In the wake of an increase in bigotry against the Asian American community and former NBA star Jeremy Lin revealing he has been called “coronavirus” while playing in a basketball game over the past year, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts is speaking out against anti-Asian racism.
Roberts, who is the son of a Japanese mother and Black father, sent an email to the entire Dodgers organization, which has not publicly addressed the #StopAsianHate movement.
“Over the past year, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of hate crimes against Asian Americans and the Pacific Islander community,” Roberts wrote in the internal email. “In recent months, those attacks have intensified and have targeted the elderly in California and New York — such bullying is cowardice. Unfortunately anti-Asian sentiment is a part of American history (see 1880s, 1940s, or the 1980s as examples) and it has resurfaced again during the pandemic as some seem to blame the world’s problems on one ethnic group.”
There were more than 1,800 racist incidents against Asian Americans in the period between March and May 2020 across the United States, according to the United Nations. Last month, MLB put out a statement condemning the ongoing bigotry.
On Monday, Roberts said his email to the organization was “received the way it was intended.”
“I just think that there’s a lot of things going on in and outside of our country towards Asians, and racist, bullying acts,” he said. “It hit obviously close to home for me, and I just felt that I wanted to address it internally and show my support for the Asian Americans in our organization first off. We’re all aware of it. It’s just something that was in my heart that I felt needed to be shared.”
More than 11.3% of the population in the Los Angeles metro area identifies as Asian, according to the 2010 census.
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