We’ve already learned from critical-race-theory hustler Glenn Singleton that high-achieving Asian-descent Americans can be, you might say, honorary white people. We’ve also heard from wokesters that demanding the right math answer in school is “white supremacy” and that 2+2 can equal five. So, I don’t know, maybe it’s all relative. Maybe there really is a spate of anti-Asian “hate crimes,” even though the data say otherwise. And perhaps most of these crimes really are committed by white people, even though if so, they’re white people who looked mighty non-white.
Leftists are obviously beside themselves after last Tuesday’s Georgia massage parlor massacre, not over the fact that a deranged young man sought to eliminate sexual temptation by shooting nine innocent people, killing eight, but that he wasn’t yelling “White power!” while doing it.
So liberal media and politicians are, like a child, stamping their collective foot and trying to pound the square peg of white supremacy into the round hole of reality. Yet while they spin the narrative that whites are targeting and attacking Asian-descent Americans because, in part, President Trump dared call the China virus the “China virus,” the facts tell a different story.
First there are the numbers. The “contemporary evidence that Asian Americans specifically are being targeted at a greater rate than other minorities remains unproven,” writes Pradheep J. Shanker at National Review. Pointing out that the media pounced on research from the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism that analyzed “16 U.S. cities and concluded that Asian Americans reported 150 percent more crimes in the last year than in prior years,” he then explains:
But the numbers are so small as to be statistically meaningless. San Diego, for example, saw a grand total of one hate crime in 2020, without any in 2019. Large cities such as Chicago, Phoenix, and Houston had similar numbers. In fact, of the 122 total anti-Asian hate crime cases in 2020, 28 came from New York City, 15 from Los Angeles, and 14 from Boston. A credible or honest researcher would consider this more of a problem specific to those large urban centers than a nationwide problem.
After citing another study, Shanker then wrote that we “have no significant evidence that there has been an interval increase in these [anti-Asian] acts after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, although the media have assumed exactly that fact.”
Of course, there are “hate crimes” committed against Asians. But how many are whites’ handiwork?
It wasn’t unusual that the Georgia shooter, a 21-year-old, committed his heinous act not driven by racial animus. (The authorities found no racial motive, three of his victims were not Asian, and two of the deceased were white.) Yet something was relatively unusual: That he, a white man, shot Asians in the first place.
Just consider findings by the Spectator’s Robert Cherry. “Using 2019 FBI statistics — the most recently available data — I computed black and white perpetrators of hate crimes as a percentage of men 18 to 44 years old in their populations,” he reported March 11. “The black rate was 40 percent, 76 percent and 303 percent higher than the white rate for hate crimes against the Asian/Pacific Island, Latino and LGBTQ communities respectively. Even more troubling, black rates for hate-crime assaults were 94 percent higher while for property destruction and vandalism, they were 14 percent lower than white rates.”
Yet even this is deceptive. Many commentators don’t consider when presenting such data that the FBI lumps Hispanics into the “white” crime category (because the FBI is compiling racial statistics here, and “Hispanic” isn’t a race but an ethnicity.)
As to this common mistake, Shanker writes in response to the Cherry passage (which he also quoted), “White supremacists are a problem, but more so with property damage than with violent attacks.” But it makes no sense assuming that every “white”-on-Asian “hate crime” is perpetrated by white supremacists — especially since the “white” category includes Hispanics.
So more revelatory than the FBI data are two other studies. First, 2021 research presented in the American Journal of Criminal Justice found that “the race of offenders differs significantly across hate crimes against Asian Americans, African Americans, and Hispanics. Specifically, hate crimes against Asian Americans are more likely than hate crimes against either African Americans or Hispanics to be committed by non-White offenders. This finding may be attributed to animosity toward the ‘model minority’ from other minority groups.”
Then, Melissa Chen writes at the Spectator (adapted by the New York Post), “Department of Justice statistics show that while victims of violence tend to be targeted by perpetrators within their ethnicities far more than any other, Asian victims are targeted more by other races at the following rates: 27.5 percent black, 24.1 percent white, 21.4 percent Hispanic (compared to 24.1 percent Asian). This seems to suggest that the white supremacy thesis is extremely weak.”
Yes, well, especially since the above statistics involve violence, not specifically “hate crimes.” But the reality is that when Asian-descent Americans are violently victimized, the victimizer is another minority almost three-quarters of the time.
As for “hate crimes,” “it was plain to see from viral surveillance videos [example below] that it wasn’t MAGA-hatted assailants chanting ‘Chy-na virus’ or ‘Kung Flu’ as they took out defenseless elderly Asians,” Chen also states. In fact, perpetrators of anti-Asian “hate crimes” are most likely to be young black men/teens.
So why on this matter, then, do Democrats and leftists in general not only see red, but white? First, it’s always appealing to them to be able to pin some negative phenomenon on Trump. Second, impugning whites is acceptable today and reflexive for the Left.
Most significantly, however, the Democrats’ coalition comprises groups — blacks, Hispanics, Asian-descent Americans, and various sexual devolutionary groups — that aren’t always natural allies. Yet the Left tries to keep them under one tent via the “intersectionality” strategy. This holds that all these groups should be united in the proposition that they have a common enemy: whites and, in particular, white men.
This illusion can be reinforced anytime whites can be portrayed as involved in anti-minority activity; on the other hand, revealing that blacks are most likely to prey on Asian-descent Americans works against intersectionality, against Rainbow Coalition unity.
Furthermore, getting press as well is that also preying on Asian-descent Americans is another Democrat constituency: pseudo-elites in academia and elsewhere. They discriminate against Asian-descent Americans — and in favor of blacks and Hispanics — in, for example, college admissions. This naturally causes much resentment and is divisive.
So leftist pseudo-elites must distract from these inconvenient truths in the hopes of retaining the Asian-descent-American vote (63 percent of which went to Joe Biden).
Ergo, “Watch out, or those white supremacists will get you!”
Of course, whatever the actual incidence of anti-Asian “hate crimes,” white supremacists could be the main perpetrators. But then there are a whole lot more black and Hispanic white supremacists than anyone ever thought.
