‘We’re Terrified’: How Asian American Entrepreneurs Are Responding to a Year of Racial Tension

‘We’re Terrified’: How Asian American Entrepreneurs Are Responding to a Year of Racial Tension

Last Tuesday night, Yvonne Gu Khan was in shock.Her restaurant, Gu's Dumplings, is just 3.5 miles south of the Gold Massage Spa and Aromatherapy Spa in Atlanta, where four Asian women were shot and killed earlier that evening--along with four other deaths at Young's Asian Massage in nearby Acworth, Georgia. Quickly, Khan assessed her building's security and was reassured to remember that guards lock the doors after 9 p.m. "We feel pretty safe," she says. "But at the same time, we're terrified."The motives of the assailant, who was apprehended later that night in south Georgia, may have been at least partly racially motivated. The incident hits home for many business owners of Asian and Pacific-Islander descent, some of whom have experienced heightened amounts of racism during the pandemic.The Covid-19 pandemic, which has, in some circles, been blamed on China, has been accompanied by a shocking uptick in anti-Asian racism across the country. Stop AAPI Hate, an advocacy group created last March to combat xenophobia and bigotry against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S., has counted 3,800 reports of hate incidents over just the past year, from verbal harassment to physical assault. Earlier this month, an analysis by the Center for the Study