A recent surge of anti-Asian violence in the San Francisco Bay area has left one person dead and others badly injured. President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden posted a Lunar New Year greetings video on Saturday that condemned racism targeted at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.
The Rev. Irene Monroe and the Rev. Emmett G. Price III spoke with Boston Public Radio on Monday about Biden's remarks.
"As a Black man, I am so excited to hear [Biden's message]. Our Asian brothers and sisters who are here in the nation have been discriminated against for generations," Price said. "We know it's happening, and so we all have to say something about this. I'm glad that our president has."
Community leaders connect the recent anti-Asian hate crimes to former President Donald Trump's racist rhetoric earlier in the pandemic. Trump consistently called the coronavirus the "China virus," among other epithets.
Monroe hoped that Biden can undo the hate she said Trump spurred.
"I think that Biden's remark really nullifies Trump's xenophobic and racist remark, because it starts at the head," she said. "Too often Asian Americans are seen as the 'model minority,' the 'quiet ones,' and so that [Biden] spoke up really allows a number of us who are in marginalized groups to speak up too."
Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist, the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail and a visiting researcher in the Religion and Conflict Transformation Program at Boston University School of Theology. Price is professor of worship, church and culture and the founding executive director of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Together they host the All Rev’d Up podcast, produced by GBH.
