How might printed news coverage be interpreted differently alongside community-based, orally transmitted memory of events?

The main repository  that historians have looked to when researching the 1930 anti-Filipino race riots has been Evening Pajaronian. However, the paper’s reports on the riots deployed common stereotypes about Filipinos, minimized the racially motivated violence committed by white mobs,  favored the police, and left out the perspectives of Filipinos and other community members with conflicting accounts of events. By relying solely on Evening Pajaronian, scholars have risked perpetuating a one-sided narrative of the riots in which Filipinos are seen as passive victims. Instead,  such newspaper sources could be understood alongside community-based,  orally transmitted accounts from community members who experienced or hold memories of the riots to construct a more comprehensive and nuanced narrative of this significant historical event.  

 

In “Anti-Asian violence and US Imperialism,” Simeon Man argues that anti-Asian violence emerges in times of economic crisis. This phenomenon can be seen during the 1930 Watsonville race riots and in 2020 with the height of the COVID 19 pandemic. Myths and conspiracy theories began to circulate around the origins of the disease, leading to heightened Sinophobia and anti-Asian sentiment, with the narrative of Asians as disease carriers making its way back into the media. Then U.S. President Donald Trump only helped in fuelling anti-Asian sentiment, repeatedly referring to the virus as the “Chinese virus” furthering the association between Chinese people and COVID-19 and leading to heightened anti-Chinese sentiment. Mainstream news media outlets posted similar rhetoric, recalling the same fears around COVID-19 and Asian communities. Conservative news outlets like Fox News, blamed China for the pandemic and often referred to it as the “Chinese virus.” On social media sites such as X, racist rhetoric surrounded COVID-19, often referring to the virus as, “China virus,” “Wuhan Virus,” or “Kung Flu.” Much like Evening Pajaronian’s racialized portrayal of the Filipino community, rhetoric around COVID-19 was connected to Asian communities, creating fear amongst the masses and leading to a rise in hatred and violence directed towards Asian communities across the United States.   

 

In 2020, the US saw an increase in race-based violence directed at Asian communities as they became the main force with media sources helping to fuel the flames of anti-Asian sentiment. On January 28, 2021, an 84 year old Thai immigrant, Vicha Ratanakdpee, was walking in San Francisco where another man pushed him, knocking him unconscious, and he never regained consciousness. The nonprofit organization, Stop AAPI Hate reported about 3785 cases of hate crimes directed at AAPI communities from March 19, 2020 to February 28, 2021. The connections made between COVID-19 and Asian communities by mainstream news outlets helped to justify racial violence directed towards Asians. In the same way that Filipinos were characterized as “disease carriers” and identified as a threat to white Americans during the 1930 anti-Filipino race riots, Asian communities in America were viewed as a threat to the health of Americans leading to heightened violence directed at them.