Hillary Clinton used the anniversary of the Atlanta spa shootings to foster a dubious narrative that Donald Trump prompted an increase in violence against Asian Americans by referring to SARS-CoV-2 as the “China virus.”
“As we mark a year since the Atlanta spa shootings, Asian Americans around the country continue to experience violence and harassment. It’s awful and must stop. Please look out for your neighbors and help #StopAsianHate,” she wrote Wednesday on Twitter.
However, it can be argued that if the two-time Democratic presidential candidate truly believes the attacks are “awful and must stop,” she wouldn’t be ignoring the obvious fact that it’s not racist white men in red MAGA hats who are at the center of the brutal beating and killing of vulnerable Asian Americans.
For one, the most likely motive for the horrific murder one year ago of eight Atlanta spa workers – six of whom were Asian – was the one declared by the perpetrator, Robert Aaron Long, which had nothing to do with race. Asians are disproportionately represented in the massage industry, and Long – in his depraved mind – said he was tortured by the conflict between his stated Christian beliefs and his sexual sin, and somehow sought to purge himself of his lust and addiction to pornography.
That motive is hotly disputed, but what can’t be disputed is that the crime data and the many incidents captured on closed-circuit cameras or by bystanders tell a story that establishment media and politicians are unwilling to confront: Most of the perpetrators are black people who, many black leaders and sociologists argue, are part of the legacy of Congress trying to make amends for the monstrous sins of slavery and segregation through massive welfare programs that have produced fatherless families.
And many perpetrators, especially of late, are homeless people, both black and white, with mental issues who show no evidence of any particular political allegiance.
A story published Wednesday by the McClatchy news agency marking the anniversary of the spa shootings reflected the establishment narrative.
“The deadly attacks were part of an increase in anti-Asian violence that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when former President Donald Trump and others called the coronavirus the ‘China virus’ and ‘Kung Flu,'” wrote Vandana Ravikumar.
The report cited three recent incidents of violence against Asian Americans that made national headlines. But the article did not mention that all three were committed by homeless men, two of whom were black and one white.
- On Jan. 15, Michelle Go, a 40-year-old New Yorker, was pushed off a subway platform to her death. The suspect was Simon Martial, a homeless man who served two prison terms for robbing taxi drivers while threatening use of a gun
- On Feb. 14, Christina Yuna Lee was found dead in her bathtub after being followed into her Chinatown apartment and stabbed 40 times by Assamad Nash. In a report of the murder, the New York Times said it “fit a pattern that has become an unsettlingly common feature of the pandemic in New York City: a seemingly unprovoked attack in which the person charged is a homeless man.”
- On March 2, Steven Zajonc, was arrested after being accused of attacking seven Asian women in the span of two hours.
On Monday, police in New York City said a 42-year-old Yonkers man was arrested on attempted murder as a hate crime and other charges in the vicious beating of a 67-year-old Asian woman in the vestibule of her apartment building, which was caught on camera, reported WNBC-TV in New York.
The report did not mention that the suspect, Tammel Esco, is black. Esco yelled a racial slur at the woman before punching her in the head from behind and knocking her to the floor. Police said he then punched her in the head and face more than 125 times with alternating fist strikes before foot-stomping her seven times and spitting on her. The victim suffered facial bone fractures, brain bleeding and multiple contusions and lacerations to her head. She remains hospitalized and is expected to survive.
See a report by WABC-TV in New York City:
Last May, as WND reported, President Biden pounded his podium as he decried crimes targeting Asian Americans before signing a hate-crimes bill crafted in response to a reported rise in violence against Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic.
However, the bill drew opposition from 85 organizations that range from promoters of civil rights to gay rights, including the nonprofit 18 Million Rising and the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance.
In a joint statement, the organizations said that, among other things, the bill “doesn’t address the reality that, at least in New York City, many of the attacks involve people who do have mental health issues, who are poor, potentially homeless … we have to address inequality in our society.”
An African American Twitter user feared the bill would be “used specifically against Black Americans.”
“Any disagreement or any retaliation in self-defense against an Asian will be labeled a hate crime,” he wrote.
This bill will be used specifically against Black Americans….
Any disagreement or any retaliation in self-defense against an Asian will be labeled a hate crime…
400+ years of brutality and the Emmett Till Anti-lyching bill is still in limbo…#BothPartiesAreAntiBlack https://t.co/hIlw3Sx7JT
— J Brisenio (@JBrisenio411) May 19, 2021
Not a new problem
The problem isn’t new, and neither is the media’s unwillingness to tell the truth.
In 2010, a San Francisco Chronicle columnist cited a “community organizer” who acknowledged “San Francisco’s dirty secret” that Asian residents were being targeted for robberies, burglaries and intimidation by young black men.
The community organizer, Carol Mo, participated in a 2008 survey by the San Francisco Police Department analyzing 300 strong-arm robberies that found, she said, “85 percent of the physical assault crimes, the victims were Asian and the perpetrators were African American.”
The columnist, C.W. Nevius, reported hundreds of people marched into a Board of Supervisors meeting “to express their fear, frustration and outrage.” But officials seemed “intent on downplaying the role of race and its impact in the community.”
“The recent incidents of black violence against Asians is the perfect opportunity to open a dialogue about racism,” he wrote. “Instead, they are attempting to close the door.”
Nevius said “no one is saying the entire African American community is violent.”
“But ignoring the legitimate anger and frustration from Asians is disingenuous and unfair.”
‘Simply are afraid’
Last May, an Asian-American writer and policy expert urged role models such as President Obama and black pastors to denounce the wave of black-on-Asian violence in America.
Ying Ma, the author of “Chinese Girl in the Ghetto,” said leaders “simply are afraid to utter the word ‘black.”
“What we need in this country is an uncomfortable but honest conversation about the prevalence of black crime in general and black-on-Asian violence in particular,” she said in an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.
Ma, whose book tells her story of moving from post-Mao China to an inner-city neighborhood in Oakland, said she was “a big fan of President Obama when he bluntly talked about fatherless black households back in 2008.”
“That took courage, and that took honesty and leadership, and I do hope that he will display the same kind of courage and leadership on this particular issue,” she said.
“Especially given that President Obama grew up in Asia, in Indonesia.”
Leaders like that are needed, she said, to urge the black community “to engage in serious soul-searching.”
Ma said “there is great friendship between blacks and Asians in this country.”
“So, at this point, we are calling on our friends in the black community to please help, to please display some leadership on this issue.”
See the segment:
Data from the New York Police Department, which compiles the most comprehensive and detailed hate-crimes statistics in the country, support Ma’s concern.
The data show a black New Yorker is more than six times as likely to commit a hate crime against an Asian as a white New Yorker, points out Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald. In 2020, Mac Donald noted, blacks made up 50% of all suspects in anti-Asian attacks in New York City, even though blacks are 24% of the city’s population. Whites made up 10% of all suspects but account for 32% of the city’s population. If black Hispanics are included in the black category, blacks account for 60% of all anti-Asian attacks in 2020.
Among the incidents last May, New York’s WABC-TV reported an Asian woman in Manhattan was hit in the head with hammer by a stranger who demanded she take her mask off. The online report offered no details about the perpetrator, other than she was female, but video footage of the incident showed she was black.
See the WABC report:
In Mission Bay, California, a 26-year-old black man was arrested after repeatedly punching an Asian man who was walking with a 1-year-old in a stroller outside a store. A local KPIX-TV report identified the victim as an “Asian man” but the attacker was simply a suspect. However, surveillance video once again provided the full story.
A report by San Francisco’s KGO featuring an interview with the victim also emphasized that he was Asian but didn’t mention that the attacker is black.
KGO reported: “When asked if he thought the incident was racially motivated, Bruce said the thought did cross his mind, especially given the random nature of the attack and the number of attacks on Asian Americans in the past year.”
See the attack:
⚠️ TW / ASIAN FATHER ATTACKED IN MISSION BAY WHILE WALKING WITH 1-YEAR-OLD IN STROLLER
The attack happened Friday just after 2 pm outside Gus’s Community Market on 4th/Channel. SFPD was patrolling the area and immediately arrested the suspect – 26 yo Sidney Hammond.@KPIXtv pic.twitter.com/rcidGexoc7
— Betty Yu (@BettyKPIX) May 5, 2021
Police in San Francisco arrested a man suspected of stabbing older two Asian women, one who is 85 years old. Both women underwent emergency surgery.
Also in May 2021, the NYPD hate crimes unit investigated two other assaults on Asian-Americans, CNN reported. In one attack, a 52-year-old woman sustained minor injuries when she was pushed while waiting for a subway train in Brooklyn. And a 15-year-old boy was taken to a hospital with minor injuries after he was approached by three people who allegedly made anti-Asian remarks and hit him.
‘One all-powerful narrative’
Mac Donald argued that the media and the Democratic establishment are invested in “one all-powerful narrative.”
For example, the murder of 10 people at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, drew nonstop coverage when it was believed to be motivated by white supremacy. But when the suspect turned out to be a Muslim immigrant, media moved on to other stories.
In Atlanta, Mac Donald said, the false narrative that developed about the spa shootings in March “still has legs.”
“It represents a double lie — first, that the massacre was the product of Trump-inspired xenophobic hatred, and second, that whites are the biggest perpetrators of violence against Asians,” Mac Donald said.
Six of the eight victims of 21-year Robert Aaron Long, a white man, were Asian.
Protests across the nation featured signs declaring “I am not a virus”; “Asians are not viruses, racism is!!”; “End white supremacy now!”; and “All of us against racism.”
An organizer of a protest in Alhambra, California, told the Los Angeles Times: “I think it’s important for Black and Asian communities to work together on this because at the end of the day, it’s about dismantling white supremacy and speaking out against white racism.”
Vice President Kamala Harris announced the attack shows “racism is real in America and it has always been.”
But Mac Donald pointed out there was no evidence that Long was motivated by racism. He told police he had targeted the three spas to purge himself of his lust and his addiction to pornography. Long appears, Mac Donald said, to have targeted presumed sex workers who happened, given the demographics of the massage trade in Atlanta, to be Asian. In fact he told police he intended to target a business in Florida next that produced pornography, and the employees there were unlikely to be Asian.
Mac Donald noted that Reuters was reprimanded on social media for the headline “Sex addiction, not racial hatred, may have driven suspect in Georgia spa shootings.”
Reuters revised the headline to “Motive in Georgia spa shootings uncertain, but Asian-Americans fearful.”
Both Harris and President Biden dismissed the relevance of the motive. ‘Whatever the killer’s motive, these facts are clear,” Harris said. “Six out of the eight people killed on Tuesday night were of Asian descent.” And Biden said, “Whatever the motivation, we know this: Too many Asian-Americans have been walking up and down the streets and worrying.”
But when it comes to “hate crimes,” Mac Donald argued, “motive is the entire issue.”
‘They are pretending to care now’
Mac Donald recounted the details of numerous incidents of attacks on Asians in the Bay Area and New York City in 2021, noting “the suspects in all of these cases were black; the news reports rarely mentioned that detail.”
“Had the suspects been white, their race would have led each news report, as it did for Robert Aaron Long,” she wrote.
A former member of the Oakland police department’s robbery undercover suppression team told Mac Donald the racial pattern of the attacks and the lack of coverage is longstanding.
He said no one cares about Asian robbery victims.
“We used to follow around elderly Asians, waiting for the bad guys to start circling. This has been one of my long-term frustrations,” he said. “They are pretending to care now but ironically blaming it on white supremacy,” even though the suspects in Asian robbery attacks are almost exclusively black.
Inner-city animus against Asian small business owners is also longstanding, Mac Donald said, as the 1992 Los Angeles riots and the 1990 Big Apple grocery boycott in New York City illustrate.
Mac Donald warned that the “lie about white supremacist violence is not innocuous.”
“It forms the basis of the Biden administration’s policy in national security and in a host of domestic welfare programs,” she said. “It is the pretext for Big Tech and Big Media’s silencing of speech. And the shamelessness with which that lie is constructed grows more brazen by the day. It must be fought with facts before it irrevocably alters our culture.”
Mac Donald is known for her extensive research of data refuting the claim of systemic racism in policing. In a presentation reported by WND , she cited mainstream studies showing a white officer is much more likely to shoot an unarmed white suspect than a black suspect. And a police officer is up to 30 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
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