Anti-Hate Leader Manjusha P Kulkarni On TIME 100 Most Influential: Who Is She?

Who is Manjusha P Kulkarni: Recognising pioneers, icons, leaders, titans, artists and innovators, TIME magazine released its list of 100 most influential persons of 2021 on Thursday. Among them is Manjusha P Kulkarni, an Indian-American activist for change fighting to end racism against South Asian ethnic communities in the United States.

Kulkarni is the co-founder of nonprofit Stop AAPI Hate, which aims at targeting discrimination in the US that affects Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. She currently serves as the Executive Director at Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON), a coalition of organisations working for the rights of the oppressed.

Named alongside colleagues and Stop AAPI Hate co-founders Russell Jeung and Cynthia Choi on TIME's 'Icons', Kulkarni has campaigned for racial equality for over two decades. She is a senior attorney and legal researcher based in California.

Know Who Is Manjusha P Kulkarni, Indian-American Anti-Racism Activist

An alumna of the Boston and Duke Universities, Kulkarni has been recognised by the White House for her efforts in social work, with a focus on health for South Asian communities. She was hailed as a 'Champion of Change' in 2014 under then-President Barack Obama's healthcare act.

She was the former Executive Director of the South Asian Network (SAN) organisation, committed to resource access and empowerment for different racial groups.

Kulkarni, an active voice on social media, has spoken against the use of "minority" and "majority" as a descriptor for communities of people of colour. "My identity is NOT based upon my relative percentage of the population," she said in a tweet.

Stop AAPI Hate, founded last year in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic that spurred a series of racist attacks against Asians in the US, served as an "invaluable resource for the public to understand the realities of anti-Asian racism, but also a major platform for finding community-based solutions to combat hate," the TIME profile reads.

Between 2020 and 2021, the US witnessed a shocking spike in hate crimes against Asians, in particular women. Though they have always been at risk of racial violence, as reported history shows, the pandemic pronounced their social vulnerabilities. A national report by Kulkarni's Stop AAPI Hate notes 9081 incidents of harassment between March 2020 and June 2021.

Image: SoCal Policy Forum

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