People of color galvanized after Atlanta killings
Groups build solidarity against white supremacy
Sindy Benavides felt as if she understood what the Asian community was going through after eight people, six of them Asian women, were killed last week in Georgia. Benavides, national chief executive officer of the League of United Latin American Citizens, had felt the same trauma, and then rush of solidarity, after a gunman killed 23 people in El Paso, Texas, in what was seen as an attack on the Latino community.
The manner in which so many have rallied around the Asian American community in the wake of the Atlanta shootings, she said, “reminded me of how our community allies were calling and texting us, asking how they could support us.”
Many have rallied in support of the Asian American community, producing a palpable sense of unity in the fight against anti-Asian violence. And some said the heightened solidarity presents a chance for communities of color to effectively address the common enemy of white supremacy.
“We’re thinking about how we can work together on the issue of hate crimes and make sure our communities stop being targets,” she said. “This issue is not going to disappear overnight, and it’s going to take collaboration.”
Killed in Atlanta Tuesday were Soon C. Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; Suncha Kim, 69; and Yong A. Yue, 63, according to the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s office, and 30 miles north in Georgia’s Cherokee County, Delaina Ashley Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Xiaojie Tan, 49; and Daoyou Feng, 44, were fatally shot. A 30-year-old Hispanic man, Elcias Ortiz, was injured.
Although the 21-year-old suspect, Robert Aaron Long, told police the attack was not racially motivated, many have pointed out that it’s hard to separate race from the equation – particularly after a recent spike in anti-Asian violence that began during the COVID-19 pandemic and which many believe was fomented by the rhetoric of the Trump administration.
U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., called the attacks “horrific” and said civil rights groups across the country were working together to address the issue.
“We all stand to lose,” said Bass, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. “Just because it’s happening to Asians does not mean that I don’t care about it at the same level as though it’s happening to African Americans. All of us need to be concerned.”
Manuel Pastor, director of the University of Southern California’s Equity Research Institute in Los Angeles, said hate crimes are not the issue of one community.
“People understand they are something that could happen to other groups, too,” he said. “If you let it run loose for one group, it’s going to come back and haunt you.”
In New York, lawyer and civil rights activist Maya Wiley was among eight mayoral candidates who joined the Rev. Al Sharpton for a news conference Thursday to denounce the attacks.
“It’s on all of us, not only on the Asian American community, to call attention to the fact that despicable hate has no home here,” she said in a later Twitter post.
Caroline Yang, an associate English professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst who has written about race issues, said she has seen evidence of unity, especially between the Black and Asian American communities, during last year’s Black Lives Matter protests and now.
“The first friends and colleagues who have reached out to me in solidarity have been Black,” she said, “Especially Black women.”
Gabriel Chin, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, called the Atlanta killings a potentially galvanizing wake-up call.
“They are likely to be looked back on as a turning point,” he said.