Source: United States & Canada – South China Morning PostHelen Zia fought with her father to go to university. She went on to become one of the first American women to graduate from Princeton in 1973. While there, she successfully lobbied to start an Asian American Students Association. A few years later, she demanded that authorities in Detroit handle the slaying of a Chinese-American man, Vincent Chin, as a hate crime. She succeeded. Later, her books and articles would showcase the violence and discrimination faced by Asian-Americans. It seems Zia has always been fighting – and the reasons to fight never cease. “Asian Americans have been slammed as cartoon characters,” she said. “We’ve been called gooks, geeks, geishas. Moving beyond racial slurs to communities of strength and influence is a battle that doesn’t die.” Indeed, even after all the battles she has fought, current conditions present unusually fraught challenges. “This time feels different,” Zia said at a leadership workshop in Oakland. When people started blaming China for the Covid-19 pandemic, it seemed certain Asian-Americans would feel blowback too. “I see you nodding your heads,” she told the crowd. “You went, ‘Oh, s***.’” No one laughed. “Where we are today is a consequence of so many things that we, some of us, have been predicting for some time,” Zia said. Among those changes is the growing diversity in the US, which some members of society find threatening. Though hardly a household name to the general public, the 70-year-old activist and author is a trailblazer among those who care about Asian-American issues and civil rights. Known for her hard-hitting talk and fierce intelligence as well as her warmth, Zia speaks with such energy and conviction that she leaves her audiences inspired and often in awe. In US, Yelp sees sharp increase in racist anti-Asian business reviews “Most men or women might have given up by now,” said Mary Yu Danico, professor of sociology and director of the Asian American Transnational Research Initiative at Cal Poly Pomona. “Racism – bias against Asian Americans – has…Read More