Urban Study

Racism, Trumpism, and Hate Crime: The Urban Inequality of Neoliberal Racism

GEOG 450

2021 Winter Term 2

Instructor: Elvin Wyly

Justice for our Lives Project, 2014-2020.

Artist Oree Originol, presented in MOA UBC, June 2022.

Photo by Dylan Di

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic boosted the anti-Asian hate crime across the United States to a historical high level that has never been seen since the begin of 2000s. Hate crimes, as well as other racism activities, now become a primary contributor to the urban inequality through the traditional historical colonial capital and the ignorance of neoliberalism. In this paper, the author involved a large range of previous research to explain the relationship between racism, neoliberalism and urban inequality, and how it encouraged the development of hate crime especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, by using evidence from the database from Open Justice California, statistics on the variables of hate crime drew a picture on the new changes in hate crimes and showed some important factors that affected the pattern of hate crimes. The literature review reveled the deep connection between racism and the traditional of colonialism, and how neoliberalism lowered the awareness of racism instead of a constructional revolution. Besides, it also pointed out the shortage of current research on the new shifts of urban inequality, including Trumpism and displacements’ development in cities, and how it affected the urban minority groups, especially Asian immigrants. Statistics presented the fact that the level of hate crimes’ cases number had a significant increase since the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in high Asian population area. Meanwhile, the background of suspect and crime formats became more diverse compared with the pre-pandemic level. Even though the regression model did not provide a strong evidence on a predictable model of hate crime, there was still some noticeable factors need more attention for better learn hate crimes.