By P.C. Staff
In his first national address since taking office, President Biden on Thursday included comments condemning the surge of attacks against Americans of Asian descent.
In his 24-minute address, Biden referred to “vicious hate crimes against Asian Americans who have been attacked, harassed, blamed and scapegoated.”
“At this very moment, so many of them — our fellow Americans on the front lines of this pandemic trying to save lives — and still, still they are forced to live in fear for their lives just walking down streets in America. It’s wrong, it’s un-American, and it must stop,” Biden said.
Attacks upon individual Asian Americans, as well as acts of vandalism on Asian American-owned businesses and properties where Asian Americans frequent increased alarmingly over the past 12 months amid the national lockdown and quarantine imposed after the pandemic caused by the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which appears to have originated in China.
That situation has been exacerbated by trade and security tensions between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.
Biden’s comments on Thursday stand in contrast to the previous administration, in which government officials referred to the novel coronavirus as the “China virus” and the “Wuhan flu.”
A transcript of Biden’s speech can be found here.
