Racism has been around since forever, but racism and hate against Asians during the peak of covid increased to 339% nationwide, according to nbcnews. I find it insane because I wouldn't have expected so many people to blame literally all of the Asian minority for the cause of a virus. I'm from the Bay Area of California, which is one of the most diverse places in the world and there were SO MANY hate crimes against Asian people here. Hate crimes against Asian people happened literally every other day during the peak of covid. I constantly kept on hearing new Asian hate crime news so often and I got so tired and stressed out from it. It's heartbreaking and evil. People tend to attack the elders mostly rather than young people because it's an easy target for them, which I find even more cruel. But it's not just randomly beating them up as they are just walking down the street, but it's actually also taking their lives away. People literally killed a bunch of innocent Asian people to death for no reason at all! People were chocked, pushed down, beat up, sliced, and more. And it terrifies me because I'm always wondering what if my best friend is next? What if my mom is next? What if my grandma is next? What if I'm even next? We don't deserve to get harmed or even pass away so soon, especially in a tragic way, for absolutely no reason. A story I will share that is not as brutal is that my brother actually got called a rude Asian slur when he just came out of a store a few years ago once. But I'm glad nothing else crazy happened. Another story is that I heard two young Asian people went to sit down and ate at In-n-out which is my favorite fast food place and some random guy started saying many racist things to them and then assumed the Asian guy was gay, even though there's nothing wrong with being gay. This makes me upset because I go to In-n-out a lot and I don't want to imagine that happening to me just because I'm Cambodian. Another story is that a Thai elder man was standing outside of his house and then a random teen ran to him to knock him down making the elder passed away on the spot. There was even news about a Latina woman that got brutally beat up for no reason just because the people thought she was an Asian lady. It was that terrible. People hated all kinds of Asian people and were even calling everyone Chinese when obviously not all Asian people are Chinese. And let's not forget, invading, stealing, and wrecking Asian-owned businesses, including small businesses happened often too. My parents own a small barbershop business, but now my mom is just a single working mom. My dad doesn't work anymore because he has kidney failure and has retired because of that. I can't imagine anyone destroying my mom's small business because that's literally the only thing that's helping my parents live. People work hard to achieve these things and it's cruel to wreck small businesses especially because you don't like their race.   

I created this sculpture mockup because I believe everyone should be treated like a human with feelings. I believe in spreading love instead of hate for a better environment for our mental health, and to save asian peoples' lives due to the increased hate the past few years. 

From my mockup sculpture, I wanted to make a clear message that Asian people are human beings and are not a virus, but spreading hate is a virus. Therefore, anyone that spreads hate, especially because of someone's race, then you're the real virus. Hate is ugly and it travels fast to one another. I've known that a lot of people aren't educated in geography, but because of covid, it revealed even more that a lot of people are ignorant. Some people think Asia or being Asian just consists of either Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, but that's absolutely false. Asia is huge. There are way more Asian ethnicities than just a couple. So I decided to add in the continent of Asia to show how huge it really is and add in multiple different Asian languages for all Asians to be heard. I obviously couldn't fit in every single language though, because it's a lot. I felt like adding the multiple languages could help make some people realize how many different types of people they're hurting, not just Chinese people. I chose "Hate = virus" to be in red to attract attention to that quote and then the bottom part that's holding that quote is black for a more serious feeling. 

My work: 

Instagram posts and mockups: 

I added different skinned toned hands to give off a "we're in this together" feeling.

My intention with this one was to make the viewer question their morals and if they've been participating in the hate. 

I wanted to make this one simple by just adding a hashtag and then a call to action link for help. 

If you want to, please visit stopaapihate.org to help and for more information. Thanks for your time. :)