‘Afraid of taking the subway’: Atlanta murders raise safety concerns for Asian workers, businesses

Anti-Asian violence has sharply increased since the onset of COVID-19 and the xenophobic rhetoric used by Donald Trump and other politicians to blame China for its spread. Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition formed to address anti-Asian discrimination during the pandemic, has received reports of 3,800 anti-Asian hate incidents since last March. The group found that businesses are the primary location where these incidents occur, followed by public streets and parks….

…Thao Ho, who works as a paralegal and community organizer to support nail salon workers in Massachusetts, said the industry is staffed mostly by Vietnamese immigrants, some of whom are undocumented. One salon worker who has been putting in longer hours to earn enough to get by during the pandemic told her she’s uneasy about traveling home later at night than she used to.

“The day after the murders . . . she told me she was really afraid of taking the subway,” Ho said. “Although she can’t actually point to any [violence against her], she feels in her heart that it is a necessity to even switch train cars so that she is not by herself.”…

Read more in the Boston Globe.