Attorneys Sara Hamilton And Angela Hsu On The Current Social Climate And The Creation Of The AAPI Crime Victims & Education Fund

The fund’s mission is to assist AAPI crime victims and to support education and awareness programs aimed at reducing violence targeted toward the AAPI community.

Sara Hamilton

“There are things that the homilies and hymns won’t teach you / My mother was a genius / My father commanded respect / When they died they left no instructions / Just a legacy to protect.” — Lin-Manuel Miranda

This week, I had the opportunity to connect with Sara Hamilton and Angela Hsu.

Hamilton is a litigation and employment attorney at Thompson Hine LLP, board member of the Georgia Asian Pacific American Bar Association (GAPABA), and founding member and president of the Korean-American Bar Association of Georgia (KABA-GA).

Angela Hsu

Hsu is counsel at Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP, president of GAPABA, and chairman of the State of Georgia Commission on Equal Opportunity Board.

In the aftermath of last month’s spa shootings in Atlanta, Hamilton and Hsu, along with many other notable Asian attorneys and community leaders — from GAPABA, KABA-GA, Center for Pan Asian Community Services (CPACS), and Asian Americans Advancing Justice — have come together to create the first of its kind “AAPI Crime Victims & Education Fund.”

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The fund’s mission is to assist AAPI crime victims and to support education and awareness programs aimed at reducing violence targeted toward the AAPI community. It is the first national fundraising effort focused on crime directed toward the AAPI community.

While we work to untangle the Gordian knot of significant underrepresentation in the leadership ranks of law firms, government, and academia, our community is being attacked on a daily basis based on our race and ethnicity. It seems like only yesterday we lost Trinh Huynh in a senseless tragedy.

Since then, and throughout this pandemic, we have lost countless more to targeted acts of violence and hate crimes. Racism and xenophobia during this COVID-19 era have not only been dangerous for our community, but they have also been deadly.

Asian American attorneys like Hamilton and Hsu and affinity groups like GAPABA have given me hope that our country can do better and that our community is ready to turn this historic moment into a movement. This year, I have often thought about Lincoln’s famous quote: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

And after speaking with Hamilton and Hsu, I’m convinced our community will not only survive this coronavirus pandemic, we will emerge stronger from the pandemic. We will not only dream of a better state, we will fight for a better state.

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Without further ado, here is a (lightly edited and condensed) write-up of our conversation:

Renwei Chung (RC): Can you share with our audience a bit about your backgrounds and why you became attorneys?

Sara Hamilton (SH): I grew up in Oregon, where I studied music and philosophy. I became interested in government after interning with State Rep. John Lim. I love and appreciate music and art, and law actually complements that. I spent some time abroad in Asia afterward. Law school seemed like the natural next step.

So yes, it was part planned and part, “What the heck else am I going to do with my music and philosophy degrees?!” I practice labor and employment law in Atlanta at Thompson Hine LLP. I particularly enjoy labor law and might be the only management-side labor AAPI lawyer under the age of 40 you have ever met.

Angela Hsu (AH): I stumbled into becoming an attorney because I had an undergraduate degree in architecture, but I knew I did not want to become an architect. So my dad told me to go to law school.

RC: How would you describe the current social climate for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) in America?

SH: Challenging and inspiring. The term “AAPI community” is a misnomer for an incredibly diverse group. For instance, AAPIs have the fastest-growing buying power, but once that data is disaggregated, AAPIs are actually the most economically disparate. Similar trends are found when reviewing disaggregated data with regard to education, political beliefs, etc.

But recently, no matter where you fell under this massive umbrella, it’s been almost universally challenging, albeit in different ways. Even younger AAPIs in particular who do not strongly identify as Asian-American could not help but feel a tug at their heart seeing local businesses shutter and grandmas being randomly attacked on the streets. But it’s also been inspiring. I’ve not seen such civic participation before. There’s a genuine interest in helping others and helping the community.

AH: Racism against AAPI and other people of color exists, but I see our culture shifting towards greater inclusivity. When I just arrived in the United States in the early 1970s, for example, there were almost no images of Asian Americans anywhere, not in print media and not in movies or television.

My brother and I were always two out of a handful of Asian Americans at school. We were picked [on or ] harassed on a regular basis, both in Southern California and in Tennessee. My kids were definitely not subjected to the same level of racism.

RC: Angela, you mentioned how today’s racism against China and those of Chinese descent is reminiscent of the racism against Japan and those of Japanese descent in the 1980s. Can you expound on this concept?

AH: There is a real danger in being seen as the perpetual foreigner. During WWII, 127,000 Americans were incarcerated for being of Japanese descent. Descendants of European axis powers were not incarcerated. In the 1980s, Japanese car manufacturers were out-competing American car manufacturers. Angry, laid-off auto workers killed Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, because they were angry at Japanese carmakers.

You can draw a straight line to today and Trump rhetoric attempting to blame the coronavirus on the Chinese government. This blame sticks to Asian Americans, even though the virus is a disease and China is a foreign country. The people who have been scapegoated are often not even of Chinese descent. When the U.S. has a conflict with European Countries, people do not run around looking for Caucasians who might look French or Russian to attack. When the U.S. was angry at France in the early 2000s some French fries were rechristened Freedom fries, but no one punched any grandmas in the face.

RC: Sara, there was an incident in 2014 you briefly addressed. And you said our community doesn’t really talk about its struggles rather we internalize it in our attempt to be “good Asians” — what do you mean by this?

SH: In 2014, I was walking home when strangers committed a totally unprovoked act. They used derogatory race-based language and laughed afterward while asking whether I could defend myself with kung fu or jiujitsu.

I was lucky because the DA prosecuted it, resulting in a plea. At the time, I didn’t tell anyone, including my employer or closest friends. In hindsight, that was a mistake. But the whole thing was just so bizarre. Although everything was caught on CCTV, I actually doubted whether people would believe me, or worse, I worried they would think it was comical because Asian people and culture are so frequently the butts of jokes.

There is an invisibility of such crimes or even a belief that AAPIs are discriminated against in other ways. I felt pressured as a young professional to keep my head down (I was at a different firm at the time) and just work. I only recently decided to share this in light of the disbelief over the many sad and unprovoked attacks that made the news and after meeting Rep. Andy Kim, who bravely shared his struggles with discrimination as a young professional and encouraged us to speak up.

RC: Sara, you discovered only .2 of 1% of donations go to the AAPI community. How did you figure this out and why does this matter?

SH: Only 20 cents out of every $100 of foundation giving goes to support the AAPI community. It’s the worst of any group, even though AAPIs are the fastest growing. Moreover, nearly 33% of that already-limited funding is designated for communities in California.

As a lawyer, I believe in government and strong institutions. But government cannot be the solution for everything. Individual people have incredible ability, and I think with that, a special duty.

We need to commit to individual giving and also elevate our stories and community to put them on the radar of foundations and corporate giving departments. I was so pleased to hear of the Asian American Foundation that was launched recently.

RC: Angela, xenophobia against the AAPI community hasn’t just been dangerous, it’s been deadly. As you accurately observed, thousands have been victimized during this pandemic and this is a historical moment for our country … . How can we best meet the moment?

AH: We can meet this moment by speaking up and speaking out when we have the opportunity. We have to shape our own narrative because people outside of our community will get it wrong. I can’t tell you how many well-meaning DEI initiatives are focus on Asian food culture which is accessible, but may emphasize the exotic and foreign aspects of our stereotype.

We can take the time to learn more about Asian American history and the history of other people of color which is often glossed over in U.S. history. We can engage politically. AAPI political engagement in Georgia was likely a large factor in sending Democrats to the Senate. Many AAPI are politically conservative, but they are turned off by racist rhetoric from certain segments of the GOP.

We can raise money for causes that will help our community. Through the tragedy of the shootings, it has galvanized our community as well as the larger community, leaders, major companies, all wanting to do something. The shootings finally focused attention on violence against AAPIs which had been brewing for over a year; we have some momentum and energy, so we need to direct these resources towards solutions and assistance.

RC: What prompted you to come together and create the AAPI Crime Victims & Education Fund?

SH: In short, we saw a need and felt a duty. We were put in this time and place due to the tragic mass shooting on March 16, which killed eight people, six of whom were AAPI women. It occurred in a broader context of nearly 3,800 incidents of harassment or crime against AAPIs in a 12-month period.

As lawyers and AAPI community leaders, we are uniquely situated. We have one foot in the legal system, which is intimately connected to any incident of crime, and one foot in the community, where we go to church and get our late-night fix of bulgogi.

We are blessed to have the perspective of many experienced lawyers such as former U.S. Attorney BJay Pak, who is co-chairing the initiative. Although bias and crimes against AAPIs just now seem to be making the news, they were happening even before now.

At our press launch, BJay spoke of a business owner who was robbed and shot while cowering in fear. The perpetrators had targeted numerous AAPI businesses based on false stereotypes that they held cash and wouldn’t fight.

She didn’t have a GoFundMe, it barely made the news. In some cultures, some victims may not seek financial assistance even if they desperately need it. The GAPABA Law Foundation has raised and granted over $250,000 in the last few years. We already had the structure in place. We felt a calling. We didn’t know what we could do, but we figured we would try and do something.

AH: Because there were many, many people both inside and outside our community who decided after the Atlanta shootings that enough was enough. We and others had issued statements during the pandemic, but talk was getting us nowhere.

RC: What would success look like for the Fund?

SH: Raising $1 million and using our knowledge as lawyers and leaders to get that money where it can be used best. GAPABA and KABA-GA are professional bar associations first and foremost, we do not provide direct services. We find that supporting groups that do provide direct services, through the GAPABA Law Foundation, is how we are best situated for the moment.

GAPABA Law Foundation has supported big groups like Asian Americans Advancing Justice and other, smaller groups that are desperately in need of funds and doing important work, but are way off the radar of any large corporate departments or foundations.

The fund is also an opportunity to start a conversation. It’s not easy to talk about race or social problems, but it’s vital that we do so because we are all connected in the end. I get that it’s not easy to start that conversation. The hesitation is from a good place, mostly not wanting to say the wrong thing. The current environment is tragic, but the silver lining is that it has opened a pathway into these discussions and into the community.

AH: Raising enough money so that it can both fund prevention efforts and provide resources for bias crime victims across the country.

On behalf of everyone here at Above the Law, I would like to thank Sara Hamilton and Angela Hsu for sharing their stories with our audience. We wish them continued success in their careers. If you are interested in following up with either of them, Hamilton can be reached at sarahamilton08@gmail.com, and Hsu can be reached at angelahsu2014@gmail.com.

Lastly, in honor of AAPI Heritage Month, be sure to check out PBS’s free streaming of American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, as part of its 31 Stories for 31 Days of AAPI Heritage Month.


Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact him by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@fnfour), or connect with him on LinkedIn