Treat all hate crimes equally

About a month ago, I was traveling on the Market Frankford El, and I was attacked by a young African-American male in a hoodie, who was angry that I was filming him after he’d punched me in the head moments before. It all happened rather quickly, the time it took to go from 15th to 30th Street. I made a report, and other than anger that SEPTA is incapable of guaranteeing my safety for the increasingly expensive fare they charge, I’m fine. In fact, I’d basically forgotten about the incident until this week, when I saw that video of a few AfricanAmerican girls attacking Asian students on the Broad Street Subway.

It is a disgusting display of inhumanity, with the aggressors yelling and screaming curses at the victims, who seem to be cowering in their seats and very much afraid for their lives. The attackers appear to be unarmed in the video, but they are feral and brutal, and much more violent than the teen who attacked me.

When the first reports were issued about the attacks on the train, local media and officials twisted themselves into Philly soft pretzels to avoid addressing the elephant in the room. One news channel posted an article about how they were “investigating” if this was a hate crime, ignoring the fact that on the video you can, if you listen closely, discern racial epithets screamed at the victims. It’s not conclusive, but it matters.

More important, though, were the official announcements tweeted out by people like Mayor Jim Kenney and Councilwoman Helen Gym. Kenney wrote:

“I’m appalled by yesterday’s assault involving students on the Broad Street Line. Those involved in the assault have been identified and will be held accountable. I want our residents to know that we will not tolerate any acts of hate.”

Then there was the highly anticipated commentary from Helen Gym, an Asian-American herself. This is part of what she wrote:

“When any one of us is hurt — especially one of our children — our entire city is hurt. Last night’s incident is part of a wider trend of violence experienced by and involving our city’s youth, with roots in the collective trauma our young people have endured for far too long.”

There’s not one word there about the hate crime/bias part of the equation. She talks about the “collective trauma” of city youth, seeming to excuse the brutality of the African-American assailants because they might have suffered their own “collective trauma.”

Imagine if a bunch of white girls from the Main Line had called a bunch of Black girls racial epithets and that was caught on video. You know that this would be the number one story on the news for the next two cycles, and there would be op-eds written (hand raised here), community activists consulted and sensitivity trainings initiated.

Here, though, there seems to be a much lower sense of urgency. Time after time, if the aggressor is white and the victim is not, it automatically becomes a narrative about bigotry and white supremacy.

I’m glad that D.A. Larry Krasner is going to charge these attackers with ethnic intimidation. I just wish we’d be more honest about who is doing the intimidating.

I also wish I didn’t have to write this column. I want to live in a world where the race of victim and aggressor is irrelevant to their acts and injuries.

But doing the opposite like an ostrich is no solution. Refusing to point out that race was very likely a factor in the attack by these Black students on Asian youth is racism by omission, namely, refusing to even consider the possibility that bias was a central part of the equation.

Another problem is the attempt to “understand” the rage of the aggressors, which is exactly what Helen Gym did with her “collective trauma” excuse. My father grew up in foster homes, had a very rough childhood and never took out his anger on innocent people. In fact, daddy’s sister was half Chinese, and he defended her against the bigotry of neighbors in that postWorld War II Philadelphia, so I can only imagine how he would have reacted to the attacks on those poor Asian students.

My point is this: if we really want to have an honest discussion about race, we have to discuss all the messy, uncomfortable aspects about it.

We need to treat all instances of hatred and bias equally, because if we don’t, we are proving that only some lives matter.