ATLANTA, March 19, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – Asian-American communities were on
alert Thursday after a shooting rampage that left six women of Asian origin
dead and stoked fears in a population already alarmed by a surge in hate
crimes during the coronavirus pandemic.
Three massage parlors around Atlanta were targeted Tuesday, before a 21-
year-old man suspected of the killings was arrested in southwest Georgia
hours later.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said Andrew Yang, a former Democratic presidential
hopeful who is running for mayor of New York.
“I’ve been Asian all my life, and I remember — vividly — growing up with
this constant sense of invisibility, mockery, disdain, a sense that you
cannot be American if you have an Asian face,” Yang said.
“But this has metastasized into something new and deadly and virulent and
hateful,” he told a press conference in New York alongside the Black civil
rights activist Al Sharpton.
The White House announced that President Joe Biden and Vice President
Kamala Harris, who were already scheduled to be in Atlanta on Friday, would
meet Asian-American leaders to “discuss the ongoing attacks and threats
against the community.”
Robert Aaron Long, of Woodstock, Georgia, faces eight counts of murder and
one charge of aggravated assault for Tuesday’s attacks, in which six of the
eight people killed were women of Asian descent.
He has admitted carrying out the attacks, according to law enforcement, but
claims he was not motivated by racial hatred.
FBI Director Chris Wray reiterated in an interview with public radio
station NPR on Thursday that the gunman’s motive was yet to be fully
understood, but the shootings nevertheless struck a chord in a country where
hate crimes against Asian-Americans have been on the rise.
Chi-Chi Zhang, an Asian-American woman living in Cambridge, Massachusetts
and whose family came to the US when she was seven, described discussing race
and hate crimes with her two young daughters, aged two and four.
“We started to talk about what our escape plan would be if we were to be
attacked on the street,” she said. “How is that a normal conversation to have
with a two-year-old?”
Zhang said that for much of her life she had been taught to conform to the
idea of a “model minority” but added that the concept of keeping one’s head
down was “the reason nobody pays attention to crimes against us.”
– ‘Latent anti-Asian prejudices’ –
In Washington, a House subcommittee discussed a worrying rise in anti-Asian
sentiment, with chairman Steve Cohen describing Asians being subjected to
“verbal harassment, being spat at, slapped in the face, lit on fire, slashed
with a box cutter or shoved violently to the ground.”
“For many Asian-Americans, Tuesday’s shocking events felt like the
inevitable culmination of a year in which there were nearly 3,800 reported
incidents of anti-Asian hate,” Representative Steve Cohen said.
They have grown “increasingly more violent over time as the Covid-19
pandemic worsened,” Cohen, a Democratic lawmaker from Tennessee, said.
The surge, he said, had been fueled by references to the “China virus” — a
term often used by Donald Trump although Cohen did not cite the former
president by name.
According to the sheriff’s office, “Long told investigators that he blames
the massage parlors for providing an outlet for his addiction to sex” and the
shootings were not racially motivated.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said Long’s claims should be taken “with
a grain of salt” while Sarah Park, of the Korean American Coalition-Metro
Atlanta, said racism was clearly a factor.
Among those testifying before the House panel were four members of Congress
of Asian origin.
“Asian-Americans must not be used as scapegoats in times of crisis — lives
are at stake,” said Judy Chu, a Democrat from California. “It’s critical that
Congress takes bold action to address this pandemic of discrimination and
hate.”
– ‘Un-America’ –
The ranking Republican on the panel, Chip Roy of Texas, said the victims of
the Atlanta shootings deserve justice but expressed concern about “policing”
the right to voice criticism of China’s communist leadership.
Roy’s remarks drew an angry response from Meng, a Democrat from New York,
who suggested Republican rhetoric on the pandemic had put “a bull’s eye on
the back of Asian-Americans.”
Vigils were held in several US cities on Wednesday to mourn the victims of
the shootings and condemn racially motivated violence.
Police in New York, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and other major cities
stepped up patrols in areas with large Asian-American populations.
Biden ordered flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House and other
public buildings until sunset on Monday as a mark of respect for the Atlanta
victims.
Biden said that while the motive has not yet been fully established “what
we do know is that the Asian-American community is feeling enormous pain.”
“The recent attacks against the community are un-American,” he tweeted.
“They must stop.”
Georgia is home to nearly 500,000 people of Asian origin, or just over four
percent of its population, according to the Asian American Advocacy Fund.