Let’s Recognize our Complicity in Anti-Asian Racism
Education proceeds advocacy and allyship
On March 16th, 2021 the news was rampant with headlines that read “A white gunman was taken into custody after killing eight people at three Atlanta-area massage parlors, most of them women of Asian descent.” The articles read “Robert Aaron Long, 21, told police that the attack was not racially motivated and claimed to have a “sex addiction,” with authorities presenting that he had a bad day and lashed out at what he saw as sources of temptation”.
To most these headlines just read as bad news but, what they fail to recognize is that we live in a system that acknowledges the name of a white supremacist shooter before that of any of the victims. We humanize white supremacist killers instead of the victims, proving the narrative that the media will protect white terrorists and thugs. Time and time again the government fails to generate and track accurate data on hate crime statistics. This was not a single event or coincidental — this was a hate crime targeted towards Asian women. The shootings happened at Young Asian Massage Parlor. If that’s not targeted then I don’t know what is. For him to justify sexual addiction as a motive is misogynistic. Fetishizing and sexualizing Asian women and blaming them for your sexual temptations is racist.
