The Instagram profile of the 21-year-old punk who used his legally-purchased 9mm pistol to execute 8 innocent people last week in Georgia reads, “Pizza, guns, drums, music, family, and God. This pretty much sums up my life. It's a pretty good life.”
A pretty good life indeed.
The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department seems to accept the shooter’s claim that the murders were not racially motivated, despite the Asian heritage of six of the victims gunned-down at three Asian-owned spas. The shooter, (who does not deserve to have his name immortalized in print), allegedly told law enforcement officials that he is a sex addict who viewed the spas as a temptation. He also stated that he thought about suicide but opted instead to “help” others with sexual addictions by targeting the women working at the spas.
The sheriff’s spokesman, (who also doesn’t deserve to have his name immortalized in print), seemed sympathetic to the murderer’s plight, saying the shooter was “fed up” and was having “a really bad day”. Soon after, it was revealed that the spokesman had been promoting t-shirts online that read, “Covid-19 Imported Virus From Chy-na,” a reference to a Corona Beer label and the way the former president (who doesn’t deserve to have his name immortalized in print either) pronounces China.
The shooter killed six Asian women at three Asian-owned businesses. Five of those women were old enough to be the shooter’s grandmother. His oldest victim was 74 years old. Although an elderly person can certainly be the object of someone’s affection, it is quite unbelievable that a 21-year-old man in the prime of his life would find a 74-year-old grandmother so sexually tempting that the only thing he could possibly do to stop himself from seeking a physical encounter with her would be to murder her. The shooter drove past countless white-owned businesses in order to target places he knew would be staffed by Asian people. If that isn’t a hate crime, I don’t know what one is.
Make no mistake, the sheriff’s spokesperson is a racist, too. He sympathized with the white male shooter while selling a t-shirt that refers to the coronavirus as the “Chyna virus”, a blatantly xenophobic and racist tactic employed by the former president to vilify all things Chinese. The police captain wrote on his now-deleted Facebook post, “Love my shirt! Get yours while they last.”
The former president, by repeatedly calling the coronavirus “the China virus” and “the Wuhan virus”, has done his best to make his followers think of China whenever the Covid-19 pandemic is mentioned. As a result, anti-Asian hate crimes in major U.S. cities have risen 150% in the past year, while overall hate crimes are down 7%, according to a recent report by California State University-San Bernardino.
Besides being a racist murderer, the shooter is also clearly a misogynist. Seven out of his eight victims were women. They were daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, and grandmothers. Sexual addiction had nothing to do with the unspeakable horror that took place last week. Instead, yet another male who considers women to be nothing more than sex objects decided to remind those women, and women everywhere, that men are superior to them and can treat them in whatever way they see fit. He was, as the sheriff’s spokesman said, just a guy who was having a bad day. Apparently in our society, it is somehow understandable that men can have bad days and gun down women when they get fed up with them.
Why am I, a white male in Missouri, writing about the murders of Asian women in Atlanta, Georgia? First, as Atlanta native Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” And second, I am the proud parent of two Chinese children. The surge in anti-Asian hate crimes has me very concerned for their wellbeing.
To call the monstrous actions of the shooter in Atlanta anything other than a hate crime is a slap in the face of minorities, particularly people of Asian descent, everywhere. Anti-Asian crimes are being tacitly encouraged by racist sheriff’s spokespeople, former presidents, and right-wing television personalities who employ anti-China verbiage and propaganda. This anti-Asian rhetoric is causing an increase in hate crimes against people who look like my children.
As I have written many times before, I love our Southern Boone County community. The people who live here are good human beings. I would be shocked and appalled if either of my Chinese children came home from school and reported that they were the victims of racism. So far, they have endured only minor teasing over the years and nothing that would cause me to worry about their safety.
I do know of one instance, however, when kids were overheard saying that an Asian child in our school district was to blame for the coronavirus. When this was reported to me, I shook with rage while tears streamed from my eyes. That child’s parents handled the situation far better than I probably would have had those words been directed at my children.
I don’t care who you voted for in the recent presidential election, but I do care if you’re raising your children to hate my children and other people who look like them.
On a final note, while the murderer does not deserve to have his name immortalized, his victims certainly do. Soon Chung Park, 74. Suncha Kim, 69. Yong Ae Yue, 63. Hyun Jung Grant, 51. Xiaojie Tan, 49. Delaina Yaun, 33. Daoyou Feng, 44. Paul Andre Michels, 54. May they all rest in peace.
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