Tepid response to attacks against Asians is nothing new
by Gustavo Martínez Contreras
Photo: Tim Moyer Photography - Media Mobilizing Project
Students have brought attention to anti-Asian violence at South Philadelphia H.S.
In 1981, two stabbings and a series of brawls between African American and Asian students disrupted school life at University City High School.
Two years later, a Vietnamese student named Do Manh spent a month in traction after a pair of attacks at University City left him with a broken neck and a Laotian girl needing stitches in her lip.
Then, as now, in the aftermath of attacks on Asian students at South Philadelphia High, District officials were slow to recognize the problem as ethnic violence and take action. Only after community outcry did they move to respond.
“I went to see [Do Manh] at the hospital and found out from his classmates that no student had even been suspended for that assault,” recalled educator Debbie Wei.
“I ended up going to the newspapers, and after it got reported, then the District made an investigation,” Wei said. “If I hadn’t gone to the newspapers, nothing would have been done.”
In fact, it took Philadelphia police more than a month to get warrants and arrest the two teenagers charged with Do Manh’s beating because the school declined to cooperate in the investigation, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer story at the time.
District officials are no better able to cope and respond today, according to Xu Lin, an organizer with the Chinatown Development Corporation. He said that before th
