Stop the “lone wolf” narrative.
Happy Thursday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily! Tuesday evening's attack on the Asian community was another clear and blatant act of white supremacy. And still, law enforcement and the media attempted to mitigate the harm by diminishing a violent act of terror to "a good boy" who "had a bad day". Today we analyze how white supremacy persists through the coddling and protection of violent acts of terror.
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TAKE ACTION
Center your education about reporting on the victims and communities harmed, not the perpetrators. Avoid media platforms that share more about the perpetrator than the wellbeing of the community harmed.
Sign the petition and in solidarity with Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta, which is dedicated to the civil rights of the Asian American community.
Donate directly to support the victims and their families and to support crisis interventions, created by Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta.
Continue to report Asian hate crimes to Stop AAPI Hate to more effectively address anti-Asian violence.
GET EDUCATED
By Nicole Cardoza (she/her)
Watch recordings of interviews on Instagram with Michelle Kim and Dr. Jenny Wang to understand more about the rise of anti-Asian violence and racism.
On Tuesday evening, March 15, a gunman shot and killed eight people and wounded another at massage parlors in the Atlanta area (NYTimes). At least six of the victims are Asian women. Four of those were identified as Korean. The names of the victims available as of writing (12:30 am EST) are Delaina Ashley Yaun, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, and Paul Andre Michels (NYTimes). Each of them still deserves to be here, and we grieve for their loss.
This was the latest of a surge of violence against the Asian community over the past few months. Read our recap in an earlier newsletter. According to the latest report from Stop AAPI Hate, which has been measuring the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes since March 2020, women are 2.3 times more likely to report hate incidents, and 35% of all violence happens at businesses (Stop AAPI Hate). This attack is all the more heartbreaking because it was taken out against members of the immigrant community and sexually motivated, which makes this not just a racially-charged attack, but one rooted in misogyny and racial fetishization. Read more in a previous newsletter.
As the world woke up to the news Wednesday morning, a series of new articles explained more about the perpetrator, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long, who was arrested and charged with murder. Friends described him as “nerdy,” “from a good Christian family,” and “very innocent-seeming and wouldn't even cuss” (Newsweek). The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that he has a “sexual addiction,” leading others to report that his mental health might have influenced his decision-making (AJC). Police officers stated that “yesterday was a really bad day for [Long], and this is what he did,” and that he “he gave no indicators that this was racially motivated.”
This rhetoric is problematic for several reasons. By centering his religious faith, nerdy background, and lack of cussing, the press and law enforcement imply that he's aligned with whiteness’s key characteristics and consequently impervious to harm. This narrative has been used frequently to excuse violent acts carried out by white men, often against women and people of color. It aims to solidify that things like Christian faith, proper language, and academic performance grant power and privilege, and those that don’t align with these markers are “less than” in society. Related: White Supremacist Ideas Have Historical Roots In U.S. Christianity (NPR).
Not only that, it attempts to center the "innocence" of the perpetrator over the innocence of the victims. This further minimizes the pain that marginalized groups experience, and takes up space that could be used to tell their stories. Author and advocate Michelle Kim names other reasons why, in this case, families of victims might not feel comfortable speaking up, further exacerbating the issue (Twitter).
It also contributes to the mental health stigma in our society. It insinuates that people with mental health conditions are dangers to our society. Remember, racism and misogyny is not a mental health condition. This stigma doesn't just affects us on an individual level by discouraging people from seeking help and sharing their experiences with their friends and family. It creates a systemic narrative that mental health is so dangerous it needs to be policed, enforcing our criminal justice system’s role in health and well-being instead of social services that offer more preventative, healing support. Read more in the Washington Post.
But, most urgently, it pushes the "lone wolf" narrative: that this individual acted alone for personal reasons and wasn't motivated by a larger narrative. This attempts to detach this specific instance from the larger role that white supremacy plays in acts of violence and terrorism in the U.S. As a result, it doesn't call for accountability for the system that nurtured and developed that hate in a white supremacist society. Although the individual should be held responsible for their actions, so should the government that fostered discrimination and bias against the Asian community since its start, from the Chinese Exclusion Act, to Imperialism in the Asia-Pacific, and platforming a president that persistently called coronavirus “Kung flu” and the “Asian virus” (Anti-Racism Daily).
This isn’t new – this is the same narrative we've heard after white terrorism events throughout our history. In an article from last summer, we outlined how quickly the rhetoric changes to protect white domestic terrorists. Dylann Roof, a far-right extremist who shot nine Black people in a church in South Carolina, idolized the Confederacy, was portrayed in the media as “mentally ill” and "misunderstood" (Al Jazeera). Kyle Rittenhouse, a white teenager who killed two people during protests in Kenosha last year, was called a "hero" and "innocent," and a "bullied teenager" who became a huge fan of the police (Huffington Post). Each of these issues, too, were discarded as single acts of individual errors than a result of systemic decisions – like our unwillingness to admonish the Confederacy, our lack of gun control, the tensions between communities and law enforcement stoked by our President – that fostered them. It should come as no surprise that, in 2020, reports indicated that white supremacists posed the greatest domestic terror threat to the U.S. (The Guardian).
And the first days of 2021 brought that to life, when hundreds of these "lone wolves" rallied together to attempt a violent insurrection at the nation's Capitol. A new report indicates that local and federal law enforcement often fail to address violence caused by white supremacists. Video evidence shows several members of the insurrection causing violence in their communities years before the event, and they weren’t charged (NYTimes). Elizabeth Neumann, an assistant secretary for threat prevention in the Department of Homeland Security who left last year, stated that “the Proud Boys are just the guys-that-drink-too much-after-the-football-game-and-tend-to-get-into-bar-fights type of people — people that never looked organized enough to cause serious national security threats.” The lone wolf narrative protected these violent extremists and enabled them to cause harm on a national scale.
It’s important to note that this convenient narrative is reserved for members of the white community. A study found that overall, terror attacks by Muslims receive 357% more press attention (The Guardian). But the narratives differ, too. Researchers analyzed news coverage of mass shootings in Las Vegas in 2017 and Orlando in 2016. The Orlando shooting, carried out by someone that identifies as Muslim, was allotted more coverage despite the fact that it produced nine fewer fatalities than the Las Vegas shooting. In addition, newspapers were more likely to frame the Orlando mass shooting as “terrorism” and link it to the global war on terrorism. In contrast, most articles for the Las Vegas shooting attempted to humanize Stephen Paddock, the white perpetrator (Taylor & Francis Online). Similarly, the concept of “Black on white crime” is a grossly fictionalized narrative used throughout history to validate the enslavement and incarceration of Black communities, which influences both policy and media to this day (Southern Poverty Law Center). The Huffington Post has side-by-side comparisons on how white suspects are often treated better than Black victims in headlines.
In the latest attack Tuesday night, one man might have pulled the trigger, but white supremacy doesn't act alone. He was encouraged and supported by a white supremacist culture that normalizes violence against communities of color and enables white men to carry it out. We need to hold not just individuals but our society accountable for this violence – including ourselves, and the role we play in perpetuating white supremacy.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Tuesday evening, eight people were killed in shootings at massage parlors in Atlanta, GA, contributing to the rise of violence against Asian communities over the past year.
Reporting of white male suspects tends to emphasize qualities that support their innocence and distance them from collective accountability.
This type of reporting allows for violence and terrorism by white supremacists to go unchecked, as evident in the recent attack on the Capitol.
RELATED ISSUES
2/8/2021 | Address anti-Asian hate crimes.
2/25/2021 | Reject racial fetishization.
9/8/2020 | Reject the model minority myth.
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