Earlier: NYPD: Per Capita, Blacks In NYC 18.7 Times As Likely As Asians To Be Robbery Suspects
From NBC News:
Violence against Asian Americans and why ‘hate crime’ should be used carefully
Social media posts have conflated violence against people who are Asian American with hate crimes against the community at large, tying the crimes to pandemic racism.
Feb. 25, 2021, 7:44 AM PST / Updated Feb. 25, 2021, 1:44 PM PST
By Kimmy YamAs the recent wave of attacks on older Asian Americans prompts calls for action and activism, experts urge the use of precise, accurate language in discussing the violence.
The robberies and assaults in several big-city Chinatowns have led to significant media coverage and outcry from activists, many of whom have labeled the incidents hate crimes. But recent higher-profile cases that have gone viral on social media aren’t being investigated as such, law enforcement officials say. Officials say the occurrences don’t show signs of being racially motivated.
Social media posts have conflated violence against people who are Asian American with hate crimes against the community at large, tying the crimes to pandemic-related racism. Some sources have declared a “spike” in hate crimes, citing an astronomical increase. But the figure they refer to specifically reflects New York City and New York police data obtained by NBC Asian America, which showed three anti-Asian hate crimes in 2019 and 28 last year. No hate crimes were reported this year so far. …
Regardless, Asian Americans have every right to their fear and anger at this time, said Michael Eric Dyson, a race and religion scholar at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. …
Dyson said that when cases aren’t determined to be hate crimes, “we want to be a bit reserved to make certain we’re not unnecessarily inflaming tensions and undue hostilities.” He said prematurely declaring them as such, particularly because the suspects in some cases have been Black, can have a deleterious effect.
Incorrect use of “hate crime” labeling “can have a negative impact on either side, on reinforcing the vicious stereotype of the natural Black inclinations for crime and that we’re thugs,” Michael Eric Dyson said. “And on the other hand, alerting Asian communities or heightening their awareness about their safety and security may be sending a false signal that there is a nonexistent attempt on the part of some Black communities to target Asian brothers and sisters.”
“It can have a negative impact on either side, on reinforcing the vicious stereotype of the natural Black inclinations for crime and that we’re thugs,” he said. “And on the other hand, alerting Asian communities or heightening their awareness about their safety and security may be sending a false signal that there is a nonexistent attempt on the part of some Black communities to target Asian brothers and sisters.”
Dhingra said Asian Americans can be targeted for a variety of reasons, not solely because of racial animus. Assailants could perceive them as easy or lucrative targets, instead.
After all, it could be that blacks attack Asians far more than Asians attack blacks (blacks were 18.7 times more likely per capita in NYC in 2020 to rob Asians than Asians were to rob blacks) not because blacks hate Asians more than they hate other people but because blacks, on average, are so much bigger, stronger, faster, and more impulsively violent than are Asians.
…Violence hasn’t been restricted to the Asian American community. Law enforcement statistics show that homicides in major cities have risen at alarming rates across the board; advocates attribute the crimes to the environment created by the pandemic and poverty.
The huge increase in murders in the days following the death of George Floyd couldn’t have had anything to do with the media-celebrated Racial Reckoning.
Chicago police, for example, reported about a 50 percent increase at the end of 2020 compared to the previous year, with 750 murders.
That Chicago had its most single most murderous weekend in its 60 years of reliable record-keeping, with 25 dying, the weekend after George Floyd’s death couldn’t have had anything to do with the protests. They were mostly peaceful!
Dyson said he understands why people are tempted to connect the incidents to the rampant anti-Asian sentiment tied to the pandemic. He said that with Donald Trump’s perpetuation of the “Chinese virus” discourse in the political bloodstream, the Trump administration had “unleashed the floodgates of anti-Asian sentiment.”
When blacks attack Asians during the Biden Era, the one thing we can know for sure is that it’s all Trump’s fault.
… Dyson said the Black community, like others, hasn’t been untouched by the Trump administration’s incendiary rhetoric. And just as the Asian American community isn’t immune to perpetuating anti-Blackness, the Black community can be vulnerable to absorbing the anti-Asian discourse.
“Just because Black folk have been oppressed themselves doesn’t issue a carte blanche, so to speak, exempting us from looking at whatever possible internalization of certain elements of our community, of the hostility toward Asian folk in regard to the ‘Chinese virus’ and the way in which that discourse targets AAPI folk with such vicious particularity,” he said.
Dyson said history has shown that marginalized communities can be manipulated by white supremacy and that communities of color must be vigilant.
An alternative explanation is that blacks aren’t particularly more or less hostile toward Asians, but instead blacks have just become more murderous during the Racial Reckoning. If murders were up about 30% overall in 2020, it’s likely that murders by blacks were up 40% or more. So, yeah, with The Establishment telling blacks that they ought to feel angry and that their anger is more than justified, blacks are likely killing more blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians.
