BOSTON (AP) – A Chinese American mother in the Boston suburbs is sending her sons to in-person classes this month, even after one of them was taunted with a racist “slanted-eyes” gesture at school, just days after the killings of women of Asian descent at massage businesses in Atlanta. In the Dallas area, a Korean American family keeps their middle schooler in online classes for the rest of the year after they spotted a question filled with racist Chinese stereotypes, including a reference to eating dogs and cats, on one of her exams.
As high schools and elementary schools across the country gradually re-open for full-time classes, Asian American families are wrestling with whether to send their children back out into the world at a time when anti-Asian hostility and violence are on the rise.
Some Asian American parents say they’re content to keep their children in virtual classes, especially with the school year winding down and COVID-19 cases rising in places. Others aconcedeto adolescents craving normalcy, while sthers refuse to shield their youths from bigotry.
Asian American students have the highest rates of remote learning more than a year after the coronavirus pandemic shuttered school buildings and forced districts to pivot to online classes. A federal government survey released earlier this month found just 15% of Asian American fourth graders were attending classes in person as of February, compared with more than half of white fourth graders.
Those rates appear to rise in some cities but are still far lower than Black, Latino, and white students. For example, in Sacramento, Boston, and Chicago public schools, roughly a third of Asian American students are expected to return to in-person classes this month, compared with some 70% of white students, according to the most recent district data.
Asian American youths have also not been spared anti-Asian harassment. A September report by Stop AAPI Hate found about 25% of Asian American children surveyed experienced discrimination, including verbal harassment, social shunning, cyberbullying, and physical assault, during the pandemic. The San Francisco-based group, which tracks iiscrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, also says more than 12% of its reported incidents involved youths ages 17 and under.
Concerns about virus spread and rising racism are factors in the in-person learning disparities. Still, many Asian families also benefit from living in multi-generational households where grandparents and other relatives can help, said Peter Kiang, director of Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.
“These ethnic-defined support systems have been operating for more than a year already while parents are out working long hours, so there is no urgency to return to in-person classrooms,” he said.
Another factor is that many Asian Americans live in major urban areas like Boston, where schools are only now starting to widely re-open, said Robert Teranishi, a professor of education and Asian American studies at UCLA. Meanwhile, San Francisco, where about a third of public school students are of Asian descent, has no timetable for the return of middle and high school students.
For Grace Hu, a 16-year-old in Sharon, Massachusetts, who has been learning all school year remotely, the decision to go back to in-person classes later this month was easy.
The high school sophomore helped organize a recent rally against anti-Asian hate in Boston but said she’s not concerned about facing vabusein school. About 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Boston, the district has a sizeable Asian American student population, and she’s generally felt safe and welcomed.
“I’m feeling trapped at home,” Hu said. “I just want to see my classmates again.
Closer to Boston, in Quincy, a city with the highest concentration of Asian Americans in the state, Kim Horrigan said she and her husband have struggled with their decision to keep their 8-year-old son in remote learning this school year but for altogether different reasons.
Horrigan said she’s never considered racism a threat to her family, even though Quincy has had tension over the years as the Asian American community has grown to roughly 25% of the population, transforming a city famous for being the birthplace of two American presidents.
Instead, she’s most concerned about exposing her household, including her Chinese immigrant parents in their 70s and two younger children, to COVID-19. At the same time, Horrigan worries about her son falling behind the longer he’s home.
