‘We can’t stop them’: The Atlanta shootings were just as misogynist as they were racist
She’s scared to go outside and she’s afraid for her children.
I swallowed back anguish when I read those comments from an Asian colleague at work this week. I wanted to know how she was coping with the latest in a spate of violence targeted at Asian Americans. Like others I had spoken to, she was afraid, confused and traumatized.
And why wouldn’t she be?
A gunman went on a shooting spree at three businesses near Atlanta on Tuesday, killing eight people in a hail of gunfire. His victims were mostly Asian-American women working in spas.
The attacks came on the heels of intensifying hatred and violence leveled against Asian Americans, who for months have absorbed the brunt of blame for a pandemic they didn’t cause.
Before we learned the names of all eight victims, we learned the killer claimed his attacks weren’t racially-motivated. He professed to love God and was identified as the son of a church leader. He said he harbored a sexual addiction and claimed that he targeted the businesses to eliminate the source of his temptation. Unsurprisingly, he failed to mention that he killed actual human beings in his self-righteous campaign against his own deep-rooted sin.
