Cummins Chairman and CEO Tom Linebarger is speaking out against anti-Asian xenophobia due the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide increase in hate incidents targeting people of Asian descent over the past year, including Cummins employees in Columbus.
Linebarger told The Republic on Tuesday that Cummins employees of Asian descent have been receiving more discriminatory remarks and threatening looks in public since the pandemic started and "I want to stand up for" employees.
Employees of Asian descent, including some in Columbus, have reported a “pretty wide range of emotions” over the past year due to the increase in incidents across the country, including disappointment, anger, as well as fear and anxiety when going to the grocery store, Linebarger said.
“Things have gotten notably worse in the last year and many of them we’re feeling quite scared about just normal everyday activities,” he said. “They were worried about their parents going outside. That’s how bad it has gotten.”
“There is a heightened level of concern … This is different and worse,” he said.
Linebarger said he sent out a note to all employees on Monday “to make sure that people knew that I care, but also to call our employees to action to “step up, speak up and speak out” and “stand with your colleagues.”
“These (employees) are people that work for us, give us everything they have in the company, they are great members of our community and they’re in our churches and they just need to have a voice to say that this is not right.”
The comments from Linebarger came about a week after a white man shot and killed eight people at three Georgia massage parlors, including six women of Asian descent, according to The Associated Press.
Additionally, watchdogs and police have reported a sharp increase in hostilities toward people of Asian descent in the U.S., including the killing of an 84-year old San Francisco man of Thai descent in February, according to wire reports.
Nearly 3,800 incidents have been reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a California-based reporting center for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and its partner advocacy groups, since March 2020. Nationally, women reported more than double the number of hate incidents compared with men.
Police in several major cities saw a sharp uptick in Asian-targeted hate crimes between 2019 and 2020, according to data collected by the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, according to wire reports.
The recent nationwide increase in hate events targeting people of Asian descent has particularly hit home in Bartholomew County, which has the highest concentration of people of Asian descent in Indiana, making up 8.5% of the population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
By comparison, people of Asian descent make up 2.6% of Indiana’s population and 5.9% of the overall U.S. population.
Linebarger said one the reasons for the increase in hate incidents has to do with people wrongfully blaming people of Asian descent for COVID-19, which was initially detected in China.
“No Asian Americans had anything to do with distributing the pandemic or causing it, nor did any expatriates from China,” Linebarger said.
Linebarger said he is not “blaming Columbus for anything,” but emphasized that one of the strengths of the U.S. is its diversity and that discrimination “brings us all down.”
“I think the company succeeds more (when) people want to live in our communities more, when Columbus is an open place for anyone who wants to live there and be an active member of the community can and people are treated fairly,” Linebarger said. “That means I can recruit employees from wherever who are great. People want to live there and stay there, they want to raise their kids there, so I can get really good employees. If it’s backwards and it’s hateful, then people don’t want to live there and I can’t recruit anybody there. So it means my company suffers. So I do think that there’s a direct business impact on how open the community is.”
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.
