 as the “China virus” and “kung flu.” (The spread of Covid-19 is most attributable to a worldwide failure to monitor the virus and take active preventive measures early in the pandemic.) Last year, attacks on Asian Americans surged more than 3.3 times higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to a 2022 report from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
As worry about the virus itself has waned, this metastasis of anti-Asian American racism has accelerated. By late 2021, nearly one in five Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (who comprise more than 25 million of the US’s population) had experienced a hate incident in the past year, according to estimates from the coalition Stop AAPI Hate. And the percentage of these reported hate incidents that involved physical assaults rose from about 11 percent in 2020 to about 17 percent in 2021.
A Vox series about the collateral health effects of the Covid-19 pandemic in communities around the US.
These numbers parallel a trend in public opinion: In 2021, 11 percent of US adults said that Asian Americans were at least partly responsible for Covid-19 (a belief tied to the “perpetual foreigner” stereotype of Asian Americans). By 2022, that number had risen to 21 percent.
This epidemic of hate crimes has discouraged many Asian Americans from going out even for basic errands for more than two years. As of spring 2022, more than one in three Asian Americans still say they have changed their daily routine because they’re worried about being assaulted or threatened. (Who would want to make themselves a target for physical attacks, racial slurs, verbal threats, or being spat on?)
But the disruption to health care has gone largely undiscussed.
While data is still scarce, experts warn that the pandemic-driven scapegoating could be fueling a public health crisis among Asian Americans.
Internal medicine physician Anthony Tam, who practices in Manhattan and Brooklyn, said he’s recognized a clear drop in visits from his Asian American patients, many of whom need regular care. “They’re too afraid to come out,” he said.
Over the course of two months, Vox reached out to more than 100 Asian American health care providers, advocacy organizations, and researchers to learn more about this underreported problem. Many said they saw their Asian American patients miss doctor’s visits due to the rise in hateful acts. These same patients, they said, were hesitant to talk about their concerns, however. This reluctance was backed up by our reporting: Patient after patient who admitted to these fears declined to speak about the issue for this article (although several, such as Jenny H., eventually did).
Experts and care providers warn that this delay in health care — compounded by its lack of visibility — could cause unforeseen consequences, from unmanaged chronic conditions to undiagnosed diseases, for many in this growing segment of America, and for years to come.
The hidden epidemic
Covid-19’s arrival caused a mass deferral of health care across all demographics due to shutdowns, social distancing, short staffing, and general concern about catching the virus, leading to worse health outcomes for many. But within months, more people began returning to the doctor.
For many Asian Americans, however, the other threat of race-based attacks has remained high, with more than 10,900 reports of hate incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders reported to Stop AAPI Hate between March 2020 and December 2021 alone (a number experts agree is likely a vast undercount).
Almost half of these incidents happen in public spaces, which makes getting to essential appointments onerous, particularly for the 95 percent of Asian Americans who live in urban areas, many of whom rely on walking or public transportation.
“Families are afraid to leave their homes to get the care they need — and they’re afraid for their loved ones,” said Adam Carbullido, director of policy and advocacy at the Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations.
For many Asian Americans, these fears are such a regular feature of living in America they often feel it’s not worth talking about, or they’re concerned about drawing more attention to themselves. Instead, they would rather put off appointments than risk putting themselves in more immediate danger.
Venkata Jonnalagadda, a psychiatrist in North Carolina, said doctors often have to explicitly ask about anti-Asian sentiment before their patients will talk about it. “One of my male Asian patients said … ‘I’m not going to burden you with that because that’s not why I came to see you,’” she said.
Of course, not every Asian American has delayed health care due to fear of being attacked. But reports from providers suggest that the problem is substantially underestimated. And those who are most likely to become victims of these crimes — which have predominantly targeted older adults and women — also tend to be those more in need of regular health care.
Even many health care providers were reluctant to speak about the issue. “When we got the call to do this interview, none of my colleagues wanted to do it,” Jonnalagadda said. “They said I was crazy for talking.”
Health care providers face a double pandemic
In April 2022, Anthony Tam received an urgent call from one of his patients. The 61-year-old man was slurring his words and reported weakness in his arms and legs — hallmark symptoms of a stroke. Tam told the Chinese American man (who did not want to be identified by name) to go to the emergency room immediately, since any delay could lead to more permanent brain damage or even death. The man said he didn’t want to, for fear not only of catching Covid-19, but also of being assaulted. A day or two later, the man finally went, but the wait may have permanently impacted him: Tam says the patient still speaks with a slur.
Anthony Tam sees patient Bi Yan Chen in Brooklyn, New York, on May 26. Tam says he’s seen a clear drop in visits from his Asian American patients, many of whom need regular care.Carey Wagner for Vox
Tam has been practicing medicine in Manhattan’s Chinatown for seven years. But since the onset of the pandemic — and a concurrent rise in violence and vitriol against Asian Americans — he has seen how fear has driven many to miss or postpone important treatment.
Mainstays in preventive care such as mammograms, colonoscopies, and blood tests are also falling by the wayside because many patients are afraid to travel around the city, Tam said. And he worries these delays are harming their long-term health, in the form of budding cancers, unchecked diabetes, worsening heart disease, and other serious but avoidable problems.
“Over the last two years, there were people who were managing chronic conditions ... in the past they’d come to me every three to six months. [Now] it’s not uncommon to see them once a year,” Tam said. Those with previously well-controlled diabetes are skipping appointments, and Tam is noticing that their hemoglobin levels (which doctors use to assess diabetes severity) are now higher than recommended. (Asian Americans are about 37 percent more likely to have diabetes than white Americans.)
“Diabetes is a silent disease, and for the most part the patient may not even know there’s something wrong unless they come into the office,” Tam said. “Especially for my patients who don’t live in the immediate area of the clinic, there’s been a real drop in their health care,” he said. “They say … ‘I have to force myself to get on the train to see you.’”
Follow-ups are another hurdle. “Sometimes I have patients that need a work-up for blood in the urine,” Tam said. But “they’d rather stay home than go on the train,” to get the lab test.
The rise in Asian American discrimination and violence also rattles Tam as a doctor. His Manhattan office is just blocks from the Canal Street subway station, the site of two high-profile attacks on Asian Americans since 2020, including on one woman who died from her injuries. “That could have been one of my patients,” he said. These concerns trouble him.
Tam examines patient Yanli Chen. He says he weighs the risk of not doing tests or follow-ups with patients against the risk of them being harassed or attacked on the way to the office.Carey Wagner for Vox
“I find myself having to weigh the medical risks of not doing a [test or follow-up] with the very real risk of harassment or violence [for patients] getting to the office,” Tam said.
“It saddens me to know there’s something I have to take into account before … telling them to come to the office unless they really have to — because I don’t want to be the reason they’re attacked or suffer,” he said.
Across the country, Vaughn Villaverde, the director of advocacy for Asian Americans for Community Involvement, a nonprofit organization that provides health services in California’s San Jose area, reports a sharp decline in people participating in the organization’s senior wellness program. The majority said they have reduced their outdoor activity due to anti-Asian discrimination.
Jane Jih, an associate professor of medicine and research director of Asian American Research Center on Health at the University of California San Francisco, has watched patients who normally managed chronic diseases through outdoor exercise suddenly lose control of their condition because they were too afraid to go out. Since the rise in pandemic-fueled racist incidents, Jih has noticed, for example, “patients whose blood sugar for diabetes was really well controlled for a while and then it’s not. They would say, ‘I don’t feel safe having my father walk around for exercise,’ or ‘the public park where we normally went to, we stopped going to, because we heard of people receiving verbal assaults,’” she said.
These aren’t idle anxieties but lived experiences, Jih said. “I’ve had patients tell me stories — if I ask them … they’d be assaulted and no one would come to their defense.”
Helen Lu, a pediatrician in San Francisco, said an attack on one of her teenage patients sent him to the emergency room. “My patient was about to go inside his home, and suddenly someone hit him on the back of his head — the person ran away, and the patient could not see who it was,” she said. She saw him for follow-ups and staple removal, but he told her that he tries not to go outside anymore because of this attack.
Families face disrupted care
Despite a general reluctance to speak publicly, several Asian Americans and their family members talked to Vox about their experiences, which paralleled those shared by providers.
Amy Y., who is in her 60s and lives in the Flushing neighborhood of New York City, says that while she still tries to make all her mandatory checkups, she has limited her other health care. For example, she stopped going to her acupuncturist (whom she used to visit regularly for pain management and wellness) and never went to the physical therapist to whom she was referred to manage severe back pain. “I try to minimize my time outside,” she told Vox via an interpreter. “I believe in the law of attraction — if you don’t go outside, then you won’t have as much trouble.”
Stella C. and Amy Y. at the Association of Chinese American Physicians’ annual health fair on May 29 at Kissena Corridor Park in Queens, New York. Amy says she tries to minimize time outside her home to avoid “trouble.”Jeenah Moon for Vox
Chia Thao, a 66-year-old Hmong American living in Butte County, California, has high blood pressure that requires frequent management, including doctor’s office visits two to three times a month. To get there, she waits until her son can take her to the Hmong Cultural Center, where he works, and from there, relies on one of the center’s shuttles to her doctor — a trip that now takes about an hour and a half each way.
Thao is too worried to make the trek on her own: “I know that ever since Covid hit that we are specified as the people who brought the disease to the US,” she said through an interpreter. “We are afraid to go about in public because of that.”
Richard Chen and his wife live with their three young children in Marine Park, in the far southeast reaches of Brooklyn. But they had long made a point for their family to see doctors in Manhattan’s Chinatown or Brooklyn’s Sunset Park (one of the borough’s Chinatowns), even though they were miles away. As a second-generation Taiwanese American, Chen saw this as a way of staying connected to their family’s cultural heritage.
But when the rise of anti-Asian violence began hitting the news, the software engineer and his wife felt increasingly nervous about shuttling around the city. This was especially a concern with young children, whose pediatrician visits added up to several dozen a year. The Chens made the decision to suspend all health care visits for eight months while looking for options closer to home. This put the kids behind on vaccinations that would protect them against other illnesses and delayed care for issues, including vision trouble, unexplained weight loss, and checkups for their infant, whose persistent fussiness worried the Chens.
Today, the children’s pediatrician, ophthalmologist, and nutritionist are all within walking distance. The parents’ primary care physicians are a bit farther, but easy to drive to. Still, when the Chens make an appointment, they ask for one well before closing time to avoid walking in the dark.
Other Asian Americans have taken even more extreme measures to avoid hate crimes. In 2021, Shirley Ha Chock’s 80-year-old father, a retired jewelry store owner, was diagnosed with aortic stenosis, a serious heart condition that required surgery and frequent cardiologist appointments in Manhattan. Rather than face long trips on public transportation — common sites of anti-Asian violence — he reluctantly gave up his beloved home in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he had lived for the past 15 years, and moved to Manhattan’s Chinatown.
People wait in line to have their blood pressure measured during the community health fair in Queens.Jeenah Moon for Vox
The January 2022 surgery, however, resulted in a rare complication when his body rejected a new heart valve. “His cardiologist advised him to stay in New York City to finish up his care,” Chock said. Nevertheless, he and his family decided he should travel to Taiwan to continue his treatment in a safer city. “He would rather take the risk of flying overseas — even though he had complications with the heart surgery — and go to a whole team of different doctors who don’t know his medical history because New York City has become so unsafe for older Asians.”
How to fix a concealed crisis
Addressing the disrupted care for so many Asian Americans will require increased attention and a wide range of efforts.
While pandemic-era adaptations, such as telehealth, could help many Asian Americans replace some in-person visits, they need to be revamped.
For example, telehealth platforms have a long way to go in effectively including language translation to make these sorts of appointments accessible to non-English speakers. Older Asian Americans also face the same barriers to adopting new technology as many other American seniors do, so organizations like Asian Americans for Community Involvement are offering more tech literacy programs. And those living in ethnic enclaves disproportionately still need access to high-speed internet.
The rise in acts of hate has served as an unprecedented call to empower and protect members of Asian American communities. Programs have sprouted up around the country that teach Asian Americans and limited English speakers how to report crimes to the police, bystander intervention training, and even self-defense, in an effort to increase confidence in returning to public places. From spring 2020 to summer 2021, OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates partnered with Lyft to provide free rides for Asian Americans to safely run errands. And organizations such as the Chinatown Volunteer Coalition have also burgeoned across cities to provide one-on-one support, including connecting older Asian Americans, like Jenny H., with younger ones who could escort them to doctor’s appointments.
Jenny H.’s volunteer is Jonathan Sit, who is Chinese American and joined the group in early 2021. Having grown up in the Bay Area’s Chinatown community, he has witnessed firsthand many of its minority residents being violently targeted. He has also been the target of many “go back to your country” slurs and even beatings. When the pandemic inflamed existing anti-Asian discrimination, it sparked memories of these incidents, and he wanted to do something to help.
“There is a sense that if it’s not going to be me looking out for my community, I can’t really expect people outside my community to be looking out for them,” Sit said.
Despite being helpful for some, like Jenny H., these efforts do little to address the underlying, systemic infections behind this public health crisis.
The US government has a long history of anti-Asian American racism — from the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act to the Japanese internment camps of World War II — to undo. And American policymakers, who have often cast blame on the country’s Asian residents, have fueled racist acts, such as public health officials setting fire to Chinatown buildings occupied by Asian and native Hawaiian residents in an ill-informed attempt to quell an outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1900.
Only recently has nationwide legislation made meaningful steps against anti-Asian American racism, such as with the 2021 Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act. Among other things, this law gives more local resources to facilitate reporting hate crimes. But even in the year since President Joe Biden signed the bill, nearly half of Asian Americans surveyed are still calling for stronger anti-hate crime laws.
In addition, more funding needs to be allocated to data specifically aimed at understanding Asian American health disparities.
To date, Asian Americans are the most understudied major racial or ethnic group in US peer-reviewed literature, and research is severely underresourced. Only 0.18 percent of funding from the National Institutes of Health from 2000 to 2018 has supported Asian American health research. (Seven percent of people living in the US are Asian American.)
“AAPI are often not included as a separate group in studies,” Justin Chen, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, wrote to Vox in an email. He noted that the “model minority myth,” in which Asian Americans are portrayed as universally successful, means they might be seen as “a group without problems in need of investigation,” he said. “Yet we do have health disparities, especially in mental health, and we need funding agencies to recognize and address these.”
What’s more, lumping “Asian Americans” into a single group — often encompassing those of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, and other backgrounds — hides important health risks and disparities among very different populations.
The federal government began to address this problem through a May 2021 executive order, which provides federal funding to improve access to health care, reduce health disparities, and strengthen research for Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Native Hawaiians. Whether this will meaningfully improve health, however, remains to be seen.
In the meantime, these pandemic-era delays in health care for so many Asian Americans remain invisible to the majority of America.
“I just hope that the anti-Asian sentiment subsides and my patients can go about their lives without having to always look over their shoulders,” Tam said. He calls for more people, including those outside of Asian American communities, to speak up about the issue and for policymakers to look for solutions, rather than scapegoats.
“My patients are as much a part of the fabric of our society as anyone else,” Tam said. “They deserve to live peacefully and do very ordinary things, like coming in for an annual physical, without fearing for their safety.”
CREDITS Editors: Katherine Harmon Courage, Susannah Locke Visuals editor: Bita Honarvar Copy editors: Tanya Pai, Tim Williams Fact-checker: Willa Plank
A Taiwan dollar note is seen in this illustration photo May 31, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration
June 30 (Reuters) - Asian currencies will wallow in the near-term, analysts forecast this week, with any respite from their first-half losses only likely to come in the form of proactive policy normalization by regional central banks combined with a Chinese recovery.
A mix of elevated commodity prices and narrowing interest rate differentials have piled pressure on most Asian currencies, with some hitting multi-year lows in recent weeks.
Foreign money has flowed out of emerging Asia, excluding China, for five months in a row in the face of a reluctance among central banks to hike rates. read more
The Taiwanese dollar , South Korea's won and the Philippine peso have all weakened by more than 6.8% against a strong U.S. dollar this year, while the Indian rupee is near record lows.
Mounting fears of a global recession have forced investors to flee stocks and riskier Asian assets in favor of bonds and the greenback, which recently hit a nearly two-decade high against major currencies.
While Asian central banks have turned more hawkish recently to control spiking prices, a focus on growth and relatively controlled inflation has meant rate hikes have not been as aggressive as those by the U.S. Federal Reserve.
"Rate hikes (in Asia) are ultimately going to be of a smaller quantum and at a slower pace compared to the U.S. Fed. So, policy rate differentials will continue to be moving against Asia," Duncan Tan, Rates Strategist at DBS Bank, said.
Of the 13 analysts and strategists interviewed this week, more than half expect Asian currencies to remain under pressure as long as aggressive Fed tightening persists.
"We could possibly see EMFX stabilization once peak hawkishness is reached, but any meaningful gains will hinge on growth and (the) extent of U.S. dollar pullback," Christopher Wong, FX strategist at Maybank, said.
Although a rejuvenation of China's economy after the lifting of COVID-19 curbs could drive flows back into Asia, investors will refrain from placing big bets until they see data which allows them to gauge the pace of any recovery.
"The reality is that China finds itself opening to a slowing global economy. This is leaving the outward-facing nation vulnerable going into the second half of 2022," said Daniel Dubrovsky, a strategist with IG.
Net commodity exporter Indonesia, historically regarded as susceptible to global policy tightening, has remained resilient this time, with strong commodity exports and reopening from COVID-19 restrictions helping it outperform other markets.
The Jakarta Stock Exchange Composite Index (JCI) (.JKSE) is the only major equity index in the region to post significant gains this year, jumping nearly 5%.
Reporting by Harish Sridharan in Bengaluru; Editing by Krsihna Chandra Eluri
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Dive Brief:
Enrollment of Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students in California's community colleges dropped 20% from fall 2019 to fall 2021, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is according toa May reportfrom The Campaign for College Opportunity, a California nonprofit working to make college access more equitable.
The report stressed that looking at average academic outcomes for Asian American and NHPI students as one group hides important variations. For example, 38% of Asian American community college students enrolled in 2013-14 transferred to a four-year university within six years. Among NHPI students, only 22% transferred. Some 15% and 11% of those cohorts, respectively, earned a degree or certificate.
Colleges and universities should offer support systems to Asian Americans and NHPI students who have been impacted by an increase in hate crimes toward their community, according to the report.
The report’s researchers tried to break down the data to demonstrate the different outcomes and challenges faced by Californians of Asian and Pacific Island descent, according to Vikash Reddy, senior director of policy research at The Campaign for College Opportunity.
"In popular culture, and oftentimes in research that uses aggregate statistics, we think about these communities as a monolithic block, one that is universally high achieving or highly educated," Reddy said. "The breadth and the scope of the educational trajectories and experiences for California students are masked when you use coarser averages."
Educational policies and guidance that don’t account for the diversity within the Asian American and NHPI communities will not fully address the groups' needs, according to the report.
Over 15% of California's residents are Asian American or Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander. Academic disparities appear when breaking down data between those two groups.
Among Asian American Californians, 59% of those aged 25 to 64 have a bachelor’s degree. But only 22% of NHPI Californians can say the same, giving that group one of the lowest bachelor's degree rates among all racial/ethnic groups in the state.
The drop in Asian American and NHPI student enrollment at community colleges is concerning because the state's two-year institutions are where 59% of both groups enroll. Enrollment at California's four-year institutions remained largely unchanged, something worth noting and celebrating, Reddy said.
The report recommends community colleges and universities offer support systems to Asian Americans and NHPI students who’ve been impacted by an increase in hate crimes toward their community.
This group experienced an uptick in racist sentiment and attacks during the COVID-19 pandemic, as some politicians and media personalities blamed China for the disease's evolution and nicknamed it "the China virus.”
The vitriol simultaneously targeted all people within the community and blamed an incredibly diverse group for a virus first detected in China. Anti-Asian hate crimes, including those committed on college and university campuses, increased roughly fivefold from 2019 to 2021, according to the report.
On the faculty side, the report found disproportionately low numbers of Asian American and NHPI teachers at California’s public colleges when compared to the student body.
The state's community colleges employed one Asian faculty member for every 45 Asian students and one NHPI faculty member for every 35 NHPI students. Meanwhile, for White students, the ratio was 1:14.
The report recommends California colleges commit to hiring and retaining Asian and NHPI faculty. It also advises the state's leaders to shift to an aid model based on student need, which would give 18,000 more Asian and NHPI students access to Cal Grant awards.
A Taiwan dollar note is seen in this illustration photo May 31, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas White/Illustration
June 30 (Reuters) - Asian currencies will wallow in the near-term, analysts forecast this week, with any respite from their first-half losses only likely to come in the form of proactive policy normalization by regional central banks combined with a Chinese recovery.
A mix of elevated commodity prices and narrowing interest rate differentials have piled pressure on most Asian currencies, with some hitting multi-year lows in recent weeks.
Foreign money has flowed out of emerging Asia, excluding China, for five months in a row in the face of a reluctance among central banks to hike rates. read more
The Taiwanese dollar , South Korea's won and the Philippine peso have all weakened by more than 6.8% against a strong U.S. dollar this year, while the Indian rupee is near record lows.
Mounting fears of a global recession have forced investors to flee stocks and riskier Asian assets in favor of bonds and the greenback, which recently hit a nearly two-decade high against major currencies.
While Asian central banks have turned more hawkish recently to control spiking prices, a focus on growth and relatively controlled inflation has meant rate hikes have not been as aggressive as those by the U.S. Federal Reserve.
"Rate hikes (in Asia) are ultimately going to be of a smaller quantum and at a slower pace compared to the U.S. Fed. So, policy rate differentials will continue to be moving against Asia," Duncan Tan, Rates Strategist at DBS Bank, said.
Of the 13 analysts and strategists interviewed this week, more than half expect Asian currencies to remain under pressure as long as aggressive Fed tightening persists.
"We could possibly see EMFX stabilization once peak hawkishness is reached, but any meaningful gains will hinge on growth and (the) extent of U.S. dollar pullback," Christopher Wong, FX strategist at Maybank, said.
Although a rejuvenation of China's economy after the lifting of COVID-19 curbs could drive flows back into Asia, investors will refrain from placing big bets until they see data which allows them to gauge the pace of any recovery.
"The reality is that China finds itself opening to a slowing global economy. This is leaving the outward-facing nation vulnerable going into the second half of 2022," said Daniel Dubrovsky, a strategist with IG.
Net commodity exporter Indonesia, historically regarded as susceptible to global policy tightening, has remained resilient this time, with strong commodity exports and reopening from COVID-19 restrictions helping it outperform other markets.
The Jakarta Stock Exchange Composite Index (JCI) (.JKSE) is the only major equity index in the region to post significant gains this year, jumping nearly 5%.
Reporting by Harish Sridharan in Bengaluru; Editing by Krsihna Chandra Eluri
Men wearing protective masks amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, use mobile phones in front of an electronic board displaying Japan's Nikkei index outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan June 16, 2022. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
Japan output data weak, but China services improve
U.S. data expected to show still high core inflation
Dollar holds broad gains, bonds enjoy a bounce
SYDNEY, June 30 (Reuters) - Asian shares were ending a rough quarter in a sombre mood on Thursday amid fears central banks' cure for inflation will end up sickening the global economy, though it is proving to be a fillip for the safe-haven dollar and government bonds.
Policy makers on Wednesday reiterated their commitment to controlling inflation no matter what pain it caused, and data on U.S. core prices later in the session will only underline the extent of the challenge. read more
"Inflation can be sticky," warned analysts at ANZ. "It is broadening from goods to services and wage growth is accelerating."
"Even with rapid rate rises, it will take time for tightness in labour markets to unwind, and that means inflation can stay higher for longer."
That suggests it is too early to pick a peak for interest rates or a bottom for stocks, even though markets have already fallen a long way.
The S&P 500 (.SPX) has lost almost 16% this quarter, its worst performance since the very start of the pandemic, while the Nasdaq (.IXIC) is off an eye-watering 21%.
Early Thursday, S&P 500 futures and Nasdaq futures were both down 0.3% with little sign as yet that the new quarter will bring in brave bargain hunters.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) eased another 0.4%, bringing its losses for the quarter to 10%.
Japan's Nikkei (.N225) fell 0.8%, though its drop this quarter has been a relatively modest 4% thanks to a weak yen and the Bank of Japan's dogged commitment to super-easy policies.
The need for stimulus was underscored by data showing Japanese industrial output dived 7.2% in May, when analysts had looked for a dip of only 0.3%. read more
Chinese blue chips (.CSI300) added 0.6% helped by a survey showing a marked pick up in services activity.
Analysts at JPMorgan are looking a major rebound in China in coming months and felt that, with so much bad news priced into world markets, positioning argued for a bounce.
"It is not that we think that the world and economies are in great shape, but just that an average investor expects an economic disaster, and if that does not materialize risky asset classes could recover most of their losses from the first half," they wrote in a note.
DOLLAR IN DEMAND
For now, the risk of recession was enough to bring U.S. 10-year yields back to 3.085% from their recent peak at 3.498%, though that is still up 77 basis points for the quarter.
The yield curve has continued to flatten, and turned negative in the three- to seven-year range, while futures are almost fully priced for another Federal Reserve hike of 75 basis points in July.
The Fed's hawkishness has combined with an investor desire for liquidity in difficult times and gifted the U.S. dollar its best quarter since late 2016. The dollar index was trading up at 105.100 and just a whisker from its recent two-decade peak of 105.79.
The euro was struggling at $1.0442 , having shed 5.6% for the quarter so far, though it remain just above the May trough of $1.0348.
The Japanese yen is in even worse shape, with the dollar having gained more than 12% this quarter to 136.70 and hitting its highest since 1998.
Rising interest rates and a high dollar have not been good for non-yielding gold which was stuck at $1,818 an ounce having lost 6% for the quarter.
Oil prices were flat on Thursday amid concerns about an unseasonable slowdown in U.S. gasoline demand, even as global supplies remain tight.
OPEC and OPEC+ end two days of meetings on Thursday with little expectation they will be able to pump much more oil despite U.S. pressure to expand quotas. read more
September Brent rose 2 cents to $112.47 a barrel, while U.S. crude eased 5 cents to $109.73.
Hate crimes driven by homophobia and racism resulted in a 33% surge in reported incidents in California last year, following a similar spike in hate-driven attacks the year prior and confirming what officials have been hearing anecdotally since the pandemic began, the state's attorney general said Tuesday.
Attorney General Rob Bonta said that crimes against Black people were again the most prevalent in 2021, climbing 13% from 2020 to 513 reported incidents. Hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation bias increased nearly 50% to 303 incidents while crimes against Asian Americans were up 178% to 247 incidents.
"One hard truth in our state, just as we see across the nation, is that the epidemic of hate we saw spurred on during the pandemic remains a clear and present threat," said Bonta, a Democrat, at a news conference. "Each of these incidents represents an attack on a person, a neighbor, a family member, a fellow Californian."
The 1,763 hate crimes reported in 2021 was the sixth highest tally since the department began collecting and reporting data statewide in 1995. It is also the highest since 2001, when 2,261 hate crimes fueled by the 9/11 terrorist attacks were reported in California.
Last year's annual report showed a similarly high increase — 31% — with anti-Black bias making up the bulk of incidents in a state where African Americans are 6% of the population. The 2020 report also showed a startling increase in bias crimes against Asian Americans following the emergence of the coronavirus in China.
Video of assaults on Asian Americans, particularly seniors, went viral last year with San Francisco police in January reporting an astonishing 567% increase in reported crimes from the previous year. The initial count showed 60 victims in 2021, up from nine in 2020. Half of last year's victims were allegedly targeted by one man.
Still, not all criminal attacks carry a hate crime charge since prosecutors need to prove the suspect was motivated by bias. In San Francisco, for example, the 2021 death of an 84-year-old Thai grandfather is headed to trial although the district attorney's office has not filed hate crime charges in that case.
Officials say reported hate crime statistics may be far lower than actual numbers, but add they've taken steps to encourage reporting by victims. Nationally, hate crimes rose to the highest level in more than a decade in 2019, according to an FBI report.
Community leaders who joined Bonta at Tuesday's press conference urged people to report crimes and to seek resources such as mental health services. Cirian Villavicencio, commissioner with the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs, said hateful attacks against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community are not new.
But the sheer rise in attacks during the pandemic was alarming, he said.
"Our elders were being physically attacked, women and young people were being verbally insulted, AAPI students were being harassed and bullied at school and AAPI-owned small businesses were targeted and discriminated against just because they were AAPI," Villavicencio said.
In May, a white gunman killed 10 Black shoppers and workers at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. A steep rise in anti-Asian bias since 2020 included the March 2021 killing of eight people at Atlanta-area massage businesses, including six women of Asian descent.
A hate crime is motivated by the victim's gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or disability. Hate incidents such as name calling are not necessarily criminal. The California Department of Justice has collected and reported statewide data on hate crimes since 1995.
Crimes showing bias against Latinos increased 30% to 197 incidents in 2021 while anti-Jewish bias events increased 32% to 152 in 2021, the most in the religious bias category.
Bonta announced the new position of a statewide hate crime coordinator within the California Department of Justice to assist state and local law enforcement efforts to battle hate crimes.
The report also showed that district attorneys and elected city attorneys filed 30% more cases in 2021 involving hate crime charges.
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