Yesterday Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took a break from their COVID relief package sales tour to stop in Atlanta where a deranged gunman opened fire on three massage parlors last week, killing eight people, six of whom were Asian. The killer, Robert Aaron Long, told police he carried out the shootings because he’d been feeling overwhelmed by his own sexual desires. Long, who regularly frequented sex spas, described himself as a “victim” of his own passions.
The massacre sounds more like a crime of a troubled mind than it does a hate crime, but the administration misses no opportunity to tell America how “xenophobic” the country is after four years of Donald Trump’s hateful messaging.
Speaking at Emory University, Biden, losing sight of the fact that the victims were not exclusively of Asian extraction, spoke of the hate crimes against Asian Americans that have been “skyrocketing” since the coronavirus pandemic began. Asian Americans, he said, have been “attacked, blamed, scapegoated and harassed. They’ve been verbally assaulted, physically assaulted, killed.”
His second in command echoed the theme, calling Americans racist and ascribing the blame for these attacks to “people in positions of incredible power”:
VP Harris speech: “Racism is a real in America. And it has always been. Xenophobia is real in America and always has been…The last year we’ve had people in positions of incredible power scapegoating Asian Americans. People with the biggest pulpits spreading this kind of hate.” pic.twitter.com/DBadKdcfx8
— Bo Erickson CBS (@BoKnowsNews) March 19, 2021
There have indeed been hate crimes against Asian-Americans, a spate of them taking place in the Bay Area of California, where Harris lives. In February, a 91-year-old was violently pushed to the ground from behind. But the perpetrator wasn’t done. The local ABC News affiliate quotes police as saying:
The suspect then approached a 60-year-old man and 55-year-old woman from behind that were also walking in the 800 block of Harrison Street. The suspect pushed both victims to the ground, resulting in the woman losing consciousness. The man also suffered injury. Both victims were treated at a local hospital for their injuries.
The rash of attacks turned deadly when an 84-year-old man succumbed to his injuries after being violently thrown to the ground by a man who blindsided him.
LATEST: Horrific video of fatal attack Thursday on 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee. Details -> https://t.co/6Z5rqIQpcZ pic.twitter.com/PJnuuWgE3Y
— Evan Sernoffsky (@EvanSernoffsky) February 1, 2021
The problem these attacks pose for Harris’s racism model is that the perpetrators in both instances were black, and blacks as we have been told repeatedly can’t be racist.
But Biden has some explaining of his own to do. One of his first acts of office was to instruct his Justice Department to drop a lawsuit filed against Yale University alleging that the school discriminated against white and Asian applicants in its admissions process. The decision was a no-brainer since it reversed an action taken during the Trump era.
The problem with it, though, was that the DOJ had determined following a two-year investigation that Yale’s practices were indeed unlawful. But Biden, who fancies himself a champion of racial equity, was unfazed by the Justice Department’s findings or their discriminatory impact on Asian Americans. (RELATED: Boston Public Schools suspends all AP classes, citing concerns over ‘equity’)
