Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, and a year after the fatal spa shootings in Atlanta that targeted and killed people of Asian descent, reports of anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander violence and bigotry have increased. Stop AAPI Hate, an organization tracking and reporting on these acts of racism that started since the stay-at-home orders began in the United States, released its most recent report this month, noting that verbal harassment continues to make up the largest share of reported incidents. Despite the fear and harm caused by the kind of street harassment lobbed against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, the conduct isn't criminal, leaving little recourse for its victims.
"If speech had no effect, we wouldn't be protecting it as a fundamental right of the constitution. Speech can have tremendously beneficial effects, but speech can also be really harmful and cause psychological harm and physical manifestations of the psychological harm," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law. "The fact that the speech is offensive and upsetting isn't enough under current First Amendment law for it to be punished."
Chemerinsky was also the founding dean of the University of California Irvine School of Law; has written more than 200 law review articles; and authored more than a dozen books, including his most recent, "Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights." Michael Ichiyama is a clinical psychologist and chair of the department of psychological sciences at the University of San Diego. Miwa Yasui is associate professor in the school of social work at the University of Chicago. They each took some time to discuss verbal harassment from a legal and psychological perspective, looking at how it's defined and the ramifications for its victims. (These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.)
