Personally, I find that hate based on ethnicity, skin color, gender, and any other trait that a person is born with, is usually based in ignorance and/or fear, which means it’s a complete waste of time.

My niece, Francesca is a delightfully fun person who is also an intelligent and caring person. She has a great smile and the ability to make people around her feel good. To know that she’s been affected by ignorant racists was unfortunately, not as surprising as one would hope based on the rampant racism in America, but still disappointing, to say the least.

When COVID hit America, the prejudice against Asian people that has always been there, was amplified. Francesca responded by using her graphic arts skills and making cute and meaningful stickers to sell as a way to make money to help support efforts to push back against the hate. I interviewed Francesca about her efforts:

You created cute/fun stickers with the message to Stop Asian Hate during COVID. Could you describe how you came up with the idea and how the experience affected you? 

• Asian Hate has always been around but definitely became more rampant when COVID began. The mainstream news and media did not talk about it even though it was happening every day and the only way our community could keep up was through social media and following Asian based news pages or Asian reporters such as Cefaan Kim and Dion Lim. I was trying to bring awareness to my non-Asian friends and family by re-sharing troubling news and videos like the killing of Vicha Ratanapakdee through my own Instagram stories. It was difficult to watch but people needed to know this was happening to our community. A lot of the attacks were happening in the Bay Area, where I grew up, and where a lot of my family and friends are still living in. It was the 2021 Atlanta, Georgia mass shooting that really broke me. I felt so helpless only resharing stories. I felt I needed to channel my anger on something good. During one of the Asian Hate protests, I saw a picture of someone holding up a sign that said “love us like you love our food” and it truly resonated with me. I had started a small business a couple of years ago selling t-shirts and tote bags with my drawings. My drawings were of food, specifically dim sum, with cute little faces so that sign was calling to me. I decided I wanted to make stickers. I drew all types of popular Asian food, not just Dim Sum, to go along with “Love us like you love our food”. My husband made sure I had all the equipment and materials I needed to make this happen. I started selling them for $2 each with all proceeds being donated to an organization fighting to Stop Asian Hate. My friend reached out and said she would like to sell Stop Asian Hate keychains with me and all proceeds would be donated as well so that is how we partnered up. In the end we made $1,460 together and donated $730 to Hate is a Virus and $730 to Stop AAPI Hate. My friend put one of the stickers on his prosthetic leg at the Paralympics and won gold for USA sled hockey. It felt great knowing I helped a little in making a difference and I wish I could do more. It brought back my love for drawing and I definitely hope to re-open my small business again. 

Have you done other projects to bring awareness of Asian Hate before this? 

• No, this was my first time and it will not be my last. I have been supporting other artists who are using their art to fight Asian Hate as well. I’ll keep doing projects like these to help spread awareness until hopefully someday it isn’t needed.

If you had all the resources that you needed, what would you love to do to help spread your message? 

• My dream was to see the stickers all across the United States. I also would love to continue to create stickers and bring back my small business one day. 

If you’re comfortable, do you have examples of times that you’ve been harassed and/or treated badly because of your Asian heritage that you’d be willing to share?

• I am originally from the Bay Area in California. I grew up with a majority of Asians so I didn’t have much experience being treated badly because of my Asian heritage. Even in Vegas I never felt like I was ever harassed or discriminated against before. I was and am very proud of my Asian culture so when news about COVID started spreading before the lockdown happened, I started noticing little things that I thought were kind of funny before I realized what it actually was. When my husband (he is white) and I sat on pretty full flights on Southwest, he would be in the window seat, and I’d be in the middle seat but the aisle seat was never taken. I thought I had hit the jackpot each time! It got weird when we were cherry picked from the line in TSA and were escorted through, which I thought we had hit the jackpot again, only to do extra security. They opened up our bags and swabbed every single item we had and we noticed the only other person they did that to was another Asian woman. 
• It started to seem like these instances were too often to be just lucky chances, enough where that inner voice tells you that it just doesn’t feel right. 

• There was also a time when I went to our workout studio with a friend of mine who is also of Asian descent, and two non-Asian girls came in, looked at us, and said “Look, Coronavirus over there.”  We were in such shock, we didn’t even know how to react. 

Are there other peaceful activists that have motivated you? 

• I follow many on social media who are bringing awareness to the issue. 
• @dionlimtv and @bett_yu report about racially motivated crimes happening mainly in the Bay Area. This hits very close to home. 
• @cefaan reports about the hate crimes that happen mainly in New York. 
• @asiansarestrong reports on hate crimes and will give you tips and teach you moves on what to do if you were in that situation. 
• @hateisavirus educates through posts and podcasts. Their mission is to dismantle racism and other forms of hate. 

There are many others that have motivated me to do something about Asian Hate and these are only a fraction of the leaders in our community. We are all striving to Stop Asian Hate because we should not have to live in fear for ourselves and our loved ones when we do something as simple as taking a walk in our own neighborhood.  (Francesca Baker)