From the February 8, 2021, edition of MSNBC's The Reid Out

JOY REID (ANCHOR): Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have seen increasing reports of racist attacks targeting members of the Asian American community. Both the Anti-Defamation League and the website Stop AAPI Hate, which has been tracking the incidents since March, when the country went into lockdown, report thousands of cases of violent or verbal attacks. Some community organizers worry that those numbers do not accurately reflect the current situation, because many are afraid to report the attacks to authorities. Anti-raise Asian racism is not new in this country. In the 19th century similar xenophobic sentiments led to the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring immigration based solely on race. In the first days of his presidency, Joe Biden issued a memorandum publicly condemning this racism, xenophobia, and intolerance.

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REID: How much can we connect the rash of violence against Asian Americans to the previous president's rhetoric about the coronavirus? 

REP. ANDY KIM (D-NJ): Yeah, there's no doubt that there's a connection there, and that needs to be something that is brought out, something that helps us understand as a community how to be able to move forward from here. Many Asian Americans across this country, myself included, have experienced first-hand that type of discrimination and hatred over the last year, and it is something that we see manifested in the horrible videos, and it is just so hard to watch, of elderly Asian Americans being pushed -- killed, attacked over the last few days, weeks. These are the types of things we need to make sure we come together to condemn. 

REID: You know, and Connie Wun, thank you very much. I think the one I saw that actually QuestLove was raising up some of these specific cases, there was an elderly man in San Francisco who was killed in an attack. His family is saying it was a racist attack. The daughter of Vicha Ratanapakdee, his daughter's name is Kim, told a local news station that her father was targeted because he was an elderly Asian man. She added that she's received racist harassment and verbal abuse since the beginning of the pandemic. In your view, is this tied mainly to that and to this discrimination against Asian Americans thinking, “Oh, you know, this is where I can direct my anger about COVID," or is there something deeper, more to it that we need to look into? 

CONNIE WUN (CO-FOUNDER, AAPI WOMEN LEAD): Thanks for having us on the show. I do want to say a couple of things. I think the racism and xenophobia towards Asian Americans and Asians has long existed before the Trump administration. So, I think we need to historicize that and remember that as a part of the United States' kind of long history with white supremacy. 

Now with the Trump administration, that was exacerbated. Because of things like you noted the China -- the Chinese flu or the China virus, right. That exacerbated the already underlying xenophobia and racism against Asians, and then what we have right now is a condition by which our communities have historically and continue to be invisibilized. The stories about us being -- theres 12% of Asian Americans and Asians live under poverty. Up to 40% of our Mahl community live under poverty. Those stories are invisible, they're neglected, and they're unknown. The fact that so many of our communities, Asian Americans, Asians are facing immigration deportation, racial profiling. In December of -- December 30, 2020, one of our Chinese American 19-year-old boy and sons was killed by the police -- by Pennsylvania state troopers. Those stories are invisible, and because of that we end up becoming even more vulnerable to the violence and the rage that you're talking about, Joy. People are kind of narrowing in their rage on to our communities, which they don't understand are also historically, and have been, and continue to suffer under racism and white supremacy and xenophobia and poverty. 

REID: Can I stay with you for just one moment because there is -- right. Well there is this like sort of almost sort of exoticizing the Asian American community with stuff like Bling Empire or Crazy Rich Asians -- that represents the Asian American community. And the thought that it's an elite community, a wealthy community, a well-educated community, and this idea that people aren't hurting. You're giving a different narrative that people are actually hurting, that is not real. What's real is that people are actually hurting and that racialized and racism against Asian Americans is happening, and no one is paying attention. 

WUN: Perfect. That's exactly the case. Every day that I'm in Chinatown, where my family is from in Oakland, we walk around seeing Chinese grandmothers and grandfathers, aunties and uncles selling canned food for a dollar -- like for two cans, right? So they're out here suffering while media is presenting us as if we are crazy rich Asians, that we are a part of the bling empire, that we are these well-off communities when that is actually not the case. A number of Southeast Asian community members continue to be racially profiled, live under poverty, and my family, growing up in Oakland, and the Bay Area, we didn't have those kind of, you know, resources that are being portrayed on the media and so people come into our neighborhood assuming we have that, that makes us extremely vulnerable to violence and misconceptions and stereotypes about us. 

REID: That's a very good point, and so, congressman Kim, what should we be doing here? Is the Biden administration sort of edict that they are going to address this racism, there's so much racism they have to try to deal with, is there a legislative solution? Is the solution cultural? What should we be doing here?

KIM: Look. It's not a problem that you can legislate away. There's no way to write a perfect bill or law that’s going to change this. It starts by what you're doing right now, so thank you. You're raising the visibility of this as mentioned by your guest here. Just raising that visibility, having that image of the elderly man pushed and shoved, have that seared into us and recognize that that could be our grandfather, our father, our loved one. Recognize that the problem with the Asian American community, this is not just for the Asian American community, this is for all of us.