You know what we’ve been missing? Right! Lately, we just haven’t had enough New York Times op-eds on the theme of Hate Whitey from self-promoting Asian women writers. But happy days are here again:

When Asian-Americans Have to Prove We Belong
This isn’t the first time we’ve been treated as a threat.

By Jia Lynn Yang, April 10, 2020

Jia Lynn Yang is a deputy national editor at The New York Times and the author of the forthcoming book “One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965,” from which this essay is adapted.

The coronavirus pandemic has unleashed a torrent of anti-Asian racism in America that shows no signs of abating. Asian-Americans have been spat on in the streets, harassed and insulted. Even children have been attacked as our fellow citizens blame us for a virus that threatens our families no less than any other household.

This is not the first season of darkness for Asian-Americans in this country. Nearly 80 years ago, Japanese-Americans were forced from their homes into barren internment camps.

The most strident voices after Pearl Harbor against Japanese-Americans tended to be from their fellow Asian-Americans, such as the Chinese and, especially, the Filipinos. But who can remember which nations were on which side in World War II?