Avenger of the Week | Congresswoman Grace Meng

This week, Congresswoman Grace Meng of Queens, New York, who is of Taiwanese descent, stopped her prepared remarks at a hearing on anti-Asian hate and violence to call out another member of Congress who had earlier mingled references to lynchings along with remarks about Chinese Communists as bad guys. The hearing was held in the wake of the shooting of 10 people in Atlanta, six of whom were Asian women, at three Asian-owned spas.

The five-term Congresswoman rebuked her colleague for using such language, which creates fear in the community and encourages the very actions the hearing was designed to condemn.  

You don’t have to do it by putting a bullseye on the back of Asian-Americans across this country, on our grandparents, on our kids.” she asserted. “This hearing was to address the hurt and pain of our community and to find solutions. And we will not let you take our voice away from us!

As part of her testimony, Meng said:

Our community is bleeding. We are in pain, and we have been screaming out for help for the last year. There have been nearly 3,800 reported incidents of anti-Asian hate and nearly 70 percent of reported anti-Asian hate incidents have come from Asian American women. That is why the murder of the six Asian women in the Atlanta-area is even more tragic — because the Asian American community has been sounding the alarm for so long… I hope today’s hearing will bring us together and demonstrate this is not an Asian-American issue, but an American issue.

Meng has since tabled the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, which has received President Biden’s public support:

I introduced the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act to address the terrorizing incidents of hate and violence that’s been plaguing the Asian American community throughout this pandemic. Our children, our parents, our entire community deserves to live in peace… This has been a year of pain and struggle for our Asian American community.

Born and raised in Queens, she attended the prestigious Stuyvesant High School and graduated from the University of Michigan and Yeshiva University’s Benjamin Cardoza School of Law. She was a public interest lawyer before serving in the New York Assembly. She currently serves on the House Appropriations Committee, the Ethics Committee, and subcommittees on State and Foreign Relations, Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, and Related Agencies. She is the First  Vice-Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.

Congresswoman @RepGraceMeng is @GenderAvenger’s #AvengerOfTheWeek for insisting that Asian-American voices be heard, because “this is not an Asian-American issue, but an American issue.” #StopAsianHate #GenderAvenger https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/avenger-of-the-week-congresswoman-grace-meng