GEORGIA MASSACRE SPURS FEAR AMONG ASIAN AMERICANS, PINOYS

The shootings at three Georgia massage parlors and spas that left eight people dead, six of them women of Asian descent, come on the heels of a recent wave of attacks against Asian Americans since the coronavirus first entered the United States, Christine Fernando and Terry Tang reported for the Associated Press (AP).

A 21-year-old white man, Robert Aaron Long, suspected in the shooting has been taken into custody and charged with murder. The alleged gunman told police the attack was not racially motivated, claiming to have a “sex addiction,” and apparently lashed out at what he saw as sources of temptation, authorities said Wednesday. The true motive behind the attacks is unclear at this time.

Five people were shot Tuesday at a massage parlor in Acworth, 30 miles north of Atlanta, four of whom died. Police found three women dead from apparent gunshot wounds at Gold Spa in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, and one woman dead at Aromatherapy Spa across the street.

Recent attacks, including the killing of an 84-year-old San Francisco man in February, have raised concerns about worsening hostilities toward Asian Americans and Filipino-Americans. Nearly 3,800 incidents have been reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a California-based reporting center for Asian American Pacific Islanders, and its partner advocacy groups, since March 2020.

Police in several major cities saw a sharp uptick in Asian-targeted hate crimes between 2019 and 2020, according to data collected by the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. New York City went from three incidents to 27, Los Angeles from seven to 15, and Denver had three incidents in 2020 — the first reported there in six years.

Racism against Asian Americans has long been an ugly thread of US history and was enshrined into law in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which was designed to prevent Chinese American laborers from entering the US as a result of widespread xenophobia.

Asian Americans have also long been used as medical scapegoats in the US and falsely blamed for public health problems, including a smallpox outbreak in San Francisco in the 1870s. This racist association between Asian Americans and illness and uncleanliness has also affected views of Asian food and contributes to the “perpetual foreigner” trope that suggests Asian people are fundamentally outsiders.

This fueled suspicions of Japanese Americans during World War II, when many were sent to detention camps solely due to their ethnicity, as well as Islamophobia and prejudice toward Muslim and South Asian Americans following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

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