So I have mixed feelings about this. I almost put this in the Stupid Liberal idea of the day, but I actually wanted a thoughtful nuanced discussion about it.
On the one hand it really does appear that since Trump started blaming the Chinese for everything and for the Corona virus in particular, violence against Asians has been up. It is a serious problem and needs to be addressed. The shooting deaths of 8 Asian massage parlor workers the Democrats jumped at the chance to start talking to publicly talk to Asian activists and bring this issue to national attention.
However, now the evidence seems to suggest that the attack may not have been racially motivated, or that if it was it was due to the racist notion that all Asian massage parlors are dens of prostitution, not that they were the sources of Covid-19, or enemy spies, or any of the other things that Trump had accused them of that was actually feeding the uptick in anti-Asian bigotry. But for the most part the Democrats haven’t changed their message are are still using this event as the poster child for the Asian violence issue.
I am concerned that their continuing to do this could actually backfire. If the Democrats keep pushing the narrative that this event exemplifies a systemic issue, while the evidence suggests otherwise, then it could backfire. People could say that the Democrats are lying that the shooter was motivated by racism, and so the whole issue of anti-asian sentiment is just a Democratic hoax.
Does anyone else share my concern or am I misreading the situation in some way?
Even if Trump didn’t talk about it specifically, the “racist notion that all Asian massage parlors are dens of prostitution,” as well as the sexualized stereotyping of Asian women that a significant number of Americans subscribe to, are both real things, and are certainly part of the racism that Asian Americans face.
Yes I agree entirely with everything you say, that is why I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. On the one hand there really was a racist motivation for this, but It’s very nuanced, and Americans in general don’t handle nuance well.
I think it’s absolutely fair to include this incident as evidence of a trend towards violence against Asians, even if his primary motivation was gender, not race. Even if he set out that day with the express motivation to kill women, and not kill Asians, it’s not a coincidence that the specific women he targeted were Asians. If this guy hadn’t had some incel-fueled fetishization of Asian women, he might still have killed someone, but it likely wouldn’t have been these specific women. They’re dead, because some guy’s fucked up views about women were inflected by his fucked up views about Asians.
I say it could very likely a couple of things. Yes it could be an anti-Asian thing. He probably does have misogamy issues and doesn’t relate well to women in general. But he could also be targeting people he knew that somehow pissed him off, a former customer. And he ended up shooting whoever was in the way of his intended targets. It may come out in the investigation, or we may never know because people are already fixating on the anti-Asian angle.
Still the fact is that almost all of his victims were Asian, so its not wrong that people point it out and ask questions.
He is a 21 year old going to Asian massage parlors. That alone would seem odd, most of those place cater to middle aged guys. It is quite possible he was a customer at multiple places and they all thought of him as an oddball. Or he got that feeling because his feelings are all F’d up.
And was planning to continue to Florida to continue to shoot people.
That said, it is, I suppose, possible that he had patronized all of the spas. The descriptions of him that have already made it to the press indicate that he had a extreme sex addiction.
I don’t have a problem with using this event to highlight increased violence against Asians (because it is real). I also hope it is used to highlight violence against women (because that is real as well), along with highlighting violence with guns by people who should not have them (because that is also real).
If it ultimately turns out this has nothing to do with Asians, women, or access to guns by those who shouldn’t, I still don’t mind using this event to highlight those [real] issues.
I definitely think people are jumping the gun. We need to remember that Rosa Parks was not the first black women not to give up her seat. That was a 15-year-old Claudette Colvin who had gotten pregnant, and would have made the movement look bad due to the mores of the day (and even of today, to some extent) You have to be strategic with your rhetoric.
While there’s nothing wrong with conjecturing that this may have had a racial motivation, I think people need to hold back on using it as evidence directly of such in the discourse. There are plenty of other examples they could cite instead.
In fact, wasn’t there another incident elsewhere that started the whole concept trending? I seem to remember the hashtags starting before the 16th.
Note, this also means I think the discourse should happen. Just not saying for sure that this particular incident was racially motivated. That’s an easy target for those types of right wingers who would try and discredit the whole thing.
Edit: and I just used “try and” naturally, without thinking about it.
Right wingers always try to discredit everything every time. We do better when we act without worrying about how they will react, because it’s always the worst possible reaction and it’s always totally disingenuous.
And you know who else doesn’t handle nuance very well? Stupid racists.
You can’t promote one form of racism against Asians, and then say, “Oh, no, that’s not what I meant!” when someone who listened to you goes all-in on some other kind of racism. Trump and his ilk spent the last four years telling stupid racists that being stupid and racist is not just okay, but an actual virtue. For the last year, that effort was directed explicitly towards Asians. They can’t just turn around and deny their responsibility for this when they know their stupid racist supporters will come up with their own ways of expressing their stupid racism.
And it’s not like this is a new problem. Trump and his ilk also spent years banging the drum of anti-Muslim racism, and guess what happened? Stupid racists couldn’t tell the difference between Muslims and Sikhs. That’s still their fault, even though they never explicitly supported anti-Sikh racism.
When you rile up stupid people, every stupid thing they do is your fault. That’s why sensible people try not to rile them up.
There’s been a shit ton of virtue signalling from companies on social media today. But, it’s just a bunch of words and hashtags and my guess is that it’s forgotten about in a few days. Asians aren’t a politically organized group, and are hated by other minorities.
So, none of this will affect any upcoming elections
Asians are “hated by other minorities?” That seems like a huge overstatement (or maybe just a misstatement).
ETA: I heard an Asian-American individual on TV just last night express gratitude for all the support their community is getting from other minority groups.
I was about to ask for a cite, but never mind. Even if there’s an example or two, using it as a reason why this’ll all blow over (“forgotten about in a few days”) is a pretty shoddy argument.
This is one of those times to bring out the word “intersectionality.” You can’t separate the victims’ race or their gender out - it was both AND the combination of the two and the killer’s perception of and the stereotypes he held about women of Asian descent all together. The violence that Asian and Asian American women face specifically is definitely part of the racism and violence against Asians.
I think I’m misunderstanding the OP - because it seems to say that Democrats shouldn’t speak out against violence against Asian women. (but I don’t think that’s what the OP meant).
Yes I do. Some Asian-American owned businesses were targeted (as were other businesses) by people upset about the acquittal of the officers in the Rodney King incident. There were reasons for the tension besides “other minorities hate Asians.”
Twenty-five years after Lee’s gas station burned down, he is once again a businessman in Koreatown. He has since served as an LA-area planning commissioner, and calls members of the Latino and African-American communities his friends and colleagues.
Lee believes he managed to come back from the ashes because of one act by the community, a day after the fire that destroyed his business. Lee remembers that for some reason, perhaps out of shock, he began to pointlessly sweep the debris around the shell of the gas station.
“One by one,” said Lee, “neighbors came out to help. They were black, Korean, and Latino. 30 people. They gave me hope. They are my community. And it’s time again to stay bound together these next four years.”