Ben Prescott, sports editor
2020 was a year that brought a lot of needed attention to different social issues. It was great to see conversations open up about certain racial bias that may lie within people or federal systems. It’s important to have these conversations, as they provide foundation for change.
But there was one conversation that never seemed to reach the light of day, that being the violence against Asian Americans and people of Asian descent. Of course, a few stories made national news but other than the media discussing them for a few days, the topic of violence against Asian Americans got lost in other news fairly quickly.
As someone of Korean descent, hearing the news of the Atlanta spa shootings pained me. The story hit close to home in so many ways, with my racial make-up being an obvious factor, but also growing up in Georgia and staying in state for college being the main reason. I have mostly positive memories living here, with exception to hearing a few racist remarks growing up, but I know this isn’t the case for other Asian Americans or people of Asian descent. This horrific event happened within an hour of me, given that I was here at school. and it’s something that could have happened to any one of my Asian family members. Just the thought of that angers me.
When I heard the news of the shooting, naturally I wanted to do something. I was inspired by what I had seen in the months prior with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. People were exercising their right to protest and change a system that they believed was fundamentally wrong. Surely, there would be people who were just as mad as I was and wanted to make change in this case too. But what was I met with? Silence.
After the initial news cycle, media outlets were silent. It’s not like reporters ran out of material, because there was a 73% increase in reported Asian American hate crimes in 2020, according to NBC. And it only gets worse.
The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism reported a 339% increase in Asian hate crimes in the last year. No, that wasn’t a typo – a three hundred and thirty-nine percent increase. This number could be even higher when considering some of these hate crimes go unreported. With such a large increase, you would think this issue would get more coverage besides the initial breaking story. So, how come it wasn’t covered past the initial breaking news stage? How come this isn’t covered to the extent of other movements?
Social media participation wasn’t any better. Personally, I don’t participate in social media in terms of activism. I just see it as an act to seem like you care, followed by no real action. But when you’re searching for somebody to care, you stoop to these levels to see if anyone is acknowledging the trauma from these actions. I wasn’t surprised by what I saw. Very few people seemed to voice their opinion, which showed the lack of care they claimed to have as “allies.” The people who criticized the silent ones during the BLM protests had now become silent themselves. Nobody wanted to be a social media warrior in this instance. This included the people that I follow on social media and people on social media in general. To put it nicely, these practices are hypocritical of the media and the self-proclaimed allies
What is the difference? A minority is being targeted and violently attacked for looking a certain way. How come nobody was just as mad about this issue? There are plenty of reasons for why I think this happened, but that’s not what I’m here for. I just want these horrific crimes to be talked about on a national level.
So, what can be done? I don’t have that answer and even if I did, I don’t think the answer would fit within a column. What I do know is we can start a conversation, but people need to act quickly. Look into organizations that help fight hate but do careful research on these groups because not everyone has the best interests of people in mind. Stop AAPI Hate is a great organization to learn more about this issue.
In all, it’s going to take generations to wipe out racism, and even then, it’s impossible to completely rid the world of the issue. But if we’re going to defeat it, we need to stop ALL forms of racism against any ethnicity. Otherwise, we’ll be having the same conversation 20 years from now, when someone else tries to write a column on an issue that is near and dear to their heart. Hopefully it gains traction the first time.