Support Your Local Chinatown and Asian-Owned Businesses

In celebration of the Lunar New Year and in light of the rise in hate crimes towards Asian Americans, this is a call to action to support your Asian communities.

How to Support

Visit Chinatown

If you live in a city with a Chinatown community like we do here in Chicago, make an effort to visit. Chinatowns are typically full of beautiful architecture and vibrant art. Enjoy the views, learn about the community and share on social media to give more visibility to the neighborhood and combat stigma.

If you haven’t been to Ping Tom Memorial Park in Chicago, you must check it out!

Grab Takeout

Order takeout from local Chinatown restaurant or another Asian-centric restaurant. I did a bunch of research of different Chinatown restaurants I want to try next so I can spread the love. Leave reviews, post photos and recommend where you visit to elevate the business.

Where I plan to support or recommend:

Get Groceries

Try different Asian-inspired meals at home and venture to your local Asian market or grocery store. Support them and buy ingredients there rather than at your usual or go-to grocery store. You are likely to find way more variety than a small “Asian and ethic” aisle and you’ll support a non-chain business.

Where I plan to support or recommend:

Shop Beyond Food

Of course supporting restaurants is important, but go further and put purchase power behind different stores, gift shops or Asian artists in your community.

Where I plan to support or recommend:

Donate, Educate & Advocate

Most importantly, continue to educate yourself and those around you, fight stigmas against Asian Americans, especially those around the pandemic, and donate to great causes supporting Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.

Why Support

Asian Based Hate Crimes Are Rising

Since coronavirus’s inception, xenophobic and racist acts have surged around Asian communities. Stop AAPI Hate has logged more than 2,500 incidents of discrimination across the U.S. since mid-March. This has been exacerbated by the country’s former “leadership” referring to COVID-19 as the “China virus” or “kung flu.” A recent Pew Study reports that since COVID-19 about 40% of U.S. adults believe “it has become more common for people to express racist views toward Asians since the pandemic began.”

Source: Pew Research

COVID Disproportionately Affects Asian Americans

As the we near the one-year mark of wide-spread shutdowns across the country, we must increase our efforts to support the Asian community. COVID is disproportionately affecting this demographic.

  • Source: USA Today

NYC’s Chinatowns have seen business drop from 50 to 70 percent (Eater) and statistics in New York City also point to a dramatic fallout for Asians who have seen the sharpest increase in unemployment countrywide since February (Washington Post).

Asian-Owned Businesses Are Hurting

The restaurant industry was hit hard by the pandemic and 10 percent of Asian-owned companies in the United States were restaurants or other food businesses, a share far higher than any other group (Washington Post).

Throughout the pandemic we’ve seen rallies of efforts to support small and local businesses (yay!) and tons of efforts to help support and bring visibility to Black and other BIPOC businesses (extreme yay!), especially since Black and Latine communities have had the largest impact from the pandemic.

But now, I must ask, how are you supporting Asian-owned businesses?

Sources

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