Holocaust Museum confronts hate speech

A young Asian American woman holding a sign "Hate Is A Virus" was the first image that welcomes visitors to the "Speaking Up! Confronting Hate Speech" exhibition, held at the Holocaust Museum of Houston (HMH).

"Hate speech consists of words – whether written or spoken – that express animus toward an individual (or groups of individuals) on the basis of their group identity or toward the group as a whole," Carol Manley, chief curator of HMH, pointed to the definition made by David Simon, director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University and one of the exhibition curators.

Manley, who discussed the exhibition, drew attention to the accompanying radio static sound. "It's annoying, it's part of the sensory experience, the static of hate speech," she explained.

There are arrows going all over the place on the exhibition walls. "The arrows point to all different directions to illustrate how hate speech travels," Manley said.

Featuring an anti-Jewish poster from Yugoslavia in 1941 and German anti-Jewish propaganda film poster of The Eternal Jewin 1940, the exhibition also showcased the 1990s Rwanda genocide where hate speeches was disseminated primarily through radios, crackdown on communist party in Indonesia during 1960s under the call of its president, and ISIS's branding Shi'ite Muslims and other groups as "heretics".

It also highlighted what happened in the United States: anti-gay speech by politicians, White Supremacists' belief that white race is inherently superior and should have more power over other races, the use of "N-word", and calling the novel coronavirus "kung-flu" by former US president Donald Trump in June 2020.

"Using images of perpetuating stereotypes, we want people to be able to recognize hate speech, we want people to be able to respond," Manley said.
Arranged in circles, she said the inner layer showed what hate speech is and what kind of violence it could lead to. The outer layer shows what people can do to stop hate speech.

"Hate speech has been utilized throughout the generations of mankind. They [the curators] did a good job of taking a different segment of the human condition and identify how hate speech created violent acts and genocide," Kelly Zuniga, CEO of HMH, told China Daily.

"The key to the exhibition is the current day awareness. And there is the social media aspect that didn't exist 10 years ago. It teaches people how to identify what it is and how dangerous it is when it's used as a tool and how violent acts generally occur after the use of hate speech," she said.

Zuniga said another important element of the exhibit is to show people how they can take action against hateful speech and violent acts.

"It's not just a passive warning exhibition. We want people to feel like that they are empowered, they can do something, they can make changes to the society we are living today," she said.

The New York Police Department reported that anti-Asian hate crimes had surged by 361 percent as of December 2021 over the previous year.

As hate speech against Asians became more prevalent among US leaders and the social media, hate crimes against Asian Americans have been on the rise not just in New York but nationwide.

According to Stop AAPI Hate (SAH)'s latest report, from March 2020 to September 2021, the organization received 10,370 hate incidents against Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), of which 16.3 percent involved physical assaults.

The FBI's recent data showed that Anti-Asian hate crimes increased by more than 73 percent in 2020.

The rise of anti-Asian hate speech and crimes in the US since the pandemic was one of the primary reasons for this exhibition, said Nancy Li-Tarim, co-chair of the exhibition.

"From Jewish professional research, we connect the current situation to history, to the holocaust. There is so many ways to look at this, and this is viewed from outside of the Asian community, it's very unique, we are the first one in the US to do this," Li-Tarim said.

Both Li-Tarim and Zuniga said the exhibition will offer free to any other communities, including the Chinese communities throughout the country.

In addition, a two-day conference is planned at the end of February to look at the long history of Asian Americans and how to move forward beyond racism to foster equality and social justice for all.

"The conference will serve as a launch pad for additional academic program that will occur annually at our museum for the AAPI community. We serve as a resource for that community and any other minority community," Zuniga said.