Earlier by Michelle Malkin: Who Murdered All The Asian Women—And Who's Covering It Up? and Dear Woke Asians—Stop Blaming Whitey For Black-On-Asian Attacks
From the opinion section of the Washington Post:
Why Christina Yuna Lee’s homicide is personal to Asian American women like me
By Michelle Lee
Today at 4:32 p.m. ESTMichelle Lee is a resident physician, writer and community activist based in Manhattan.
People who are based in somewhere, such as writers and community activists, are not based, but ones who are based out of someplace, such as hitmen, tend to be.
On Feb. 13, 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee was stalked, stabbed over 40 times and found half-naked in her Chinatown apartment, located 15 minutes from where I live. Four weeks prior, 40-year-old Michelle Go was killed on the same New York subway line I take regularly. Two weeks before that, 61-year-old Yao Pan Ma died of his injuries in what investigators have called a hate crime, committed 30 minutes from my workplace in Manhattan.
Here are photos of the Asian victims and the black men arrested for the NYC attacks listed by Lee:
Christina Yuna Lee and Assamad Nash:
Michelle Go and Simon Martial:
Yao Pan Ma and Jarrod Powell:
One thing that’s going on, among many, is that Work From Home means that New York City isn’t as jammed anymore with law-abiding suburbanites and Outer Boroughs types, whose mere presence tends to deter hoodlums and crazymen from doing their worst. The kind of large white family men whose proximity shielded small Asians from attack by big black homeless and criminals now tend to be back home in Connecticut or New Jersey on Zoom meetings.
Hate crime or not, these unprovoked, disturbing attacks are examples of the violence that has skyrocketed against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) in recent years, as these communities have been scapegoated for the covid-19 pandemic. In December, the New York Police Department said the number of anti-Asian hate crimes reported in the city had risen 361 percent from the previous year. AAPI women make up a disproportionate number of anti-Asian hate-crime victims (nearly two-thirds). And many of these episodes have occurred in public streets, sidewalks and businesses.
On the other hand, Asians mostly escaped the brunt of the vast murder surge of 2020. According to the CDC, 36% more blacks died by homicide in 2020 relative to 2019 (the vast majority at the hands of other blacks, of course), 29% more Latinos, 21% more whites, but only 1% more Asians.
Of course, 2021 might have been different than 2020. Or it might be that white people alarmed by how other white people have been encouraging blacks since May 25, 2020 to see themselves as above the law have chosen to emphasize Asian victims of blacks rather than white victims.
Despite being born and raised in New York City, I now worry for my physical safety more when taking public transportation than I have while working in a hospital during the pandemic. In the past two years, I’ve been publicly spat on, harassed, stalked off the R train and, on a subway platform in my native Queens, verbally threatened with rape. In all these unprovoked instances, I was surrounded by other New Yorkers but was the only East Asian woman around. …
It should be noted that viral images of Black male perpetrators committing violence against Asians misrepresent the full story. Increased crime and violence across New York City disproportionately affects all communities of color, but Black New Yorkers make up the largest racial demographic of victims of homicides, shootings, felony assault and rape. Black Americans have also experienced significant discrimination during the pandemic, not to mention disproportionately poorer health outcomes and economic hardship.
Not acknowledged well enough by authorities or the media are the combined rallies and true Black-Asian solidarity across the nation. We must not give in to harmful stereotypes of Black and Asian people in conflict, which have caused historical misunderstanding and destruction. This wedging of communities has been used to distract us from addressing the larger confluence of systemic racial, legal and social failures that for decades have affected people of color. Instead, we often get Band-Aids.
For instance, in response to public safety concerns, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York Mayor Eric Adams this month revealed an aggressive plan to remove unhoused individuals sheltering in the subway, and to provide more mental health services. But this will not end the violence — racially motivated or otherwise. The vast majority of mentally ill and unhoused individuals are not violent, nor are they responsible for the totality of violence against AAPIs.
Michelle Go, a manager at Deloitte, also volunteered and advocated for the homeless. Christina Yuna Lee, a creative producer at the digital music platform Splice, helped lead diversity and inclusion causes at her company. These women believed in change and the compassionate treatment of other minority and vulnerable communities.
We should embrace these same principles when demanding better. And all Americans need to acknowledge the escalating violence toward Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, especially women — to speak up when you see us attacked for simply being who we are.
But never ever say that the holy and without sin Racial Reckoning appears to have anything to do with all the black attacks on Asians lately.
