As Kamala Harris, Usha Vance bring marquee value to South Asian profile, a spike in online hate: report

Vice President Kamala Harris and Usha Vance, the wife of Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, have raised their profiles in the race for the White House, and their South Asian ancestry has been front and center during the 2024 campaign cycle.

Now, a new report from the advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate says it found that a rise in South Asian representation has coincided with anti-South Asian racism online.

Stop AAPI Hate, which collects data and research on anti-Asian hate, found that online threats of violence toward Asian communities reached their highest recent levels in August, when Harris was declared the presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention and Vance appeared at the Republican National Convention.

“The preelection surge in anti-South Asian hate stems from a toxic political climate in which a growing number of leaders and far-right extremist voices continue to spew bigoted political rhetoric and disinformation,” said Cynthia Choi, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, in a statement.

The group, in collaboration with extremism research group Moonshot, recorded 973 reports of online threats of violence against Asians in August 2024 alone; at least 75% of those threats were directed at South Asian communities.

The data shows that reports of anti-South Asian slurs on social media doubled from around 23,000 in January 2023 to more than 46,000 in August 2024.

The online slurs and stereotypes used against the community mirror the language of offline attacks, Stop AAPI Hate states -- including calls for South Asian residents to "go back" to their ancestral country.

“It’s clear that their hate-fueled rhetoric has sparked a wave of racism and discrimination against South Asian people ahead of the elections — but we cannot assume this hate will stop once the elections are over. In fact, we’re bracing for a further rise in hate to come,” said Choi.

FBI data also has shown anti-Asian hate crimes have not fallen to pre-pandemic levels amid inflammatory political rhetoric around the coronavirus.

Stop AAPI Hate warns that it could take months or years for data on in-person hate incidents to be collected and released by official agencies -- so online spaces can act as a warning for what people may be facing in real time.