Anti-Asian crimes are not due to white culture

Over the past week, I’ve watched and read about Asians fearing for their lives, even afraid to jog in a relatively safe part of the Bay area due to possible harassment.  It’s unnerving. Anti-Asian crime is real. It’s jumped significantly compared to overall hate crime in the past year. As an Asian-American, I don’t want to live in fear. So what matters to me is to understand what is happening.  

I’m not a criminologist, but my intuition tells me that the intent behind a crime should matter as much as the identity of the victim. If we are to understand how to help prevent crime in the future, we have to understand why they are happening in the first place. 

That’s why it’s infuriating to see how these vile acts are being used as propaganda to further a narrative. I’m talking about the causal connection between crimes against Asians and white supremacy, and by extension Republicans or what’s broadly referred to as white culture and privilege. Once again, Democrats are hijacking a narrative for political gain. And even more infuriatingly, they are choosing to select the incidents that fit their narrative and that work towards their ends, and conveniently deselecting the incidents that don’t.

It isn’t helpful to frame the issue in a way that doesn’t seek to find a solution for everyone.  Following the horrific mass killing in Atlanta where six of the victims were Asian, USA Today ran an article with the headline: “Stop Asian hate; Stop black hate; Stop all hate.” According to the article, hate crimes can only be perpetrated against “non-white” groups, and the Atlanta shootings “presents a chance for communities of color to effectively address the common enemy of white supremacy.” We don’t know if this was a hate crime, and hate crimes can most certainly be committed against any group. 

Preliminary police reports showed the suspect, who had a sex addiction driven by his religious guilt, wanted to eliminate the temptation at the spas he frequented. These parlors were listed in a “red light district” and were linked to sexual services. It appears we could possibly blame oppressive religious indoctrination or an oversexualized society. But to immediately blame it on white supremacy without truly understanding the underlying facts and potentials of the case creates division in a place where we should be seeking healing.

This narrative applied indiscriminately obfuscates what’s really happening. It’s abusive, dehumanizing, degrading and dangerous because it’s confusing the issue and leading us all down a path that will increase, not decrease, hate. 

“Stop Asian Hate” is the latest rage bubble against whiteness. It’s replacing the rage bubble of 2020, which was BLM. And as I mentioned in my book Unequally Yoked, BLM replaced the rage bubble of #metoo. We are continually inflating rage bubbles against the status quo, and with each one, the number of aggrieved gets larger and larger. 

Lest someone calls me “tone deaf” and says “We should despise all hate crimes, but 2021 is the moment to stand up in solidarity for anti-Asian hate!” Sure. I stand with that. But I don’t stand with defaulting to racism as the prime mover of evil in our society. Things are a lot more complex than that. 

Factless based claims

On March 18, CNN had a scathing and hyperbolic headline: White Supremacy and Hate are Haunting Asians. Yet the first line of the article reads: “It’s immaterial whether the accused killer in the Atlanta spa shootings admits to a racist motivation.” 

Daily Show Trevor Noah also dismissed the probability that the Atlanta shootings could be driven by sex or religious guilt. “Murders speak louder than your words,” he stated while suggesting white culture was to blame. 

The cultish icon of the woke age, Ibram X. Kendi tweeted: “Locking arms with Asian Americans facing this lethal wave of anti-Asian terror. Their struggle is my struggle. Our struggle is against racism and White supremacist domestic terror.”

The New York Times editorial board, along with the Washington Post, have written that the rise in anti-Asian sentiment is due to Donald Trump’s calling of COVID-19 the “Wuhan virus.” Never mind that the first known case came from Wuhan, China and the World Health Organization is now in China investigating the source. 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said there was “no question” that Trump’s rhetoric led to anti-Asian hate crimes. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Ca) told MSNBC host Chris Hayes that the killings were “the culmination of a whole year’s worth of hate stoked by xenophobia of Donald Trump.” In another Hayes interview, a black feminist and activist suggested that white supremacists and the Trump administration “created a rhetorically-violent environment for Asian American folks, blamed them for this pandemic, ginned up the public and created this context for things to be unsafe.” During a recent congressional hearing, Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) said Asians are fighting hate and bigotry because “anti-Asian rhetoric like China virus and Kung flu” have left Asians “traumatized and fearful for their lives.”

Is the person behind rhetoric to blame?

Rhetoric can certainly influence. But is the person behind the rhetoric to blame? Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La) was shot by a gunman who was inspired by Bernie Sanders. Is Sanders to blame? In the shooting of five white officers in 2016 by a black gunman who told police he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers, should we blame Obama, who had riled racial tensions?  

There are a lot of crimes out there, every day. White on white, Asian on Asian, black on black, black on Asian. It isn’t just white people. Yet when it isn’t white perpetrators it’s cast in a different light. 

When a black 19-year-old killed an 84-yr-old Asian man last month, why did CNN report that there was “lack of evidence pointing solely to anti-Asian bigotry” and the suspect was a man preying on the vulnerable and elderly? What about the Asian stylist punched in the face by a black woman hurling racial slurs?  Last year, a video caught two men dragging an Asian woman and in another video a black man assaulted an elderly Asian man. Are these anti-Asian crimes? What about hate crimes in general? In upstate NY this month, two black teens were arrested for allegedly setting an elderly white man on fire. Is this a racist crime? Reports of the the Boulder shooting that left 10 white people dead refers to the non-white male suspect whose family emigrated from Syria as having mental illness. Why isn’t this investigated as a hate crime? Search “Boulder or Colorado shootings'' and most reports refer to the problem of mental illness or loose gun laws. Search for “Atlanta shootings” and most reports refer to the problem of racism. Something’s not right.

By Trevor’s logic, all crimes are racist because intent doesn’t matter. 

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistic report in 2018 titled: Criminal Victimization, white Americans were not the largest perpetrator of crimes against Asians. The percentage of whites and Asians carrying out crimes against Asians were the same: 24 percent, whereas blacks committed 27.5 percent of those crimes. These are not categorized as racially-motivated crimes. We don’t know the motives or intent. But if we are to apply the same standards the media is applying to the Atlanta shootings, then yes all of these are racially-motivated crimes.

The point is we’re not addressing the problem

There is an anti-Asian problem. I get it. As an immigrant, I recall being the only Asian in a very white school where some of the white kids weren’t sure if they could be friends with me because I was “oriental.” In another neighborhood, I was chased down by three black kids because I was different from them too. I don’t doubt this type of unfamiliarity with people drives some to do bad things. 

But there’s questions to ask: Are Asians being targeted because many are successful? Are they being targeted because Asian women are sexualized? Who’s committing the crimes and what is their motive? Is the 24/7 news media hype machine causing more hate crimes? Is it a combination of the above that’s been exacerbated by lockdowns that are driving everyone insane? (In 2020, murders rose 35 percent in the Bay Area while homicides jumped  nearly 40% in NYC and up 50% in Chicago.) 

As I’ve also said in the past, if American culture is so racist, why are Asians doing so well? They account for under 6 percent of the population yet the household median income for Asian Americans is 38 percent greater than the national median income. At Apple, 23 percent of the highest paying tech jobs are held by Asian. Even in 2010, a decade ago, Asians made up more than half of the Bay Area workforce, which included high-paying tech and engineering jobs. 

If Republicans are so racist, why did the Trump administration sue Yale for discriminating against Asians in college admissions? If the current administration is not racist, why did they drop this lawsuit that discriminates against Asians? When a school drops a program for high-performing kids solely because many who qualified were Asians and whites, why is this not racist?

Democrats, like Kendi, will say because “If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.” They’ll say their progressive discriminatory policies enabled Asians and people of color to succeed, therefore they’re not racist. I agree and disagree. Democrats and Republicans both have laid the groundwork for such policies. Republicans were just as much behind affirmative action (which are a form of preferential, or said differently “discriminatory”). Their goals aligned in wanting equal opportunity and safety nets. But I don’t subscribe to the notion that discrimation until there are equal outcomes is a good thing, that’s called communism. It doesn’t work. 

This is why the current political battle isn’t between Republicans vs. Democrats. It’s actually Republicans against socialists. Socialists are on the move and in fact have a toe, and possibly a foot, in the White House since the White House is also promulgating the same racist narrative. The socialists have found a magical hammer, racism, and they can use it to hammer any political nail. If you defend America’s traditional values, capitalism and the Judeo-Christian ethos whose goal is not equal outcomes, you are racist. Essentially the entire Republican party is racist. Equal outcomes taken to its logical end doesn’t make sense.

Socialists want more power in the hands of their government and to use that platform to shape our values, ethos and definition of equity. Inflating rage bubbles has become their go-to political strategy. Select incidents that fit the narrative; re-cast those that don’t; spin the media and social media machine; call everything that contradicts the narrative bigotted and move the social agenda forward. Rinse and repeat.

As an immigrant who’s had success in America, I like America’s traditional values and capitalism. They’ve changed my life. I was given an opportunity to create an amazing life that would not have been available to me in any other country of the world. I’m grateful for America. But rage bubbles distract me from being grateful. They drive me and many to fill ourselves with hate and resentment so we forget the blessings that inspire us. 

Not all media are complicit. NBC News legal analyst explained why the Atlanta shootings are “not being classified as a hate crime. But these reports are few. We need more of this and less emotion. Yes, America needs to work on race. We always will need to. But what leads to crime isn’t just racism. We won’t find those underlying cracks in our foundation if we are so myopic. 

Rage bubbles move us backward, not forward. 

Image source on social media: Vox