Literally every day I log on to Twitter, stories from local media outlets across the country come across my newsfeed reporting on the latest attack on Asian Americans in their communities.
I can’t help but notice something about the suspects in the videos that are shared in these reports, and I’m sure you’ll notice it, too, once you see them.
In one assault a week ago in San Francisco, an Asian dad was walking his 1-year-old child in a stroller when he was viciously attacked from behind:
An Asian father pushing his toddler in a stroller in San Francisco was shoved to the ground and pummeled in a vicious attack that left his sense of security “shattered,” he said.The 36-year-old man, only identified as Bruce, said he was attacked while waiting to cross the street with his 1-year-old son Friday afternoon in the Mission Bay neighborhood, news station KGO-TV reported.[…]“I couldn’t protect my child. I was on the floor and he was in a stroller that was slowly rolling away, so it’s definitely very scary as a parent,” he said.
Watch:
The suspect in that case, who has been arrested, is the same man who is suspected of targeting another Asian American man just the day before. Here’s video of that attack:
In another violent incident, this time in Baltimore, a man assaulted two Asian American women at a liquor store with a cement block:
Graphic surveillance video shows [John] Yun’s aunt walking to the front of the store trying to close shop, when a man in a red shirt approaches her with a cement block in his hand. He’s then seen pulling her to the ground and beating her with the block.As the other woman, Yun’s mother, steps in to try to help, she was also hit in the head.“She says this is the first time she has ever seen him so, random, random act,” said Yun.You can see both women trying to fight the man off for about two and a half minutes by pushing him out of the store, but they were overpowered.
Watch:
Here’s the man who was arrested for the crimes:
On Sunday in New York City, two Asian American women were harassed and attacked by a woman who wielded a hammer:
Police released surveillance video that showed the moment a woman appeared to accost two Asian women walking on the sidewalk from behind. The woman demanded they remove their masks before striking one of them in the head with a hammer, police said.The victim was identified as a 31-year-old woman who was taken to the hospital for a laceration to the head, according to authorities. The other Asian woman, 29, did not appear to suffer any physical injuries.
Watch:
It was one of four attacks on Asian Americans in NYC on Sunday alone, according to CNN.
On Tuesday in San Francisco, a man stabbed two elderly Asian women at a bus stop:
Witnesses say the two women were waiting at a bus stop when a man carrying a knife attacked them at 4th and Market streets in the downtown area.Video from Citizen App shows the attack happened in broad daylight. Police were called just before 5 p.m. on reports of a stabbing.A GoFundMe was established Wednesday by the grandchildren of the 85-year-old victim.Victoria Eng and her brother Andrew say that their grandmother was waiting for a MUNI bus when she was stabbed with a long knife in her right arm, which entered into her chest.
Here’s video of the stabbings:
Oddly, journalist David Beard didn’t see fit to mention the race of the suspect in a second tweet he posted on the attack, even though in the first tweet he posted – which has since been deleted – he claimed the attacker was white and included the #StopAAPIhate hashtag:
So apparently because the suspect wasn’t white his race was no longer worth mentioning or something.
Beard has since scrubbed his Twitter profile clean of his journalistic creds and also locked down his account:
Beyond the race of the perps, notice anything else about these attacks? They all happened in big Democrat-run cities that all make a big show of talking about wanting to end white supremacy but who don’t seem to want to discuss the elephant in the room about how these attacks are oftentimes committed by people who obviously were not white.
Sadly, some groups that are dedicated to educating communities against Asian American hate are avoiding the issue, too:
To reiterate a point I’ve made before, the vast majority of attacks are happening in places that are not known for being MAGA hotbeds:
The NYPD reported that hate crimes motivated by anti-Asian sentiment jumped 1,900% in New York City in 2020. Stop AAPI Hate, a reporting database created at the beginning of the pandemic as a response to the increase in racial violence, received 2,808 reports of anti-Asian discrimination between March 19 and December 31, 2020. …. While anti-Asian violence has taken place nationwide and particularly in major cities, the uptick in attacks in 2021 has been particularly focused in the Bay Area, especially in San Francisco and Oakland’s Chinatowns.
I say none of this to downplay the seriousness of the attacks on Asian Americans by white perpetrators, because that happens, too. But again there’s an elephant in the room here that many of the folks who say they are committed to stopping hate against Asian Americans are ignoring. Also, the national media conversation about violence against Asian Americans that we had after the Georgia spa murders has tapered off considerably for some reason. Why is that exactly?
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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