Flipping narratives

This week, a mass shooting occurred in Atlanta. A white man walked into 3 different spas and shot 8 people, 6 of whom were Asian women. While this shooting was irrefutably an act of hate crime, the shooter said he was trying to overcome his "sexual addiction." I've been processing the news this past week, and my thoughts echo what many others have voiced. What angers me is that Captain Jay Baker, who had previously shared anti-Asian posts on social media, could say that the shooter just had a "bad day." When did a "bad day" warrant hate crime? One insightful article on the NYTimes that I wanted to share is called "Asian-Americans are being attacked. Why are hate crime charges so rare?" I think this article offers a clear explanation regarding the difficulty of proving a racial motive for hate crimes against Asian-Americans. 

But I want to return to the shooting that took place this past week. I couldn't believe my ears when I heard that Robert Aaron Long shot 6 Asian women to stop his "sexual addiction." I mean, really? This proclamation reflects how culturally screwed up this country can be. Asian women are first stereotyped by the news, by books, by Hollywood, as sexually submissive, exotic creatures. The media valorized Asian women. Then COVID-19 hit, followed by offensive rhetoric from the former president that blamed Asian-Americans for the coronavirus. And now, a criminal has taken these stereotypes and exploited them to cover what are clearly hate crimes. As the NYTimes article said, even this will be hard to prosecute. 

I've also been thinking about the flipping narratives for Asian-Americans. For one, we are looked upon as the "model minority." We are supposed to represent how the American Dream can be obtained through hard work, obedience, and decency. Is this the first hate crime against Asians? No. But I've noticed major media sites rarely highlight Asian hate-crime, perhaps out of a fear that it will shatter the idea of the American Dream narrative for racial minorities. But then, when the pandemic wreaked havoc, we've been scapegoated by some extremists as the cause of the coronavirus. This scapegoating also drove the Japanese internment. It feels as if we fill in vacancies and inconsistencies in America's narrative. We tend to gashes wherever they open. 

I'm still struggling to string together my feelings on paper. There's just so much happening emotionally right now amongst the AAPI community. But what's sad is that I foresee many more hate crimes against racial minorities occurring. Rhetoric, compounded by social media's pervasiveness, is more important than ever. I've noticed this in myself. I, for one, don't feel the same when I walk outside. There's a tenseness in me, a newfound alertness. But perhaps what's saddest of all is that what happened this week wasn't surprising at all.