The long Western legacy of violence against Asian Americans

[Dill]

(03-16-2021, 04:25 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Dill Wrote: how does the insight that racism is not limited to any race help us understand the violence against Asians seen in Dino's post? E.g., if we agree there has been a rise in violence against Asians, and we can find 1) separate cases in which the perpetrators have been Latino, African-American, and White, and 2) in each of these cases there is no mistake about the racial character of the attack (e.g., because the perp used racial slurs), then in your view, what is the next step in determining the cause of the attacks, or more specifically, the rise in attacks?

A start would be acknowledging the different ethnicities of these attackers instead of trying to paint this as a white person only issue.  As has already been stated, when the media talks about "the West" they mean people of European ancestry.  Also, in OP, they took pains to mention the ethnicity of the attacker when they were white, and clearly omitted them (deliberately?) when they were not.

My question assumes recognition of attacks from different ethnicities, which have some marker of racial motivation (as opposed to a random robbery or altercation after a fender bender). It asks what is the next step, then, in determining the cause of a rise in violence? If there is one, then maybe checking stats is a start. The FBI does has not readied stats for 2020 yet, so we have to rely on other sources, like Stop AAHI Hate, which collect volunteered reports and monitor the news. They report some 3,000 attacks between March 2020 and Feb. 2021, compared to 100 in the preceding time frame.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/11/asian-american-hate-incidents-target-new-legislation-congress/6937841002/

One study from April 2020, maybe to early to be useful here, could NOT find that the pandemic had increased xenophobic behavior to Asians, at least as measured in surveys (not violence) 
Does Pandemic Threat Stoke Xenophobia? https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/populationCenter/documents/Has%20Pandemic%20Threat%20Stoked%20Xenophobia%20aggregate%2012%202%202020%20w%20cover%20page.pdf

(03-16-2021, 04:25 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Quote:Could there be some change in the information environment which triggered already existing prejudice?

Could you ask a straightforward question?  Do you really think there are a lot of black and Hispanic people hanging on Trump's every word or responding to him?  Even if so, we are all responsible for our own actions, so understanding why these individuals decided it was ok to attack Asian people, in some cases multiple times by the same offender. 

The question is about as straightforward as it can be, without assuming the answer from the get go. I can refine it a bit, though.

If "we are all responsible for our own actions," then why have more individuals been responsible for racist attacks against Asians this year than in the first quarter of 2019 or 2020? 

The answer cannot be a generalized abstraction, like "racism," since that was already there in 2019 and 2018. Something more time- and environment-specific is needed. It is also possible the attacks are genuinely random, like a June snowstorm. We could even start with that as a null-hypothesis (i.e., if we investigate, we'll find no causal pattern beyond those already existing).

Since some Dem lawmakers want to introduce a bill addressing the problem, they should take your point to heart--namely that we need to understand causes if we hope to address them effectively.