Atlanta Shootings Bring Attention to Anti-Asian Racism

Last Tuesday, on March 16, eight people were killed in a series of shootings which took place at three spas in the Greater Atlanta area. Of the eight that died, six were Asian American and two were white. All of them, except for one, were women. The shootings fueled fear that the shooting may have singled out Asians, and draws attention to the longstanding racism many Asians have faced in America, which has sadly become more exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Video footage from surveillance cameras indicates that the suspect, Robert Aaron Long, who is now in police custody, drove up to Young’s Asian Massage, a massage parlor in Acworth, Ga., an Atlanta suburb, and sat in the parking lot until 3:38 p.m. EDT when he entered the parlor. However, all was fine until around 4:50 p.m., which is when Long left the parlor. Police were called about four minutes later and found two people who were fatally shot and three wounded people, two of whom would later die in the hospital.

Then, at 5:47 p.m., Atlanta police responded to reports of a robbery at a Gold Massage Spa in northeast Atlanta, just 30 miles away from the first parlor. Police found three women who were fatally shot, and during the time in which police were in that spa, reports of another shooting were received, at a massage parlor just across the street named Aromatherapy Spa. A woman was found dead from gunshot wounds.

Long was captured by Georgia State Patrol at around 8:30 p.m. at a location 150 miles south of Atlanta, after his car was identified using surveillance footage at the spas. He was identified as a 21-year-old native of Woodstock, Ga..

The eight people who died include Xiaojie Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Delaina Yaun, 33; Yong Ae Yue, 63; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 60; Soon Chung Park, 74; and Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz, 30. Of these people, Yue, Grant, Kim, and Park were of South Korean descent, according to the South Korean Embassy.

Although it isn’t immediately clear if the suspect was racially motivated to commit the attacks (he claimed that he had a “sex addiction”), the attacks brought attention to the racism that many Asian Americans had been facing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since last March, when the pandemic first exploded in the U.S., there have been 3,800 cases of anti-Asian hate incidents, according to the advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate (AAPI is an acronym that stands for Asian American and Pacific Islander).

There have been a number of high-profile cases in the news lately regarding racist attacks against Asians. In San Francisco, on March 18, a 75-year-old woman Chinese woman was randomly punched in the face by a white man, and she hit the man back with a wooden stick hard. The incident garnered substantial attention on social media. In the Bay Area, where a lot of Asians live (19 percent of Bay Area residents are Asian, compared to just four percent nationally), anti-Asian hate crimes have skyrocketed since the pandemic began.

The hate against Asians can be partly attributed to the fact that former President Trump repeatedly used racist labeling to describe the coronavirus, using terms like the “Chinese virus” and “Kung flu.” That has led some people, particularly white Americans, to view Asians with a newfound hatred, as they believe they are responsible for bringing the virus to U.S. shores.

A number of police departments in major cities, such as New York City, Seattle, and more have increased patrols in neighborhoods with large Asian communities to better protect them from attacks. The FBI is also involved in the Atlanta case.

Asians around the country have rallied together in recent days calling for the end of anti-Asian racism. Multiple Korean churches in Atlanta have held services outside one of the spas, calling on people to “stop Asian hate.” In New York City’s Columbus Park, a group of Asians rallied on Sunday to bring attention to the discrimination many Asians have faced during the pandemic. Demonstrators have also gathered outside the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta on Saturday in a Stop AAPI Hate rally. Other gatherings have been held in cities like Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, and Charlottesville, Va., the scene of a deadly race-related riot in 2017.

In Canada, a country which also has a substantial Asian population, Jooyoung Lee, a professor at the University of Toronto, said, “Those myths that Canadians tell themselves obscure, they hide a lot of the everyday forms of violence and discrimination that Asian people experience in Canada,” as she says that many white Canadians believe there to not be the same problems with racism in Canada as in the United States.

Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, denounced the shooting as a “hate crime” and introduced a bill titled the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act along with two other Asian members of Congress, Rep. Grace Meng, D-N.Y., and Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii. On Twitter, Chu called for Americans to “unify to reject xenophobia and #StopAAPIHate.”

With Georgia also recently passing hate crime legislation after the death of Ahmaud Arbery, another high-profile incident involving the fatal shooting of a Black man in Gwinnett County, Ga., this shooting provides an opportunity for the new legislation to be used. Activists have called for Long to be charged of hate crimes.

On March 18, during a previously-scheduled House hearing on anti-Asian racism, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, questioned whether the committee’s moves to limit hate crimes and speech against Asians would hamper free speech, drawing substantial criticism. Rep. Grace Meng, a Democratic Asian congresswoman from New York, said, of the Asian American community, “Our community is bleeding. We are in pain. And for the last year, we’ve been screaming out for help.” “We will not let you take our voice from us,” Meng said.