Hurt, hope after anti-asian attack
Memphians come together to stand against violence
“Why do we have to be scared to buy groceries? To go to school?”
Annie Zhao
16-year-old student at White Station High School
The 31-year-old man named Stone Jiahao Yu carried his nine-month-old son in a harness strapped to his chest as he and his wife joined a big crowd Sunday evening at a vigil at Shelby Farms. Why did he come? “My hurt. My hurt,” he said.
He said he had just written a lengthy Facebook post about his experiences facing racism as a Chinese immigrant — in his first days at a university in Saint Louis years ago, his assigned partner in a chemistry class, who was white, refused to work with him and joined another group, he said, leaving him to spend the semester working on his own. “I feel so hurt,” said Yu, who’s now working in a dental lab and finishing a graduate degree.
He said he faced other incidents of prej
udice throughout the years. Then came the shocking killings this month in Georgia, which prompted him to change his Facebook profile to say “Stand Against Racism - #Stopasianhate.” So he attended the vigil — something he says he wouldn’t usually do.
“I’m very conservative with a lot of moral and ethical issues. Usually I don’t support people to do any protesting, especially during the pandemic. But this issue really brought my hurt here.”
Many other people apparently felt the same urge to do something: the gathering drew hundreds of people and several high-level elected officials, including Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and Sheriff Floyd Bonner.
Several organizations put the event together quickly, including the Greater Memphis United Chinese Association and the Korean Association of Memphis.
The effort also had support from a wide range of other groups including Black Lives Matter, Latino Memphis, as well as Muslim and Catholic organizations.
From the podium on a hill above Patriot Lake, speakers expressed both personal pain as well as hope in the power of the American culture, unity and love.
Annie Zhao, a 16-year-old student at White Station High School who recently won the Miss Teen Tennessee USA competition, wore a pageant crown, gown and sash, and spoke of the pain of anti-asian violence. “Why do we have to be scared to buy groceries? To go to school? To go to work? Or even just to be in our own skin?”
But she said the gathering was a hopeful sign toward healing, and she finished with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.”
Georgia shootings prompted nationwide reaction
On Tuesday a gunman carried out shootings at three different massage parlors in Georgia. One business was in Acworth, which is northwest of Atlanta. The two other businesses were in Atlanta. A total of eight people died.
Six of those killed were women of Asian descent. A white man and a white woman were also killed. A Hispanic man was shot and survived.
A 21-year-old white man named Robert Aaron Long has been arrested.
A police spokesman said the suspect told investigators he had a sex addiction and the crime was related to that, not to anti-asian racism — however, the police department spokesman who related that statement to the public was criticized for too quickly dismissing the possibility of racial bias as a motive.
The same spokesman, Capt. Jay Baker, also come under criticism for earlier Facebook posts in which he promoted T-shirts that called COVID-19 an “imported virus from CHY-NA.” He was later removed from the case.
The Georgia shootings highlighted a rise in harassment and violent incidents against Asians in the United States.
Experts have said the violence follows rhetoric from former president Donald Trump and others that blames China for the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When President Trump began and insisted on using the term ‘China virus,’ we saw that hate speech really led to hate violence,” Russell Jeung, chair of the Asian American studies department at San Francisco State University, told USA TODAY. “That sort of political rhetoric and that sort of anti-asian climate has continued to this day.”
The FBI’S crime data for 2020 and 2021 is not yet available. Jeung’s organization Stop AAPI Hate released a report that described 2,583 incidents of antiasian actions in the United States between March 19, 2020 and Aug. 5, 2020.
Most of the incidents were verbal harassment or shunning of Asians, though 9% involved physical assaults, the report said.
Among the leaders who have condemned violence and harassment against Asians are President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. They met with Georgia state legislators and Asian American and Pacific Islander advocates.
“The conversation we had today with the AAPI leaders, and that we’re hearing all across the country is that hate and violence often hide in plain sight,” Biden said Friday after the meeting. “It’s often met with silence … but that has to change. Because our silence is complicity. We cannot be complicit.”
This land is your land
The Memphis event closed with singer Sean Pan leading the crowd in a rousing rendition of “This Land is Your Land.”
The song brought 74-year-old Khunbok Ahn to his feet, dancing. Afterward, he grabbed the microphone and said he’s former president of the Korean association here. “This is not a Korean matter!” he shouted. “This is not an Asian matter! This is all races’ matter! . . . We are one race, one people under God!”
As people began to walk back to their cars under the setting sun, Bonner, the Sheriff, spoke of next steps. He said he’s not currently aware of anti-asian violence in Memphis, but said he’s meeting with local Asian-american leaders on Monday to learn more and build relationships.
Investigative reporter Daniel Connolly welcomes tips and comments from the public. Reach him at 529-5296, daniel.connolly@commercialappeal.com, or on Twitter at @danielconnolly.