“It’s incredibly disheartening,” said counselling psychology assistant professor Fred Chou, whose research interests include Chinese-Canadian mental health and community psychology at the University of Victoria. “I think a big part of it is they don’t have the coping strategies that you develop through life and experience,” she said, adding that seeing attacks on social media can exacerbate underlying mental health conditions like anxiety and depression.
Yoon said many are feeling despair that racially-motivated attacks are still happening, with East Asian youth likely feeling emotions they don’t fully know how to process. In a phone interview with CTVNews.ca, she said she was a victim of racist verbal attacks herself and that racists also single out older East Asian people. “I think women are absolutely being more targeted, especially street-involved racism,” said professor Jin-Sun Yoon, who teaches about mental health and racialized children at the School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria. Since 2020, the reported number of anti-Asian attacks and racist attacks have spiked across the country, including in Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa. who, whenever I touch base with them, tell me ‘to be careful’ because people are blaming Asians for the pandemic.”Įxperts say none of the recent racist attacks in the U.S. “It makes me reflect on my own family who’s still in the U.S. Lee, who grew up 30 minutes away from the location of the attacks, said he was struggling mentally himself, sharing he’s had trouble sleeping since news of the deadly shootings broke. Lee said the rampage shooting in Georgia can remind many people of “different moments when you felt powerless.” For some, this could mean a time when someone didn’t feel capable of pushing back against a racist, and for others, it could be when they didn’t have anyone close by sticking up for them. The murders were condemned in a joint statement by several advocacy groups in Canada who felt “outraged and deeply heartbroken by the murder of eight individuals in Atlanta.” They included the anti-hate groups such as Project 1907 and Elimin8hate, as well the Chinese Canadian National Council in Toronto and Butterfly Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Network. Police are investigating whether the slayings were hate crimes amid concerns over a wave of racist attacks on Asians across North America. On Tuesday, a white man allegedly shot and killed eight people, most of whom were women of Asian descent, at spas in the Atlanta area.
Analysis: Reports of Anti-Asian hate crimes are surging in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic.Read more: Here's what we know about the Atlanta spa shootings that left 8 dead.