It shouldn't have had to take a massacre for people to start listening (Picture: Getty) Waking up on Wednesday to hear about the Atlanta spa attacks, my heart sunk. A hashtag, #StopAsianHate surfaced in response to these dreadful killings. People all over the world were using it to speak out about the discrimination that Asians have been facing but part of me felt frustrated. Why did it have to take people dying for people to pay attention? The rise in hate crimes in the pandemic has been noticeable for every Asian I know. It's the things being said to us in the street, the comments section of any article, video or social media post by Asian creators and the resulting added layer of fear especially for elderly Asians to even go outside – and it's not just America. What did we think was going to happen when people started calling Covid-19 the 'China Virus' and 'Kung Flu'? In the UK alone, police data suggest that hate crimes against Chinese, East and South East Asians have risen 300% in the last year and yet we have heard barely anything about it.
The turn of events is notable for a signature program of Congress's $2. 2 trillion coronavirus relief package, which only a couple of months ago was caught in an intense borrowing frenzy by desperate business owners. After all, small businesses are still in distress. Even as states begin to reopen, millions of stores around the country remain shuttered and could go out of business. On Wednesday last week, Congress moved to loosen the program's rules and give businesses more flexibility in spending their aid, and President Trump signed the bill on Friday. The change was widely praised by small-businesses advocacy groups and will help many borrowers. The amended rules could help the remaining $130 billion move faster. "My expectation is that we will definitely see businesses that were on the sidelines now take it, " Mr. Mnuchin said. But having the terms of their loans revised on the fly yet again — which has happened repeatedly since the program began in April — is a nightmare for borrowers as they struggle to salvage their companies.
It didn't even matter what the context was, whether I spoke about how saying 'you aren't like other Asians' is not a compliment, or that we needed to stop stereotyping Asians in the media, or even the fact that treating Asia as a monolith is ridiculous. Imagine if we made sweeping generalisations about the whole of Europe as a continent and assumed Germans act the same way as British people? It would make no sense. This message only got louder in 2019 when I had had enough with being the only Asian in the room when it came to events I was attending as an influencer. My platform had grown and although I was still saying the same thing, my voice became harder to ignore. I would ask the PR why I was the only Asian in the room, or why there was only one Black person in the room. The responses would vary from 'we don't know any' to 'we asked, they didn't want to come'. One time the PR just stared blankly at me, almost in shock. After that, brands I spoke to about racism stopped working with me.
On Tuesday, the Duke of Sussex, 36, who is currently living in his $14 million mansion in California, announced his first job in the corporate world by revealing he had taken an executive position at a Silicon Valley start-up that claims to be worth $1. 7billion. Speaking to The Telegraph, Jonathan Shalit said Prince Harry may have taken up the post to put himself on par with Meghan, 39, whom he called 'a hugely astute woman, very bright' and 'incredibly impressive. ' The celebrity agent explained: 'So for Harry to keep up with his wife, he's got to find his own name and identity and this is the start. Prince Harry, 36, is 'trying to keep up' with 'very bright' Meghan Markle, 39, in California, a celebrity agent who knows the Duchess has claimed Jonathan Shalit said Prince Harry may have taken up the role to put himself on par with Meghan, 39, whom he called 'a hugely astute woman, very bright' and 'incredibly impressive' 'He doesn't need celebrity. When you're Royal, you're the biggest celebrity in the world.
One of them – who accounted for half of my income as an influencer the previous year – ghosted entirely upon the mention of race but I knew this was a risk I was taking. I'd asked to not be the only Asian in the room – and their solution was to remove the only Asian in the room. Eventually, I found my own way to convey the same message that Asian women deserved to be included with my own photoshoot creating the change I wanted to see. Together with six other plus-size Asian women we showed that we deserve to be represented in the media equally and it worked as the images went viral across the world. If I'm being honest though, I'm still saddened by the lack of support I received from my peers in the online community, many who I considered friends. Ultimately, the only people who seemed willing to risk jobs were those who were being directly affected by this discrimination; those benefitting from the lack of inclusion kept quiet. It is this silence that needs to end. The #StopAsianHate movement has sent home the message of just how long we have had our experiences of racism and discrimination ignored.