‘Unconscionable’: Local Asian American leaders respond to Georgia killings, call for hate crime investigation
"All too often, the most silenced members of our community — Asian American elders and women working in invisible industries — have borne the brunt of these attacks."
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Local Asian American leaders responded with grief and mourning over Tuesday’s mass shooting in Georgia, which left eight people dead in three Atlanta-area massage parlors. Six of the people killed were Asian women.
The Massachusetts House Asian Caucus is calling for the Atlanta Police to launch a full investigation to determine if the act was a hate crime.
“Although we are not surprised by this senseless violence, it is no less devastating,” the caucus wrote in a statement. “Violence against Asian Americans has been on the rise for over a year. We must acknowledge this fact and work to address it. Our voices have historically been marginalized and ignored, and even with the rise in anti-Asian racism over the course of the last year, we continue to have to fight to have them heard.”
— Asian Caucus (@asiancaucusma) March 17, 2021
Robert Aaron Long, the white 21-year-old man charged for the killings, claimed to police that the attacks were not racially motivated. Authorities said he claimed to have “sex addiction” and that he saw the spas as a “temptation” he wanted to eliminate. Though Long denied a racial motive, many argue that the shootings can’t be divorced from pervasive hypersexualization and fetishization of Asian women, long stereotyped as submissive and docile.
There were nearly 3,800 hate incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate between March 19, 2020 to February 28 this year, with nearly 100 in Massachusetts, according to a recent report. The center was founded last year over concerns about discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic after President Donald Trump repeatedly called coronavirus the “China virus.”
Over two-thirds of respondents reporting hate incidents were women. The report emphasizes that the number of hate incidents reported represents a fraction of the incidents that actually happen. Reported incidents included verbal and online harassment, refusal of service, physical assault, and other discriminatory actions.
Caucus member Tram Nguyen, who was born in Vietnam and lives in Andover, introduced a bill to crack down on hate crimes in Massachusetts just over a week before the Georgia killings.
“The increase in Anti-Asian harassment, violence, and pain has been amplified and felt in our AAPI families, and it has culminated in a mass murder targeting Asian women working at three salons,” Nguyen wrote in a statement Wednesday. “After the former President shifted the blame for the spread of the coronavirus to China, he placed a target on all people of Asian descent here in America. The precipitous rise in anti-Asian hate crimes in 2020 bears witness to that, with crimes increased by 150% in New York, LA, and yes, Boston.”
It’s almost too painful to process the senseless killing of 8 people, incling 6 Asian women, in Atlanta yesterday. Official statement below. #StopAAPIHate #StopAsianHate #AsiansAreHuman @asiancaucusma pic.twitter.com/aP4TSva5nR
— Tram T. Nguyen (@TeamTram) March 17, 2021
Rep. Tackey Chan of Quincy, another caucus member, recently recounted his own experiences with discrimination to The Milford Daily News. He said he had experienced strangers shouting racial slurs at him and asking if he ate cats or dogs.
“One of the greatest myths out there is that Asians are quiet and don’t say anything,” Chan told the Daily News. “It’s easy for one to say that, but if you speak and no one hears you, the easy excuse is that you never said anything at all.”
Mayoral candidate and city councilor Michelle Wu, who is the first Asian American president of the Boston City Council, released a statement about her own experiences with discrimination growing up. She said that Boston is not immune from these incidents.
“It’s heartbreaking and appalling to see the anti-Asian harassment, violence, and now mass murder that has accelerated over the past year — part of a long history of racism in America that we all must fight to end,” Wu wrote. “And all too often, the most silenced members of our community — Asian American elders and women working in invisible industries — have borne the brunt of these attacks.
“The unconscionable blaming of Asian American communities for the devastation of this pandemic has reinforced the sense of invisibility and perpetual foreigner status that so many of us have known our entire lives,” she wrote.
Today I join our community in mourning & solidarity. #StopAsianHate pic.twitter.com/gxLhE6hwdn
— Michelle Wu 吳弭 (@wutrain) March 17, 2021
Governor Charlie Baker and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh also released statements condemning the attack.
“MA will not tolerate violence or hate toward this community or anyone,” Baker wrote.
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