Hoa Nguyen has lived in the U.S.A. since 1981. She was walking down a street in Brooklyn, on the way to the grocery store for a senior discount. She heard a man yelling and swearing while she was on her way. She did not make it to the store. Instead she got several punches from the same man who was yelling. Hoa Nguyen became a victim of a hate crime at an age of 67 years old in January, 2022. The assailant was arrested, and he confessed to the investigators that he assaulted Hoa Nguyen because he doesn’t like how Chinese people look and thinks Chinese people look like measles. 

The Covid-19 pandemic caused misfortunes to many including students, medical staff, adults with occupations, and patients who caught the virus. A virus that started in China and spread to the World. People started being hostile to Asians and called the coronavirus the “China Virus.” These names surfaced and were even used by the former U.S. president, Donald Trump.

A graphic novel I read in class, They Called Us Enemy, is set during World War II when there were internment camps for the Japanese in America. It shows the mistreatment that people of color received during that time. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 that caused Japanese Americans to be held in internment camps. The mistreatment of Japanese Americans made me think that we as a country decide who belongs and who doesn’t after our country is hurt or affected by an individual or a group from another country or race.