Gillings School leadership condemns violence against people of Asian descent

March 19, 2021

Dear Gillings School Community,

We were outraged by the senseless murders of eight people, six of whom were women of Asian descent, in Atlanta on Tuesday. As I wrote on Twitter, we were horrified by the dramatic increase in violence against Asian Americans over the past year. Tuesday’s murders were dreadful. The statement from our colleagues in the Department of Health Behavior reflects my feelings and those of our school’s leadership.

Let’s remember that anti-Asian sentiment and hostility and violence towards Asians and people from other parts of the world who immigrated to the United States, often many years ago, are not new. As a nation, we must face the reality that hatred, discrimination and violence against people who originally came from other countries has been part of our history for many years, and the overdue day of reckoning is now.

In an interview on NPR, Dale Minami, lawyer and former Asian American studies professor at U.C. Berkeley, spoke about the history of anti-Asian sentiment in the U.S.:

“I think during periods of great tension in this country, our insecurity, fears and anxieties rise, and that undercurrent of racism that has gone through the United States history throughout its beginning tends to overflow. And that from the first immigration of Chinese to this country in the 1850s, to the present, you’ve seen an ebb and flow of such violence. 1871, there’s a massacre of 20 Chinese Americans in LA. They were lynched. We’ve seen the incarceration of Japanese Americans, the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982, demonization of Chinese during the McCarthy era and the aftermath of the Gulf War and September 11, when Muslim and Indian Americans were very much subject to violence and discrimination.”

In one of my earliest blog posts on the coronavirus outbreak, posted Feb. 21, 2020, I stressed the importance of not singling people out based on race or country of origin. Violence based on misplaced fear or hatred of people of Chinese or Asian descent because of the origin of the virus — or for any reason, toward anyone, based on race, gender, country of origin or any other characteristic related to identity — is unjustifiable and must not be tolerated. The Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH), in a statement on Wednesday, emphasized these guiding principles while strongly condemning racist and xenophobic statements and actions.

UNC Asian American Center Director Heidi Kim released a statement Wednesday that I encourage everyone to read. UNC-Chapel Hill’s leadership also has issued a statement.

The UNC Asian American Center website offers resources for maintaining mental health and reporting hate crimes. In addition, for Gillings School students, the Student Feedback and Equity Concerns Form allows you to describe incidents in which racial or other equity-related bias, or microaggressions, occurred. A Support Pod for students of Asian descent is in the works and will be co-led by Professor Geni Eng and Assistant Professor Liz Chen. We urge you to draw on these resources — and to reach out for support.

We are committed to institutionalizing changes that will help us continue to move toward greater equity and justice. (See our Inclusive Excellence Action Plan.) The Gillings School community stands in solidarity with our Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) students, faculty and staff members, alumni, colleagues and neighbors across North Carolina, and the AAPI community in Atlanta and beyond.

Each of us, let us reach out to offer our support. Together, we are stronger.

Very truly yours,

Barbara K. Rimer