ROANOKE, Va. – Days after the deadly shooting in Atlanta, three attorney generals, including Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, sat down to address the rise of anti-Asian hate.
Earlier this week, Herring used his No Hate VA initiative to raise awareness about abuse and discrimination acts against Asian Americans.
In nearly one year, about 3,795 incidents of hate against Asian Americans were reported, according to Stop AAPI Hate.
However, there are plenty of other cases that go unreported.
It’s an issue that hits home for Connecticut Attorney General William Tong as he expressed his experience with hateful rhetoric.
“When so many people, especially people in vulnerable communities have a target on their backs,” he said. “It’s really important to support those groups in the workplace, in our public and private institutions.”
District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine agrees with Tong that education and awareness are needed to lead to prevention.
“Sometimes when we want to confront aspects of our history that shouldn’t make us proud, we blame the historian or not loving our country,” Racine said.
The attorney generals said they want to pass the No Hate Act to provide funding to law enforcement to collect hate crime data and send it to the FBI for investigations.
In the meantime, all the attorney generals are encouraging people to get involved in civil rights organizations and affinity groups to combat toxic thinking and acts.
You can see the attorney generals’ full conversation on YouTube.