Silent no more
IT WAS HEARTBREAKING AND HORRIFYING—BUT TO MANY, IT WASN’T A SURPRISE.
The news that eight people, six of them Asian-American women, were killed at businesses in the Atlanta area on March 16 came after a year of intense anti-Asian racism in the U.S. On the platforms where news arrives first, and quickly attaches to feelings, emotions were already raw.
“This mass shooter was targeting Asian women and their businesses. This isn’t an isolated incident. There have been 500+ hate crimes targeted at Asian people this year alone,” social media specialist Mark Kim wrote on Twitter. “This Atlanta tragedy lies at an intersection of race, gender, class and the legacy of America’s history of colonization and violence in Asia,” journalist Elise Hu said on the site. “I don’t have the words. I’m just despondent. Protect Asian women, solidarity with sex workers, #StopAsianHate.”
And as posts went viral, with comments affirming their calls for change, the news kept coming. “Atlanta shooting suspect told investigators that killings of Asian women weren’t racially motivated, police say,” said a Washington news alert. A quote from a Daily Beast story described the alleged shooter—who was
