Asian-American students in New York respond to racist abuse with help of mentors and advice from non-profit

Racial harassment of Asian-Americans has risen in the US amid the coronavirus pandemic; a 16-year-old in a New York school is among its victims

The teen is one of many in the city being mentored by non-profit Apex for Youth and shown how to respond. ‘Our generation should speak up,’ he says

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Teenage Asian-Americans from New York on a field trip run by non-profit Apex for Youth, which mentors them and teaches them how to respond to harassment, racism and bullying.

Published: 6:45am, 7 May 2020Updated: 10:04am, 8 May 2020

Earlier this year, Jason Chen Weiping was left speechless when an older student at school in New York taunted him with a video of a Chinese woman eating bat soup.

“He said that Asians were freaks, that they caused the coronavirus. I didn’t know how to respond. I felt he was justified for what he was saying because he had the video,” recalls the 16-year-old, who was born in Taishan, in Guangdong province, southern China, and immigrated to the US with his mother when he was a baby.

Jason has since discovered that the video was filmed three years ago in Palau, Micronesia – not in China.

Cases of harassment and bullying of Asian-Americans have surged in the United States since the coronavirus began spreading there, months after the first cluster of Covid-19 cases was reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December. This new wave of racism has inspired non-profit organisation Apex for Youth to take a stand.

Apex for Youth encourages young Asian-Americans to point out that the coronavirus pandemic has nothing to do with ethnicity. Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto

The group organises workshops and mentoring for school-age Asian-Americans from disadvantaged backgrounds in New York.

Even before the pandemic broke out, more than half of Asian-American students in the US said they had been bullied at school – which is more than any other ethnic group, says Jiyoon Mary Chung, interim executive director of Apex.