Yes, I know. But neither supports your “many cases” contention. This is one case, not many.
But even assuming for the sake of argument that you’re right, so what? Is it your contention that black and Hispanic folks are the main actors in these attacks on Asians?
But even assuming for the sake of argument that you’re right, so what? Is it your contention that black and Hispanic folks are the main actors in these attacks on Asians?
In the unlikely event that was so, what would point would it prove? No one I know - and certainly not me -has ever argued that black or Hispanic people are incapable of doing bigoted and stupid things. Half of the officers who killed Freddie Gray were black.
The officer who arrested a six-year old black girl for having a temper tantrum a few months back was also black. As I’ve argued repeatedly in my column, it’s a mistake to obsess on the skin color of those who are on the spear tip of intolerance to the exclusion of the structures
and systems that breed said intolerance. As Martin Luther King’s men said after his assassination, they were less concerned with who killed him than with what. Similarly, it is of only passing interest to me whether these people were attacked by whites, blacks, browns, or
(and this is not inconceivable, people being the complicated and contradictory creatures they are) fellow Asians. My first question would still be: what created and sustains the mindset that depicts Asian people as dirty, sneaky, dog eaters, etc., which in turn makes someone
feel empowered to kick or spit upon some woman or boy, to treat them as something other than fully human when they don’t even know them. Where did they learn this, who taught it to them, and how and why? For me, that’s the larger and more critical question. If the
attackers were black, if the attackers were white, if the attackers were rainbow, fine: catch them and punish them. But if that’s all you’re concerned about, then you leave that bigger question not just unanswered, but unaddressed.
