{"id":6856,"date":"2021-04-02T18:26:19","date_gmt":"2021-04-03T04:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/?p=6856"},"modified":"2021-04-02T18:29:06","modified_gmt":"2021-04-03T04:29:06","slug":"biden-shines-a-light-on-filipino-asian-american-fears-what-took-everyone-so-long-to-notice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thefilipinochronicle.com\/backup\/2021\/04\/02\/biden-shines-a-light-on-filipino-asian-american-fears-what-took-everyone-so-long-to-notice\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden Shines a Light on Filipino Asian American Fears; What Took Everyone So Long to Notice?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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by Emil Guillermo

<\/em>Suddenly, they see us. We\u2019re in the news. Six Asian American women are dead after a mindless, despicable killing spree in Atlanta. Even President Biden and Vice President Harris visited the scene.

\u201cIt\u2019s been a year of living in fear for their lives. Hate violence often hide in plain sight. It\u2019s often met with silence,\u201d Biden said. \u201cThat\u2019s been throughout history. And that has to change. Because our silence is our complicity. We cannot be complicit. We have to speak out.\u201d

And don\u2019t think Filipinos, no matter how far from the mainland, aren\u2019t feeling something. A large percentage of the 4,000 who\u2019ve self-reported hate instances to the Stop AAPI Hate website have been Filipinos.

For this moment, we\u2019re all in this together. Here\u2019s how significant this all is.

In Atlanta, the place where MLK is entombed, we\u2019ve just established our own Asian American civil rights landmark.

For as long as there\u2019s an Asian American, we\u2019ll be talking about Atlanta.

In previous weeks, I\u2019ve mentioned Vincent Chin, who was beaten to death in 1982 with a baseball bat<\/a> in a suburb of Detroit. It set off an outcry that put \u201cunity\u201d in community and defined Asian American activism for generations.

It\u2019s been almost 40 years since Vincent Chin\u2019s murder. And now we have a crime that defines hate for a new generation. That\u2019s what Atlanta gives us historically.

But hate crime, you say? We will get into that in a second.

First, let\u2019s talk about what took so long for everyone to notice the vulnerability of every Asian American in the nation.

The signs were all there, but people refused to see us. They were blind to the obvious. Were we gaslit? No, we were just ignored, as usual. Obscured by indifference.

But Asian Americans have been paying attention and we\u2019ve been sounding the alarm for a year.

It was on March 19, 2020, when reporters first questioned the previous president and\u00a0took him to task<\/a>\u00a0for his excessive and cavalier use of the phrases \u201cKung Flu\u201d and \u201cChina virus.\u201dThe mainstream media noticed it at first, then quickly dropped it.

But those of us focused on Asian America didn\u2019t let up.

It was Trump doing what he did best: divide the country with a hate rhetoric and give the green light to white supremacists.

And then they were showing up everywhere.

As the racists came out of the shadows, we got pushed into the dark.

My columns and podcasts covered the steady rise of anti-Asian hate instances, including the start of\u00a0Stop AAPI Hate<\/a> \u2013 the website run by San Francisco State University\u2019s Asian American Studies Department in the College of Ethnic Studies \u2013 when the number was at a modest 700 cases.

People spat on us, called us names, and told us to \u201cgo home.\u201dBut we were home.

There was the stabbing attack on Bawi Cung and his family in Midland, Texas. It was ugly, but nothing we hadn\u2019t seen before, right?

Then the number of self-reported cases more than doubled to near 1,500.

By the end of the 2020, cases grew to near 3,000.

As Trump blamed China for the virus, he showed little concern for Asian Americans, who were being scapegoated and delivered to the Trump base as the convenient enemy.

Finally, a\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0by Stop AAPI Hate at the end of February 2021 put the cases at just short of 3,800.

But why quibble? Considering that most people don\u2019t report racial incidents, let\u2019s not downplay the fact that the number is too close to 4,000 for comfort. That should be enough to make all Americans concerned about freedom, democracy, and racial justice more than a little worried.

By the end of January, Asian American activists highlighted a video that captured the brutal attack on Vichar Ratanapakdee, 84, a Thai immigrant in San Francisco. He was the first death.

And then, just recently, Pak Ho, 75, in Oakland, died from a head injury during a robbery attempt.

Two elderly Asian Americans in hate attacks is a local story, right?

Here\u2019s what it took for people everywhere to notice what was happening.

Eight people dead\u2014six of them Asian women, after a 21-year-old gun zealot shoots up three Asian spas.No one saw it coming? Asian Americans saw it coming.

That Georgia News Conference<\/strong>
The cluelessness continued at the very first press conference, when Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff\u2019s Office sounded as if he were looking for a defense for the white suspect, Robert Aaron Long, 21.

Baker said Long had essentially admitted to the killings but said that sex may have been the motive. Not race? According to Baker, Long, now charged with eight murders, \u201chad a bad day.\u201d

Baker is off the case now. But besides the \u201cbad day\u201d gaffe, reporters found a post on Baker\u2019s Facebook account that showed a t-shirt with the words \u201cChyna-Virus\u201d spelled phonetically in that special way Trump sounds when he squints his eyes and tries to show just how racist he can be.

If the Cherokee Sheriff\u2019s Department sounds like the security detail of the Trump base, it\u2019s no coincidence. The Sheriff himself, Frank Reynolds, has been linked to Blackwater, the infamous private security company.

If the Cherokee County Sheriff is reluctant to charge hate crimes, the Atlanta Police are still considering the possibility. Since the state law was recently expanded to include sex and gender, it would appear that six Asian women dead at three Asian-owned spas would give law enforcement more than enough probable cause.

But you have to see us first.

A Friend\u2019s Reaction<\/strong>
When I talked about the shootings to a friend of mine \u2013 who is white and considers himself a progressive \u2013 all he could think about was guns, God, and sex.

\u201cAnd the kid,\u201d my friend said, referring to the suspect, Robert Aaron Long. \u201cWas there any evidence of a hate crime?\u201d

Do six Asian women and three Asian spas sound like a coincidence?

A good prosecutor could establish the elements of a hate crime.

Here\u2019s a coincidence: Rep. Grace Meng and Sen. Mazie Hirono had previously called for a Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on Asian Americans last week, as they introduce a new Covid Hate Crimes Bill.

The bill would get the Justice Department more involved in tracking hate crimes. But the most important testimony at the hearing was from the historians who once again reminded Congress of the racist history toward Asians, from Chinese exclusion, to Filipino and Indian exclusion, to Japanese American incarceration in WWII, to immigration bans. Men were emasculated and infantilized. Women were fetishized and sexualized. Racism has always been a part of our Asian American lives.

It\u2019s hard to imagine Robert Aaron Long relying on a sex addiction defense if it plays right into the historically sexist, racist, misogynistic view of Asian women. That puts him squarely in hate crime territory.

But my friend doesn\u2019t see it that way. He\u2019s like so many other well-meaning Americans.

There are more than 23 million Asian Americans in this country, and they just don\u2019t see us.

Hate crime? \u201cIt did not occur to me,\u201d my friend said.

I give him a break because blind spot or not, he\u2019s still an old friend. But it\u2019s also the astonishing thing about Atlanta. Given the racist rhetoric of Trump, and the slow build of spit and epithets, it was bound to happen \u2013 yet no one saw it coming.

Just us.

We\u2019ll be talking about this story for a long, long time.

For previous generations, Vincent Chin was always the call to justice. For a new Asian American generation, it will be Atlanta.

The hate\u2019s the same. The names have changed. There\u2019s still a chance that Georgia\u2019s new hate crime statute \u2013 which is slightly different from the current federal law and includes discrimination based on sex and race \u2013 may still be used.

If hate crime enhancements aren\u2019t forthcoming, it would definitely send Asian Americans a harsh message of our true value in this country.

It will also test the strength of our broad multi-ethnic community. What will our response be then? Will others feel our pain, join us, and speak up with us?

Or will we be left wondering how we get justice for the six Asian American women killed? Soon Chung Park, 74, who worked at Gold spa.Hyun Jung Grant, 51, the single mother who worked at Gold Spa to support herself and her two sons.

Suncha Kim, 69, a Gold Spa worker.

Yong Ae Yue, 63, a worker at the Aromatherapy Spa.

Xiaojie Tan, 49, the owner of Young\u2019s Asian Massage.

Daoyou Feng, 44, an employee at Young\u2019s Asian Massage.

They are our dead, the latest in the sad narrative of Asian Americans in this country since the 19th<\/sup> Century, an agonizing history of recycled hate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

EMIL GUILLERMO<\/strong> is a journalist and commentator. In his career, he\u2019s been host of NPR\u2019s \u201cAll Things Considered,\u201d and an editorial board member of the Honolulu Advertiser.\u00a0 See his vlog\/blog at <\/em>www.amok.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

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