Commentary
The opportunistic and the misguided wasted no time in fanning the flames of racial grievance after two mass shootings in California last week.
Taking place separately in Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay, both shootings resulted in the murder of multiple victims of Asian descent at the beginning of the Lunar New Year, a major holiday for Asian communities.
Soon after news of the Monterey Park shooting broke, Rep. Adam Schiff of California named anti-Asian bigotry as a possible motive. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer attributed the shooting to undefined “bigotry and hate.” Many others chimed in on social media, denouncing former President Donald Trump and white supremacy as responsible for the tragedies. None, of course, had any evidence for their assertions.
Law enforcement later announced the Monterey Park suspect to be Huu Can Tran, a 72-year-old Asian male who subsequently killed himself. Meanwhile, the suspect for Half Moon Bay, Chunli Zhao, is a 66-year-old farm worker from China.
Inconveniently for those who peddled the claim that white supremacy and anti-Asian bigotry were the cause of the shooting rampages, neither Monterey Park nor Half Moon Bay fits their political narrative.
Thus far investigators have said nothing indicating that the tragedy in Monterey Park might be a hate crime, and local law enforcement in Half Moon Bay has determined the killing spree there to likely be workplace violence.
This doesn’t change the reality that far too much violence occurs against Asians in America, including at times by Asian perpetrators, as in the Laguna Woods mass shooting last August. While many are eager to call for an end to anti-Asian hate, far too few dare to speak the truth about a large subset of the crimes: those committed by black offenders.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration condemned anti-Asian racism after a white woman stabbed an Asian Indiana University student. The media didn’t hesitate to describe the perpetrator’s white skin color, and the White House unveiled a multi-agency strategy (pdf) for combating anti-Asian hate.
The administration has offered no reaction, however, to multiple gruesome attacks against Asian Americans by black offenders in the same time frame, and the media cannot muster the courage to identify black suspects by their skin color.
Days after the two California shootings, a man savagely punched and knocked down a 91-year woman with dementia outside of her home. In mid-January, a 78-year-old man walking with a cane was sucker punched and viciously knocked to the ground. Last December, a 79-year-old woman on her way to work was kicked in the stomach as she boarded a metro bus. Each of these crimes occurred in San Francisco, and video footage showed each attacker to be black and the victim Asian.
Certainly, California has no monopoly on heinous attacks against Asian individuals. Last November, a 26-year-old black man allegedly kidnapped, bound, and repeatedly raped a 64-year-old Asian woman for 11 hours in the Boston area. Law enforcement reported that he beat her until her dentures fell out.
These sickening assaults, unprovoked and often perpetrated against elderly Asian immigrants, took place in recent months, but many more have occurred in recent years. Numerous videos document them online.
Hate crime data compiled by the FBI for 2021 indicate that while 56 percent of all hate crimes in America are perpetrated by whites, a little over 20 percent are perpetrated by blacks. Each of these crimes, not just those committed by a white person, must be condemned.
Additionally, various statistics for violent crimes, many not classified as hate crimes, reveal a more disturbing picture. In 2018, well before COVID-19 or President Trump’s commentary on the pandemic’s Chinese origins, blacks committed more violent crimes against Asian Americans than did any other racial group, according to statistics (pdf) from the Justice Department. Ten years before that, a survey by the San Francisco police department found that 85 percent of around 300 strong-arm robberies in the city were committed by blacks against Asians.
These numbers tell us that no conversation about anti-Asian prejudice can occur without a recognition of the prevalence of black-on-Asian violence. But many of those clamoring to #StopAsianHate have no interest in participating in such a conversation—not President Joe Biden, not Vice President Kamala Harris, who touts her South Asian heritage; not Democrats in Congress, not former President Barack Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Asia; not liberal Asian leaders who claim to speak on behalf of Asian communities. Instead, they cling to the prevailing, false, political narratives.
Re-establishing safety and justice for Asian Americans will require difficult work and speaking the truth. In the words of Betty Chu, former mayor of Monterey Park: “The best we can offer to Half Moon Bay and Monterey Park now are sincere condolences. The energy used to politicize these two tragedies should be channeled to genuine efforts to stop anti-Asian violence.”