How to Protect Asian American Communities
An email from a reader
Violent crimes committed against people of Asian descent have reached worrying levels in cities like San Francisco and New York. Given the way the mainstream media often portrays racial division in this country, you could be forgiven for thinking the perpetrators are all Trump-loving white nationalists.
But this is not the case. In an email to me, George Lee takes issue with attempts to describe these terrible incidents as “hate crimes,” as though the worst thing about them was their prejudicial nature. For George and many others in the Asian American community, the primary issue is public safety, not “white supremacy.” He points readers toward Wai Wah Chin’s 2021 New York Post op-ed, which calls for more policing to protect vulnerable communities, rather than empty CRT-inspired rhetoric. (You can also watch Wai Wah’s recent appearance on TGS here.)
I have a lot of sympathy for George and Wai Wah’s argument. You would think that politicians and activists who care about “people of color” would do whatever it takes to protect them from bodily harm, including increasing the police presence in relevant neighborhoods. Unfortunately, this appears not to be the case, and Asian American communities are among those bearing the cost.
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Dear Glenn,
Thank you, Glenn, for pointing out, in your recent “Which Black Lives Matter?” show, that some Asian Americans do push back against the Woke elite's “Asian hate crimes” narrative.
Back in April 2021, Wai Wah Chin wrote an op-ed in the New York Post calling out this “Asian hate crimes” narrative. Anyone with eyes can see that the attackers in New York City are not MAGA-chanting, Trumpist white supremacists. The Woke elite's narrative is shamelessly fact-free partisan propaganda, lasting no longer than a photo-op, and more importantly, serving to deflect attention away from their racism-mongering, soft-on-crime policies that, inspired by critical race theory, gave us this crime wave in the first place.
The “Asian hate crime” term itself is manipulative and divisive. Wai Wah's op-ed points out that when you are being pushed onto the subway tracks or face a knife in a robbery, whether the expletive used by the attacker qualifies the attack as a “hate crime” is a remote concern to you. The op-ed ends with the call: “It is time to make New York City safe again, not just for Asians, but for all communities hurting from rising lawlessness and crime. With them we stand in solidarity.” First and foremost, we have a crime problem. Solve it! Don't pretend to pacify us by calling it “hate” or “Asian” while actually pouring fuel on the fire by promoting CRT.
Heather Mac Donald is right that many Asian activists are tools of the Woke elite, on topics from street crimes to selective school admissions to critical race theory itself. For some, it is as Booker T. Washington said, that there's an easy living to be made from keeping the “race problem” alive and in the public eye. For others, it is as John McWhorter diagnosed, that a weak core falls easy prey to upwardly mobile and psychically addictive virtue signaling. Even without Amy Wax's thoughtful and provocative probe, we know these Asians to be the community's burden. We are excited, however, that a new, emergent generation of Asian activists and voters will turn the tide in New York City, like they did in Northern Virginia, California, and Washington State!
Thanks again, Glenn, for another great episode of The Glenn Show!
Best regards,
George Lee
I mentioned the issue of Black on Asian crime in a monthly Q&A that Glenn and John graciously addressed a while back. My main point was that rather than lumping Black on Asian crime into one indiscriminate bucket, we should actually consider two distinct categories of such crimes. First there are Black on Asian robberies that I argued almost certainly have a utilitarian rationale on the part of the criminal. It's often said that crimes like homicide are intra-racial, i.e. people mostly kill and are killed by someone of their own ethnic group. One statistical indication of this is the fact that the racial distribution of victims roughly mirrors that of the racial distribution of perpetrators. However, when you look at crimes such as robbery in large cities like NYC, you can immediately see that in contrast to crimes like homicide or shootings, Asians generally make up a much larger percentage of victims as opposed to perpetrators while the opposite is true for Blacks. Clearly Blacks are targeting Asians for robberies in big cities and my own suspicion is that a major part of the reason is that Asians are being targeted because they happen to be of smaller stature on average relative to members of other ethnic groups and are perceived to be less likely to fight back. There's a reason why Black guys rob elderly Asian women. It's high reward low risk.
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/year-end-2020-enforcement-report-20210721.pdf
I'm not sure that I would describe this first category of Black on Asian crime as being motivated primarily by racism, although I certainly agree that it's highly problematic and in any case the mainstream media loves pretending that it doesn't exist which just makes the problem worse. That being said, there is a second category of Black on Asian crime that was really exemplified during the pandemic by random senseless assaults of Asians by Blacks with no property being taken from the victim in most cases. We've seen the videos of Black perps randomly coming up to Asian victims and sucker punching or assaulting them. I'm sure some of these incidents have a racial angle based on the rhetoric uttered by the perpetrators. In other cases it's certainly possible that the assailants may have mental health issues. I agree with John and Glenn from their monthly Q&A that we don't have great sociological insight into what this second category of Black on Asian crime is all about. Like John I agree that what's sorely needed are the journalist anthropologists who can help us make sense of these Black on Asian assaults. I also agree with George and Wai Wah that the mainstream media loves promoting the narrative that somehow Black on Asian crime is fundamentally about white supremacy, which when you think about it makes absolutely no fucking sense.
I think an honest discussion of the underlying phenomenon of Black on Asian crime is sorely needed in this country. I say this as someone who was personally a victim of Black on Asian crime himself. Shortly before relocating across the country a couple of years back, I walked past a group of male Black youths with my phone out. While I was preoccupied with doing something on my phone, one of the youths ran up from behind me, grabbed my phone out of my hand, punched me in the right eye and ran away. I suffered a black eye and apparently had a broken right orbital socket as well as a fractured nose. It took many weeks to recover and was not a pleasant experience. There was nothing remotely Trumpian or white supremacist about what I endured and now when I walk past groups of Black youths I'm almost certain to be more on guard. Stereotypes and perceptions unfortunately exist for a reason.
The perpetrators in my case and in many other cases of Black crime are often juveniles. We saw this in many of the videos of the lootings that took place in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots. I remember personally asking myself where the parents were in the lives of many of these youths when I saw footage of these crimes. I think Heather MacDonald's observations about the breakdown of the Black family in her conversation with Glenn are extremely apt.
Haven't read the piece yet, but I wanted to say I really appreciate these Sunday afternoon posts. They often lead to great discussion.