Anti-Asian racism: Breaking through stereotypes and silence Posted April 15, 2021, 2:30 pm Contributor Like the rest of the country, I awoke on Wednesday, March 17 to the horrific news of a mass shooting in Atlanta that killed eight people. Six were Asian women, ranging in age from 44 to 74. I immediately went numb. Lulu Wang, the Chinese American filmmaker and director of The Farewell, gave voice to my pain on social media: “I know these women. The ones working themselves to the bone to send their kids to school, to send money back home.” The fact is, I’ve been in a state of numbness for much of the past year. On top of the unprecedented strains that COVID-19 has placed on all of us, Asian Americans like me have had to confront skyrocketing rates of discrimination, verbal assaults, and physical violence. We have been punched, shoved, stabbed, spat at, told that the pandemic is our fault, we brought it this country, and we should go back to wherever we came from. Our most vulnerable — women, youth, and the elderly — are disproportionately targeted.