"Honor our civil rights": New legal fund helps Asian Americans fight workplace discrimination

An organization formed in response to a spike in hate crimes during the pandemic is unveiling a new legal fund aimed at defending Asian Americans from workplace discrimination.

Why it matters: Over 1 in 5 Asian adults say they've experienced workplace discrimination because of their race or ethnicity, including being turned down for a job, denied a promotion or fired, per a November analysis by the Pew Research Center.

Driving the news: Stand with Asian Americans (SWAA) is launching a legal fund to help Asian Americans feel empowered to take legal action against workplace discrimination, co-founder Justin Zhu announced Monday at a panel about challenging stereotypes of passivity in the workplace.

• Funds for the Workplace Justice Initiative (WJI) will enable an in-house team of civil rights attorneys to offer representation to individual plaintiffs while also seeking to establish legal precedents to formally recognize and condemn anti-Asian discrimination in the workplace.
• SWAA, which recently kicked off fundraising for the WJI, aims to demystify the legal process for Asian Americans, according to SWAA communications adviser Jack Song.

What they're saying: Though racial slurs are not as common as they were in the workplace, Asian Americans often face "coded language," civil rights attorney Charles Jung told Axios at the panel. That includes tropes and stereotypes used to "undermine Asian Americans."

• "There's this tightrope that we have to walk" —  if you're collaborative you're not leadership material, but if you take initiative you're "too aggressive," said panelist Vaishnavi Jayakumar, a policy adviser who worked in Big Tech.
• Jung said the work done by WJI will show that "actually you need to honor our civil rights."

State of play: SWAA is one of several Bay Area groups that formed to combat anti-Asian hate during the pandemic.

• San Francisco recorded a 567% increase in anti-AAPI hate crimes from 2020 to 2021.
• A survey released this month found that 1 in 3 Asian Americans reported being the subject of hate this past year, while 59% think it is at least somewhat likely they will be a victim of discrimination in the next five years.

Yes, but: Workplace discrimination is often difficult to report and resolve since the burden of proof is on employees.

• Asian Americans say they are often left out of the DEI conversation due to the " model minority myth " and remain vastly underrepresented at the leadership level in Silicon Valley's tech industry .
• A 2023 Coqual study found that 36% of Asian professionals say they have experienced racial prejudice at their current or former companies.

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to remove a description of Stand With Asian Americans as a local organization.

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