I have seen many people on the Internet from America sharing the sign “Stop Asian Hate”.
I know they mean “Stop hate against Asian people”, but why don't they say “Stop anti-Asian hate”?
I also see people saying “Stop white terrorism”, which means “stop terrorism by white people”, so why does “Stop Asian hate” has the opposite meaning?
I do not understand the grammar here, but I am not a native speaker.
The difference between "Stop Asian hate" and "Stop white terrorism" isn't one of grammar, it's one of semantics.
"Stop Asian hate" and "Stop white terrorism" have the same basic grammatical structure: "(imperative verb) (noun phrase)". That is, there's a verb directing the reader to do something ("stop") and then a noun phrase describing the thing to stop.
Even the noun phrase has the same grammatical structure: "(noun adjunct) (noun)". That is, there's the thing that you want to stop (hate/terrorism) and that's preceded by a descriptor for which specific type of that thing you want to stop. Both of those descriptors are nouns for groups of people, used like an adjective. (There's some potential ambiguity in how you view "white", but I think it's clearest if you think of it as a nominalized adjective subsequently used as a noun adjunct - that is, an adjective turned into a noun turned into an adjective.)
It's in that noun adjunct where the ambiguity lies. Grammatically, the noun adjunct forms a connection between the nouns, but the grammar doesn't specify the type - that is, grammar itself doesn't say if "Asian hate" should be interpreted as "hate towards Asians" or "hate from Asians" - that distinction is entirely found in the semantics.
This sort of contextual ambiguity for noun adjuncts is common in English. Consider "chicken feed" and "chicken soup". One is food for chickens, and one is food made from chickens. Or "fuel oil" versus "corn oil". One is a specific type of oil used as fuel, one is oil made from corn. (Or "baby oil", which is an oil to be used on babies, and not an oil made from babies, despite the theoretical possibility of the latter.) There's nothing grammatically different, the difference is all in the contextual meaning.
If you drive in the UK, you'll see road signs that have one word on them - STOP - and this is perfectly acceptable. English learners are sometimes taught as a "rule" that a simple sentence must have a subject and a verb as a minimum, but that isn't the case with orders.
Orders, such as on signs and slogans, don't have to follow the grammatical structure of everyday speech. They are often in the imperative mood, aimed at the reader (or hearer) who is the implied subject. In effect it is asking you to obey the order.
"Stop Asian Hate" is punchy and succinct - it seems clear to me that it is a campaign to stop hate against Asian people - what else could it mean? The only other alternative would be that it is a campaign to stop Asian people hating something else - but what? It wouldn't be a very good slogan if there was no object.
Your suggestion of "Stop anti-Asian Hate" doesn't sound right. It could mean stop hating people who are anti-Asian. Consider "female oppression" - you'd understand that meant oppression of females. You wouldn't say "anti-female oppression".
This isn't a matter of grammar, but of context. Grammatically it is ambiguous, and could mean either "stop hatred directed at Asian people" or "stop hatred perpetrated by Asian people". We know which one is meant, because we know which one is an issue.
It isn't grammatical. A native speaker like me sees this phrase and parses it exactly the way you parsed it: as a command to stop hate by Asians.
but why don't they say “Stop anti-Asian hate”?
Because they wanted a short slogan and didn't care that it didn't make sense.
This is a good one!
At first, this looks like pure semantics. After all, in the present culture if you saw a sign "Stop White Hate" you would interpret it a different way.
But not all is settled yet - let's do it the other way: "Stop Asian terrorism". Is that terrorism against Asians? As a native speaker, my guess is that it would be taken to mean terrorism by Asians, same as if the word "white" is used.
So now we've got a conundrum, and we'll have to dig futher. Switching the adjective in #1 is going to get results all over the place: Stop Lithuanian Hate, Stop Kenyan Hate, Stop Norwegian Hate, Stop Brazilian Hate, Stop Dutch Hate... which ones do you take which way? But there's a little clue in the last one, maybe: Stop Netherlander Hate would probably be taken only one way -- I think? --, as hatred of Dutch people, because someone is more properly a Netherlander than a Dutch. There is still some rudimentary differentiation between whether your adjective is a noun or an adjective, I suppose. I'm not convinced that logic goes very far with the others.
But for the second one, we can take all those adjectives and there's no doubt that Dutch terrorism, Netherlander terrorism, Lithuanian terrorism and so on are all referring to the nationality of the terrorist.
So not every nationality is the same part of speech, precisely, but are "terrorism" and "hate" the same part of speech? Hate is a verb turned into a noun. I think when we say "XXX hate" we sometimes mean the verb of hating, by its object (not subject), turned into a noun. In this usage "Asian hate" = "hating Asians" just like "pea planting" means "planting peas". And sometimes we mean the verb of hating, turned into a noun, modified by a noun or adjective used as an adjective. For hate = V, that gives us "STOP (N V)" and "STOP A (V)" to choose from with different meanings. But in terrorism = N, we have "STOP A N" only - with the proviso that almost any A can be replaced with a noun used as an adjective.
Edit: the suggestion below to substitute "hatred" is a good one. Stop Asian Hatred would be unambiguously taken to mean hatred by Asians, because it is forced to be a noun rather than a verb used in a noun phrase. (You could still get the other meaning by inserting a hyphen ... though I'm not quite sure why)
tl;dr– Yes, it's poor English: hatred is properly understood as a condition of the hater, not the hated.
To be fair, it's understandable that some might tolerate brevity in a tagline. But it backfires here: the tagline forms a negative association with Asians while purportedly arguing against negative associations with Asians. It's a poor choice of terminology.
Properly, it ought to be either
anti-Asian hatred
anti-Asian hate
, depending on if the noun-form of "hate" is taken to be "hatred" or simply "hate".
Literally, "Asian hate" would be hate associated with Asians.
The problem is that hatred isn't equally associated between the hater and the hated. Hatred belongs to the hater; they might feel it toward the hated, but the hated can be entirely unaware. So the Asian association specified in "Asian hatred" would reference hatred in which Asians are the hater; the slogan's construction is clumsy.
Consider Companies A and B. If they've signed a contract with each other, then:
Company A may refer to it internally as "the Company B contract";
Company B may refer to it internally as "the Company A contract";
using different terms despite referring to the same thing. This difference in qualifiers can make sense in those contexts, serving to concisely communicate what the speaker is referring to.
Now say that Company A makes a proposal for a new contract with Company B:
Company B may refer to it internally as "the new Company A proposal"; but
Company A is less likely to refer to it internally as "the new Company B proposal".
Though the new proposal is associated with both companies as with the prior contract, it's not equally associated; as the proposer, Company A has a special relationship to the proposal that makes it more theirs.
Hatred is asymmetric: the hater has a special relationship to their own hatred not shared by the target of their feelings. So while there is a connection to the hatred's target, it's not generally appropriate to attribute the hatred to its target.
+1. Still, I think a lot's about presentation and communication.. which I understand is frustrating. There's a lot that I simply can't express. I ended up omitting a major addition to this answer for lack of time to figure out how to say it.. I was gonna present a programming-code explanation of how language-parsing works and why the current tagline has undesired connotations. But it got too lengthy even before I got into the bulk of the relevant concepts, and.. well, tried to keep things short-and-sweet.
At first language came into the picture, then the grammar. Even today we're inventing/creating new words for our needs and also new ways to talk(i.e. forming sentences). As you can see, human language never followed grammars, rather the grammar follows the language. It's communication and understanding that matters, not what we've used to communicate.
This is not a grammar question: it is a question about what is the strongest slogan in stopping violence against Asians. It is the ambiguity of "Asian hate" that one precisely wants to avoid in designing a strong slogan.
Asian cuisine, Asian fashion, Asian customs, etc. etc.
Asian is an adjective. If you think for just a second about the collocations given above, it becomes very clear that one would not want to say "Asian hate" with or without the word "stop" if what you want to do is stop hate against Asians.
Following the logic of the language, you are obliged to use:
The fact that "stop Asian hate" shows up on the twitterverse is proof of nothing, except an unfortunate occurrence.
It is just a hashtag:
“I’ve Experienced The Insidious Chill Of Casual Racism”: Why The #StopAsianHate Hashtag Is So Important
It is not a slogan per se.
stopasianhate hashtag and an organization
The New York Times says this:
Opinion Why Has There Been a Spike of Anti-Asian Hate? A small yet aggressive segment of America refuses to accept that the country is made up of people from many different backgrounds.
The AAPI unfortunately forgot to add ANTI- to its slogan.
A Google exercise:
That means without the word "stop".
Now, look at the hits: Not one occurrence of: Asian hate.
