Tepid response to attacks against Asians is nothing new

by Gustavo Martínez Contreras

Photo: Tim Moyer Photography - Media Mobilizing Project

Students have brought attention to anti-Asian violence at South Philadelphia H.S.

In 1981, two stabbings and a series of brawls between African American and Asian students disrupted school life at University City High School.

Two years later, a Vietnamese student named Do Manh spent a month in traction after a pair of attacks at University City left him with a broken neck and a Laotian girl needing stitches in her lip.

Then, as now, in the aftermath of attacks on Asian students at South Philadelphia High, District officials were slow to recognize the problem as ethnic violence and take action. Only after community outcry did they move to respond.

“I went to see [Do Manh] at the hospital and found out from his classmates that no student had even been suspended for that assault,” recalled educator Debbie Wei.

“I ended up going to the newspapers, and after it got reported, then the District made an investigation,” Wei said. “If I hadn’t gone to the newspapers, nothing would have been done.”

In fact, it took Philadelphia police more than a month to get warrants and arrest the two teenagers charged with Do Manh’s beating because the school declined to cooperate in the investigation, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer story at the time.

District officials are no better able to cope and respond today, according to Xu Lin, an organizer with the Chinatown Development Corporation. He said that before the South Philly attacks, he met with Principal LaGreta Brown. “I cautioned her if she didn’t do anything, a massive attack was just a matter of time.”

Dean Coder, a math teacher at South Philadelphia High School for three years, said his warnings to Brown’s predecessor weren’t acted upon.

“I didn’t notice [the violence] right away because it is pretty chaotic there at the school,” he said. “But after a while I started seeing a pattern of ethnic intimidation that seemed to go without any response from the administration.”

Violence affecting immigrant and refugee youth has been a fixture for nearly three decades in Philadelphia schools. Ethnic tension has been especially prevalent between African Americans and Asians.

Despite reports, studies, and investigations, the scenarios that occurred in the 1980s in University City and other schools, and the December attacks against Asian students in South Philadelphia High, have unfolded in strikingly similar ways.

Coming to a hostile place

The Southeast Asian exodus to the United States was a by-product of the wars Uncle Sam fought in that region in the 30 years between the end of World War II in 1945 and the end of the Vietnam War in 1975.

Refugees from Korea, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries found themselves away from home unable to speak the language, understand the culture, or cope with their new neighbors. The newcomers and their children settled in the impoverished and hostile settings of major cities such as Philadelphia, in which they became targets of hatred and bigotry.

In 1981, Wei worked as a community organizer in Philadelphia’s growing Asian community and was sent to University City to establish a connection with the Asian students. But after seeing what they had to deal with, she decided to become a teacher at that school.

“They desperately needed an advocate,” said Wei, now principal of FACTS charter school in Chinatown.

In 1988, the city’s Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and Human Services wrote a report called “A Study of Southeast Asian Youth in Philadelphia.”

In a section entitled “Discrimination by Fellow Students and Teachers,” it says that “nearly every Southeast Asian youth complained of experiencing…tensions with other youth, especially Black youth,” and perceived themselves as “targets of discrimination.”

Beyond name-calling, this discrimination “has resulted in some serious and unfortunate incidents such as the stabbings and severe beatings of several Southeast Asian students,” the report said.