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Atlanta, GA-- Recent shootings in Atlanta have a lot of people rethinking crime, especially hate crimes as they relate to Asian Americans. In Atlanta, eight people were killed, six of them Asian women. Robert Aaron Long went on a bloody rampage and killed employees who worked at specific massage parlors, and he planned to do more harm. He was arrested as he was traveling to a pornography shop in Florida to further his efforts.
While no hate crime charges have been filed yet, the question on everyone's mind is: When will hate crime charges be filed?
The answer for so many people is clear. News outlets and newspapers across the US report this as a hate crime.
Criteria exist to make such a determination. As the crime happened in Atlanta, Georgia, we’ll follow US law to help make a determination. The Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law offers a general definition:
(1) Offenses involving actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin. — Whoever, whether or not acting under color of law, willfully causes bodily injury to any person or, through the use of fire, a firearm, a dangerous weapon, or an explosive or incendiary device, attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin of any person —
Although the early investigator suggested otherwise in his early statement, he was quickly removed from the case as racist himself.
As we revisit the preliminary information as presented by Cherokee County sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker at the joint news conference, says,
And preliminary information indicates that the killings — of six Asian people and two White people — may not have been racially motivated, but instead could relate to the suspect’s claim of a potential sex addiction.
Baker was dismissed from the case for insensitive comments that were upsetting to the community. After his dismissal, a Facebook post containing language about the Coronavirus resurfaced and was reported by Fox 6 News.
The incident reminds us of other crimes that brought the term "hate crime" into common use in the 1980s.
Remember James Byrd, Junior? He was an African-American man who was beaten and tied to the back of a pick-up truck in Jasper, TX, and drug to his death. He was decapitated and his body later dumped in front of a church.
Not long after was Matthew Shepard, who was tortured and murdered because he was gay. Both killers received life sentences, but one alleged that Shepard made advances toward him and felt justified in the killing. It gave rise to the term "gay panic" and opened new conversations around the matter.
In 1993, Brandon Teena, a transgendered man, was raped and later murdered by two men after they discovered that she was anatomically female. The murder was later dramatized in the movie Boys Don’t Cry.
In 2002, Gwen Araujo, a transgendered woman, was murdered in California by four men after the men—some of whom had engaged in sexual activities with her—discovered that she was anatomically a female.
A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story, according to Wikipedia, is, "a 2006 American biographical drama television film directed by Agnieszka Holland and starring J. D. Pardo, Mercedes Ruehl, and Avan Jogia. It premiered on Lifetime in the United States on June 19, 2006."
It's time to stop the hate. All hate. Recent events in Atlanta, Georgia have reopened all the wounds and driven them to a deeper awareness. In some instances, the impetuous of the crime calls for a deeper penalty under the hate crime classification. We can't hide between quarantine and fright and frustration as excuses. Atlanta currently leads the way in promoting Love as a better language.
#StopAsianHate
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