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Health Implications of Racialized State Violence Against South Asians in the USA

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Abstract

South Asians, one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the USA today, trace their roots to countries in the Indian subcontinent (e.g., Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka) and its global diaspora. With a wide range of cultural, religious, and linguistic diversity, as well as immigration experiences and inequality, South Asians have experienced racialized violence and discrimination since first arriving in the USA in the 1700s. Following September 11, 2001, South Asians and other groups racialized as “Brown,” including Muslim, Sikh, Middle Eastern, and Arab Americans, have experienced a marked increase in state violence, including racist laws, policies, and immigration enforcement. Despite abundant evidence of the adverse effects of violence on mental and physical health, there is limited research examining the impact of this racialized state violence on the health of South Asians in the USA. We summarize and synthesize existing peer-reviewed and gray literature on the prevalence and types of violence experienced by South Asians in the USA and enumerate their potential detrimental health impacts. We highlight the paucity of public health data and propose a conceptual framework describing how racialized violence and hate have significant implications for health among South Asians in the USA. Ultimately, these findings illuminate the need for change at the highest levels of governance to mitigate and resist hate violence, including through political participation and inclusion and equitable allocation of social and economic resources, to improve the health of South Asians in the USA.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the integral role of community and advocacy organizations, particularly South Asians Americans Leading Together (SAALT), for the data and insights that are part of the foundational work for this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. South Asian Public Health Association, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Supriya Misra, Nehanda Tankasala, Yousra Yusuf, Trushna Rao, Anto Paul, Samira Khan & Shipra Singh

  2. Department of Public Health, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Supriya Misra

  3. Department of Population Health, NYU Langone Health, New York City, NY, USA

    Yousra Yusuf

  4. Department of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, NY, USA

    Samira Khan

  5. School of Population Health, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH, USA

    Shipra Singh

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Misra, S., Tankasala, N., Yusuf, Y. et al. Health Implications of Racialized State Violence Against South Asians in the USA. J. Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 9, 1–8 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-021-01219-w

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