Activism
COMMENTARY: Asian Americans, African Americans Know the Hate in America
You may have missed the statistics, though you may have felt it instinctively last August when the FBI released the news. Hate crimes targeting people of Asian descent rose by 70% in the U.S. The number of hate crimes targeting Blacks jumped 40%. All of it compared to 2019 levels. The trend is up. Double digits. We share the pain of racist hate.
By Emil Guillermo
This week, African Americans and Asian Americans are reminded of our common ground.
It’s Four A (or AAAA) level when it comes to hate in America.
You may have missed the statistics, though you may have felt it instinctively last August when the FBI released the news.
Hate crimes targeting people of Asian descent rose by 70% in the U.S.
The number of hate crimes targeting Blacks jumped 40%.
All of it compared to 2019 levels. The trend is up. Double digits.
We share the pain of racist hate.
For Asian Americans, much of it was due to being scapegoated by the twice-impeached president who used phrases like “Kung Flu” and “China Virus” to describe the pandemic.
The scapegoating by the White House essentially gave the public a signal to go after Asian Americans for way more than just the origins of the pandemic.
We’ve seen the attacks in and around Oakland’s Chinatown.
The group #StopAAPIHate first started logging instances of hate transgressions and found that in two years reports have grown from a modest 700 cases to nearly 11,000, ranging from verbal abuse and spitting to physical violence, including murder.
But the historical marker for this era of Asian American pain will always be Atlanta, Georgia, on March 16, 2021.
It was one year ago this week that six Asian American women of Korean descent were killed in what has become known as the “Atlanta spa killings.”
The homogenized phrase hides the real pain. We should know March 16, 2021 by the lives claimed.
Xaojie “Emily” Tan, 49. Tan owned Young’s Asian Spa in Cherokee County, Georgia, where the first part of the day’s shootings occurred. Tan also owned another spa, Wang’s Feet and Body Massage in Kennesaw, Georgia. She met her husband, Michael Webb, in Asia, and they came to America in 2006. The couple adopted a daughter, then divorced. Tan died a day before her 50th birthday.
Daoyou Feng, 44, worked at Young’s Asian Spa for just a few months.
Hyung Jung Grant, 51, worked at the Gold Spa and was a single mother of two sons. She had been a schoolteacher in South Korea.
Soon Chung Park, 74, made food for the employees at the Gold Spa. She had lived in New York before moving to Atlanta.
Suncha Kim, 69, worked at the Gold Spa and came to America in the 1980s. She was close to her family and worked several jobs to support them. A grandchild described her as a “fighter” and a “rock,” for the family.
Yong Ae Yue, 63, worked at the Aromatherapy Spa. She came to the U.S. in the 1970s from Korea where she met her husband, Mac Peterson, who was in the U.S. military.
Those are the names of the six Asian American women.
The person alleged to have committed all eight murders that occurred that day was convicted last July of the four deaths at Young’s in Cherokee County.
Robert Aaron Long, 21, took a plea deal to the four murders at Young’s and was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus 35 years. (Paul Andre Michels was also killed there that day.)
Long purchased a 9 mm handgun that very day, then went to a liquor store to buy alcohol. He drove to Young’s Spa and parked outside for an hour. He said the shootings weren’t about race, but rather his sex addiction overlaid with Christian guilt over premarital sex. That’s what they all say. Long said he went to the bathroom and came out shooting.
Long is then alleged to have driven to the two other spas, Gold’s Spa and Aromatherapy Spa in Atlanta’s Fulton County where he is alleged to have killed Grant, Park, Kim and Yu.
While the Cherokee County DA did not seek hate crime enhancements, the Fulton County district attorney is seeking the death penalty and hate crime enhancements.
Long has pleaded not guilty. His next court appearance is in April.
And that’s where we are one year later. Still processing the pain, the hate and the evil.
March 16, 2021, was the day a young white man, angered and confused by religion and his sexuality, lashed out at six innocent Asian American women: Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, Daoyou Feng, Hyung Jung Grant, Soon Chung Park,Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue.
They were working people doing what immigrants with limited means are allowed to do in this country. But they were surviving, despite living in a society burdened by racism, sexism and white supremacy. They were alive.
Then, in an instant it was all over, gunned down by a 9mm in an act of zealous evil.
Asian Americans know the violent pain of racism. Hate is an experience we share in America.
Emil Guillermo talks about race and politics from an Asian American perspective at www.amok.com See it live at 2pm Pacific on Twitter @emilamok; YouTube; Facebook/emilguillermo/media.
