Following the COVID-19 outbreak, Asian Americans, more specifically East and Southeast Asian Americans, have become the targets of racism, discrimination, and hate crimes. Mirroring this broader societal problem of COVID-related racism, schools have become a hostile environment for Asian American students with a significant rise in bullying and discriminatory incidents. In addition to experiencing harassment and discrimination in schools, Asian American students have also reported such incidents in online platforms. Both in-person and online COVID-related discrimination experienced by Asian American students have been linked to the PTSD symptoms, racial trauma, in this minoritized population. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to serve as a resource for school counselors to implement trauma-informed, culturally-sensitive practices, using the multitiered systems of support (MTSS) as a guide, when working with Asian American youth affected by COVID-19-related racial discrimination.
Yu-Jun is a 16-year-old Korean female high school student attending a White-majority public school. She is one of only a few Asian American students in her high school. After the COVID-19 outbreak, Yu-Jun feels that the school environment has become particularly hostile and unsafe. At school, a group of her classmates started to taunt her with a racist “slanted eyes” gesture. When she confided this incident in one of her teachers, the teacher did not take this seriously, and she felt discouraged and unvalidated. On several occasions, this group of students continued to surround her and pretend to cough on her. They even pushed her and shouted, “Ching chong! You have the Chinese virus! Your insides are full of bats! You should kill yourself because you are dirty dog eaters.” Using an anonymous account, the group also created a fake profile with Yu-Jun's photoshopped pictures eating bats and racial slurs on them and spread them on social media sites.
Imagine that you are the school counselor at Yu-Jun's school. She sees a poster on your office wall that is supportive of Asian Americans and approaches you to tell about the harassment and discrimination she has experienced at school. She reports such symptoms as having nightmares, avoiding the classmates, experiencing uncontrolled crying spells in her room for an hour at a time, and feeling “punched in the stomach”. After hearing about Yu-Jun's experiences, what would you do?
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Across the globe, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been spreading rapidly since its outbreak in December 2019. As of October 8, 2021, about 236,599,025 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in more than 150 countries, resulting in 4,831,436 deaths around the world. With the emergence of the virus in Wuhan, China (Wu et al., 2021) and the extensive anxiety surrounding the COVID-19 disease (Lee, 2020), the climate of xenophobia and racism targeting people of Asian descent have soared in the United States (Congressional Asian American Pacific American Caucus [CAPAC], 2020; Litam, 2020). Within one month, for example, Asian Americans reported approximately 1,500 racist attacks with incidents ranging from being yelled at to spit on and physically attacked (Liu & Modir, 2020).
The Anti-Asian sentiments in the broader society have manifested in schools as bullying, harassment, and discrimination. For example, Ermis-Demirtas et al. (in press), in their study, have found that 73.3% of the participants (n = 116) experienced COVID-related discrimination in either online or in-person settings, 81.9% witnessed COVID-related discrimination, and 83.6% witnessed anti-Asian sentiments associated with the pandemic. There a growing body of evidence suggesting an adverse impact of COVID-fueled discrimination on the mental health and psychological wellbeing of Asian American students (Akiba, 2020). Although empirical research has not extensively addressed such findings given the recency of the situation, Cheah et al. (2020) have reported worrying outcomes, connecting the experiences of COVID-related discrimination to poor psychological health for Asian American youth. More specifically, Ermis-Demirtas et al. (in press), in their recent study, have reported the relationship of COVID-19 direct and vicarious racial discrimination in online and offline (in-person) settings with the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in East and Southeast Asian American high school students. Given the prevalence of racist incidents targeting Asian American students and findings linking COVID-19 fueled racial discrimination to trauma in this population, we urge school counselors to educate themselves and apply the best practices in culturally sensitive, trauma-informed school counseling to address COVID-associated racial trauma in this group of students.