|
Post by robeiae on Mar 21, 2021 8:04:16 GMT -5
Even though many Asian-Americans are speaking out and explaining why they feel so shaken by what happened in Atlanta, many Americans will refuse to listen. And that's infuriating (though sadly not very surprising). On this, I'm sorry but I think what happened in Atlanta--while tragic and certainly a wake-up call for massage parlors in terms of security--is being oversold as some sort of critical moment with regard to violence against Asian-Americans. People--like the GQ writer--are using the event to wind others up, to draw attention to themselves. Look at this piece USA Today: www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/03/20/trump-covid-asian-american-hate-rises-biden-changes-tone-column/4747943001/Pardon my French, but bull-fucking-shit. I recognize there are racist assholes out there, that there's structural racism as well, that there's even simple bigotry that impacts how Asians and other minorities live their lives (and that bigotry can come from the uber-woke, as well). But come on, it's not Kristallnacht out there.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Mar 21, 2021 9:26:07 GMT -5
Reminds me of an old friend of mine who once commented that "black people think they're oppressed, but they're not. It's just a perception of oppression."
(How he, as a white man, understood the black experience better than black people was never explained, though.)
In general, when people say they're living in fear, I would tend to take their word for it.
And in this case, I do think the Atlanta shooting has touched a real nerve w/ the Asian-American community. I've seen it from my own friends, not just op-ed writers. I could be wrong, but I don't think my friends are race-hustlers or being insincere. My own partner is Vietnamese, and she doesn't want to go to the US, in part because she doesn't think Americans like Vietnamese. (Whether that's really the case or not is certainly debatable, IMO, but the fact that she feels this way is true, regardless of how I or anyone else might feel about it.)
Yeah, I get it, it's not Kristallnacht. But that's a shit standard, IMO. Time to grow up and stop patting ourselves on the back for being better than Nazis.
|
|
|
Post by robeiae on Mar 21, 2021 12:09:54 GMT -5
People aren't saying they are living in fear, that's my point. It's just some people with a platform and agenda saying it (and retweeting it, as if Twitter was the whole of reality). Remember back when there was a "wave" of anti-Muslim crime, only there actually wasn't and there was still a ton more anti-Semitic crime, regardless? Or how about all the MAGA-inspired violence, like against Smollett and many others, a good chunk of which was fabricated?
So, NOW there's a wave of anti-Asian violence, even though the China virus stuff was almost a year ago. Why? Where? How?
And of course any incident of violence against someone who Asian is automatically absolute proof that the "wave" is real, never mind the specifics. The way to "grow up" is to stop using people and groups, either to scapegoat or to lionize.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Mar 21, 2021 12:24:55 GMT -5
But they are saying it. Maybe you're not listening.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Mar 21, 2021 12:26:40 GMT -5
So, NOW there's a wave of anti-Asian violence, even though the China virus stuff was almost a year ago. Why? Where? How? How many examples would you like? Serious question. ETA: I am not sure I understand the "now" part. I am mainly seeing the opposite argument--that this is in fact nothing new.
|
|
|
Post by robeiae on Mar 21, 2021 13:28:30 GMT -5
Well look, here's a CNN article: Why anti-Asian American violence is rising -- along with White supremacist propagandaHere's the first bot of evidence: "Targeted at least 500 times in the first two months." Sounds bad. The link takes me to this report: secureservercdn.net/104.238.69.231/a1w.90d.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/210312-Stop-AAPI-Hate-National-Report-.pdfHere's the general breakdown: So generalizing, that's about 51 incidents of violence against Asian Americans--which may or may not reflect racism on the part of the attacker(s)--and that's nationwide. The report also breaks down where all of the incidents--violent or not--took place by State. Here are the top ten states by total incidents and percent of the same: I know CA has the most Asian Americans, both as a total number and as a percentage of pop., apart from Hawaii (which doesn't make the top 18 States in incidents). It also likely has the most liberals. And I'm pretty sure it has--far and away--the youngest median age of the States on that list. Yet almost half of all reported incidents are coming out of California. Does this seem fishy to you? It does to me. The CNN piece also says this: If you follow the link in that snippet, it takes you to this article: www.cnn.com/2021/02/27/us/new-york-initiative-anti-asian-attacks/index.htmlAnd that article doesn't list a bunch of incidents with "coronavirus motivation," all it does is say the same thing: And it has a new link that goes here: www.cnn.com/2021/02/26/us/hate-crime-stabbing-attack-asian-man-new-york/index.htmlAnd that piece details how one person who stabbed an Asian man wasn't being charged with a hate crime. That's it. Maybe there were 29 racially motivated incidents, but I'm not seeing them in any of the articles making the claim. What I'm seeing are a lot of assumptions about a "rising tide" of violence against Asian Americans that I'm supposed to accept as a reality because if I don't, then I must be some sort of horrible person.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Mar 21, 2021 20:05:30 GMT -5
With regard to New York, this piece might be slightly better... www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/nyregion/asian-hate-crimes-attacks-ny.htmlIt doesn't give details on every incident, but it does give some additional examples beyond the ones in your link. I can't disagree that the "29" figure for NYC may be questionable, especially since my link actually says 28. BUT, the basic notion that the number of crimes went up in the aftermath of Covid does seem sound to me. It does not appear that the number of crimes went down or stayed at the same level. That goes for both NYC in particular and the country as a whole. Regarding the issue of living in fear, this piece might be worth a read... www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/us/chinese-coronavirus-racist-attacks.htmlIt also brings up a couple of additional incidents in NYC, specifically. (In one of them, the subway attack, the victim actually never reported. We only know about it because it happened to be caught on camera.) Anyway, I did want to also comment on this, in particular: I do think there's an issue with attacks on Asian Americans, true enough. (and I'm actually worried about all kinds, both violent and non-violent.) But I don't think you're a horrible person. There is a lot of information and it's a lot to digest. I feel personally that I still have a lot to learn, and there's nothing wrong with that. Two examples of things I've learned recently, that had not been on my radar previously, from a friend of mine who is Asian-American... 1. She thinks that most Asian women in America have been--at some point or another--on the receiving end of the "Me love you long time" line from Full Metal Jacket. That the portion of Asian women in America who have never been subjected to this are the smaller group. 2. She also feels that she, personally, will never be accepted as American, because of what she looks like. She mentioned that people have asked her many times in her life where she was from, and often will not accept her answer of California. They keep pressing, and ask, "No, where are you really from?", or something similar. (She thinks many other Asian-Americans have similar experiences.) That latter point in particular really makes me sad. I don't think it reflects well at all on American perceptions of Asian-Americans. But I'm also glad to be more aware of that, now. Because personally, I have been lucky, and haven't ever had anyone question my Americanness.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Mar 22, 2021 2:20:54 GMT -5
Just to add some additional stuff on the question of fear. Here's a piece from Min Chan, a businesswoman in Seattle... www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2021/03/21/we-all-americans-anti-asian-shootings-living-fear-column/4757072001/Here's a piece from the Baltimore Sun... www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-cr-anti-asian-racism-maryland-20210317-rlj3hezh5zawzgbjyfkj6nebhi-story.html(This one is notable because it features Larry Hogan, governor of Maryland, mentioning that his Asian daughter is afraid to visit him.) Those two pieces are dated after the Atlanta shooting, but here's one from 2020 by Daniel Son, a high school student... www.northjersey.com/story/opinion/contributors/2020/04/23/im-korean-american-my-neighbors-scare-me-more-than-coronavirus/3004838001/And this one, also dated 2020, links to some data from Pew Research that might be worth considering. www.marketwatch.com/story/i-was-in-so-much-fear-that-i-started-running-asian-americans-must-grapple-with-racism-as-well-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-2020-08-13From the bit on the Pew data... Bolding mine. This really doesn't look good at all, IMO. But it shouldn't be surprising, either. Many Latinos expressed increased fear in the wake of the El Paso shooting, and Jews expressed similar fears after the Pittsburgh shooting. To my mind, the idea that we would see similar feelings in the Asian community seems pretty natural.
|
|
|
Post by robeiae on Mar 22, 2021 7:14:52 GMT -5
I think there's a significant gulf between saying there's an increased number of crimes against Asian Americans (or increased number of "incidents") and saying there's a "rising tide of violence" (from the CNN piece) against Asian Americans. Similarly, there's a significant gulf between saying--in response to survey--that one is sometimes afraid and saying that one--and every other Asian American--is absolutely "living in fear" (fromm the USA Today piece).
As to this:
Two examples of things I've learned recently, that had not been on my radar previously, from a friend of mine who is Asian-American...
I grok her. And there's no way that I can--as a white WASP-y guy living in the USA--pretend to know what it's like to live like what is close to my exact opposite.
That said--and recognizing that anecdotes aren't proof--I'd note that one can find examples of 1. with regard to pretty much every demo out there. It may not be a movie line--and some may even imagine that it's not insulting--but there's always something. People can be cruel, stupid, and thoughtless, after all.
As to 2., that sucks more imo because many of the people who can't get past this are otherwise not awful people, in my experience. Though I think this point applies with equal force in a most other countries in the world, even today. People who don't reflect the traditionally expected demo of a place must be from somewhere else, first, in the minds of a meaningful portion of the population.
Side note: Yesterday, Kyle Larson almost won the NASCAR race in Atlanta after dominating it for most of the day. He's already won a race this year and is on pace to have a career year. He was suspended by NASCAR and fired from his team last year for using a racial slur in a I-race competition. He is, in fact, an Asian American. His maternal grandparents--Americans--were interred here during WWII. Oddly enough, no one was making much hay with this yesterday when it looked like Larson was going to win (again, it was in Atlanta) and Larson never got much woke cred for his background. Of course, he doesn't go around asking for it, either.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Mar 22, 2021 9:50:37 GMT -5
I think there's a significant gulf between saying there's an increased number of crimes against Asian Americans (or increased number of "incidents") and saying there's a "rising tide of violence" (from the CNN piece) against Asian Americans. Similarly, there's a significant gulf between saying--in response to survey--that one is sometimes afraid and saying that one--and every other Asian American--is absolutely "living in fear" (fromm the USA Today piece). I can somewhat get behind that ("rising tide" is kind of a dumb metaphor, regardless, IMO). As to the survey, the adverb of frequency is yours, not from Pew, right? I would imagine there's a spectrum w/ regard to the respondents but the survey doesn't really get into that. As to this... That may be true, but Americans in particular really ought to know better, IMO, due to the country being less homogenous than most other countries. A Vietnamese person assuming that a white person is not a citizen of Vietnam seems somewhat more understandable--to me at least--than an American person assuming that someone who looks Asian must be non-American. (Heck, in some instances, Americans are going further than that and assuming someone Asian-looking must be from China, specifically. Kind of embarrassing, no?) But I would probably agree that other countries that have had large influxes of immigrants--maybe the UK, for example--likely do have this issue as well.
|
|
|
Post by robeiae on Mar 23, 2021 7:35:53 GMT -5
spectator.us/topic/media-haste-cry-race-asian-americans-atlanta/On the 28/29 number for NYC: And then the writer (who is an Asian American woman, fyi) says this, whch I think is spot on: What ever increases there are in anti-Asian incidents--violent or otherwise--the professional media seems utterly determined to stoke peoples' fears as much as possible and maintain the spectre of "white supremacists" at all costs. Note again the CNN piece I linked to above: Why anti-Asian American violence is rising -- along with White supremacist propaganda. From earlier in the Spectator piece:
|
|
|
Post by robeiae on Mar 31, 2021 8:19:04 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by prozyan on Mar 31, 2021 10:41:12 GMT -5
If Trump had never uttered the phrase "China Virus" or "Kung Flu", that poor Asian woman would never have been attacked. I bet this fine, young man's mother might even still be alive as well.
On a separate note, why is it racist to call it the "Wuhan Virus", but ok to call the variants the "UK Variant", the "South Africa Variant" or the "Brazil Variant".
I really love the age of selective outrage.
|
|
|
Post by michaelw on Apr 1, 2021 0:11:50 GMT -5
Obviously not a white supremacy issue, but it looks like she was possibly targeted for being Asian. Awful.
|
|
|
Post by robeiae on Apr 1, 2021 7:47:17 GMT -5
Absolutely, it looks that way (tough not to see it that way). And absolutely, it was awful. It would have been no less awful--imo--if she had been targeted for being old, for being a woman, or for being the specific person that she is.
The point here is that the attempt to frame the so-called wave or rising tide of violence against Asians as a facet of Trumpism/MAGAism/White Supremacy is more about an agenda than the actual facts, imo. It's despicable, I think. It's fomenting racial hatred for the sake of looking woke and getting clicks.
|
|