NATIONWIDE — Two days after Stop Asian Hate rallies swept across the country, a new poll finds that half of Asian American and Pacific Islander women have been affected by racism.

Seventy-eight percent of AAPI women said they had been affected by anti-Asian racism within the past two years, and half reported they had personally experienced racist incidents, according to the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum.  

The most common form of self-reported anti-Asian racism was being called a racial slur, followed by feeling unsafe walking around outside, and experiencing discrimination or harassment at work, the NAPAWF found. The Harris Poll conducted the research on behalf of the NAPAWF two weeks before six Asian-American women were killed in the Atlanta area.

“This is a watershed moment for the United States,” Executive Director Sung Yeon Choimorrow said in a statement. “The deaths of the six Asian-American women in Atlanta, who were the victims of specific racialized gendered violence, were deeply felt by AAPI women across the country who recognized themselves in these women.”

Seven in ten AAPI women in the NAPAWF survey said it was either very or extremely important to improve protections for immigrants from violence. 

“Even before the pandemic and the racist scapegoating that was perpetuated by President Trump and his supporters, AAPI women have long been the targets of ugly racial misogyny and fetishization," said Choimorrow.