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Racists walk among us
By adamg on Wed, 03/31/2021 - 9:41am
The Daily Free Press reports on a Boston University forum on anti-Asian racism, and includes this account:
By Fenway Park, just over a week ago, Yeh said he was walking back from Northeastern University around 8:30 p.m. when a maskless middle-aged white male approached him, called Yeh a racial slur and told him to "go die."
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Racists post amongst us, too.
This story from the Daily Free Press is sad and far too common. It all needs to stop.
Since the innaguration, Adam has thankfully taken out much of the UHub trash and others (perhaps temporarily) have self-deported. But there is still a small-but-consistent contingent here that post anti-Asian rhetoric on any post relating to Asian Americans—anywhere from vague concern trolling to casting suspicion on to the motives of Asian Americans using their First Amendment rights to publically call for an end to violence against their community.
I hope more of us can speak up here and prove such bigoted commentary unwelcome at UHub.
This is just about the last
This is just about the last place I visit online that still tolerates so much gross, bottom-of-the-barrel reactionary drive-by commenting. I appreciate a lot of the reporting here but am really starting to wonder what I am supporting in giving the site my traffic.
Comment moderation
Comment moderation is a thankless job. No matter what Adam does, none of us will be happy. He has run sites that I have frequented for +20 years and I will continue to do so.
To be honest, I would have a much heavier hand in comment/account deletion, but I also assume that such policies would have cost me success and any community that I ran would have collapsed a long time ago. Adam has a very good track record and I admire his tolerance and patience and I think it results in an overall excellent product.
I wrote the original comment as reminder that we as an online community have some leverage in community moderation and we don’t have to let certain comments stand uncontested.
A service
Adam's moderation is very light, and I think it's a service that he allows some of the trolls to keep posting comments. Not because I think their arguments are worthwhile __ they aren't __ but because it reminds us that people with that kind of warped outlook do walk among us. They are not just in Dixie.
What kind of utopian internet are you surfing?
Have you ever read the Globe comments?
Love yourself more, I don't
Love yourself more, I don't see the merit in consuming toxic waste to prove yourself neutral.
There are two kinds of people
There are two kinds of people in this world. Those that divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't.
You seem determined to view the world as (figuratively) black & white, and that any suggestions that someone who happens to be Asian, or Black, or Democrat is as capable of being as corrupt as someone named Trump is corrupt, then that person is obviously a racist.
That's dumb.
Based on what?
You suggested—BASED ON NOTHING AT ALL—that Asian people who wanted to hold a demonstration to end the violence and hate rhetoric showered upon them due to an uptick in right-wing propaganda be viewed as suspicious and motivated by taking advantage of tragedy for financial gain.
If you don’t recognize the xenophobic trope of casting minority groups as “suspicious” and as “grifters”—without offering a smidgeon of evidence to back up such hateful accusations—as being racist, then you might be a racist.
But keep saying that’s it’s dumb. It’s super persuasive.
And your accusation towards me is as equally unsupported as your accusations against the Asian Americans who are demonstrating to, quite litterally, save the lives of their friends, families, and themselves.
There are many kinds of people
You're the racist dogwhistling type who yells "You're the REAL racist!" to deflect blame after he shows his entire ass. You have always been like this. You will never change.
What?
What does that have to do with people yelling racial slurs at others on the street?
You lose all credibility if you bring the "you make everything about race" complaint to a post about men screaming racial slurs at others. It kind of shows how often that complaint is just being used by people who want to maintain a world that includes racism like this.
Question
Does this "anti-Asian" rhetoric include mention the possible culpability of a certain Uyghur hating government as far as the Covid-19 pandemic goes?
Look, I don't think this guy did anything do deserve any grief given him, and I don't believe in blaming any group of people for the shortcomings of a few, but I do worry that the desire to deal with racism could be used a cover for, well, the kind of silencing that a certain totalitarian government near Taiwan engages in to thwart honest political dialog.
More changing the subject.
What the government of China is doing to the Uyghur population is an atrocity.
But why do some people here feel the need to pivot every conversation here about Asian Americans away from anti-Asian racism in the US to “whatabout the Uygurs”? And then there is this incessant need to inject into hate crimes discussions the idea that the Chinese government needs to face repricussions for Covid-related dishonesty and policy failures.*
What on Earth is the connection between a Chinese American—or Korean American, or Filipino American, or Vietnamese American—facing violence and hate speech in the US and the deplorable actions of the Chinese government?
Bringing the Chinese government up in anti-racist discussions is a transparent attempt to yet again change the subject and take the focus off of American anti-Asian racism and white supremacy.
You do this here: you bring up the Uyghurs and the Chinese Government’s terrible handling of Covid, yet you make no attempt to explain any relevant link between that and the violence and hate rhetoric faced by our AAPI neighbors. Do you think people are attacking Thai grandmothers as a way to express anger with Uyghur genocide? Do you think that Ye was attacked more because of the attacker’s strong dislike for the government of China and less because of the white supremacist rhetoric spewed by Trump and amplified by Fox and other white-wing media?
What is the connection here? Explain to me why we should pivot away from and minimize the violence and hate directed at our fellow citizens to talk about unrelated international policy.
No one is trying to protect the Chinese government by insisting that discussions of local anti-Asian hate and white supremacy stay on topic and not be derailed. In no world are we denying China’s bad behavior by speaking against Asian hate in Boston or the US. It’s legitimate to criticize the Chinese government, but your comment here reeks of concern trolling.
(*I have little patience for people who are so very concerned with the dishonesty, information suppression, and negligence coming out of Beijing in regards to Covid but who don’t bring that same smoke for the dishonesty, information suppression, and utter negligence of Trump, his administration, and DeSantis, et. al. It betrays a level of unseriousness. China is a bad actor, but our federal and state government held our fate in its hands and had a far bigger impact on American lives than China.)
They do it with everything
You know why. They're the kids who realized in kindergarten that they were a little smarter than some of the other kids, and thought of a clever trick like transparently false concern trolling, and hey, it worked on a bunch of five year olds! What fun! Now they're grown up and they haven't figured out that their old trick doesn't work unless they're dealing with children, but they've been doing it all their lives and it's habit and they can't stop. They do it with everything. Homophobes suddenly become concerned about gay men being thrown off roofs in Chechnya because it gives them a get-outta-jail-free card to spew Islamophobic bullshit. People who don't give a shit about Uighurs suddenly become Uighur champions because it gives them a free pass to snipe at China. Et cetera.
No one is fooled by a concern troll.
It's laughable to think that
It's laughable to think that the kind of person who yells slurs at strangers on the street has any concern for Uygur people.
I have to disagree (kind of)
Look, if you think that the rise in hate crimes has nothing to do with the emergence of the global pandemic, you are either being disingenuous or naïve. Yes, there has been a certain level of dislike of Asians in this country stretching back over a century, but things certainly have gotten ramped up recently.
Why my concern about a conflation of hate crimes and attempts to silence criticism of China? Well, let's go back a year. Remember when Seth Moulton was criticized for supporting a resolution noting how missteps by the Chinese government, including silencing whistleblowers, basically lead to the pandemic? That's what I'm talking about.
Alas, some people, including myself, understand the difference between criticizing a government and criticizing a race, nationality, or citizens of a country. Sadly, on both extremes there are people who don't get that.
The pandemic is a lame excuse.
It’s funny how the explosive Covid first waves in NYC, Massachusetts, etc entered the US from travelers from Italy, yet no one is kicking the s*** out of old ladies in the North End. Strange how that works.
If there is a direct causal link to China, then why aren’t you out there beating up Asian grandmothers like the rest of the delusional self-appointed race vigilantes? I don’t think I am going out in a limb by believing that because you weren’t the type to commit racially-motivated violence before the pandemic, you are not the type to go out and attack Asian people now. Are you positing that the pandemic radically changed otherwise non-racist, peaceful people into hate-crime committing sociopaths? If you are, then that argument is unsupportable.
Sure, you acknowledge a “certain level” of extant American racism, but JFC, the constant drumbeat of racist slurs—from POTUS, from the national GOP, from the gamut of white supremacist right-wing media, to QAnon and down to commenters on local independent news blogs—not only insisting on calling it “Chinavirus” and “king flu” l, but also GLEEFULLY repeating these terms in front of AAPI journalists and health professionals was a nalpalm-level excellerant thrown on to an already lit home-grown flame. Furthermore, with QAnon mixing in multi-layers of fantasy-level conspiracy theories, it’s clear that the uptick in anti-AAPI violence is a direct result of the American government, American media, and American citizens propagating dangerous and inflammatory propaganda. Our own people are the ones who amplified extant Asian hate and fomented this current wave of violence.
If—in some bizarro universe—Trump, Ben Shapiro, O-Fish-L, Rand Paul, Matt Gaetz, The Federalist et. al. branded Covid-19 as the “Italian Virus”, used the Italian government as a campaign punching bag the way right wing radicals kept harping on the CCP, and laundered anti-Italian Q conspiracies, could anyone imagine a remotely similar increase in anti—Asian violence? No way.
———————————
(I can already hear replies such as well, the virus didn’t start in Italy, it started in China, as if a.) that justifies things and b.) violent racists are sitting at home unpacking the nuances of how the pandemic spread internationally, the response failures in Europe, and our own government’s misguided polices.)
Do you read what I write, or just blindly comment?
Because, as I noted twice before, one should not blame the average person for the failings of a government. Random Asian grandma, who may not be Chinese and could possibly be born in the United States, bares no blame for the silencing of Li Wenliang or the misinformation spread by Chinese authorities in January and February of 2020. Heck, the average resident of Wuhan deserves some respect for being ground zero for their government's failure to act properly when cases started showing up.
But this leads me to a question. If I clearly stated that anti Asian hate crimes (or any anyone hate crimes really, but we are concentrating on Asians) are wrong and should be condemned, why are you posting missives attacking me? I mean, you certainly seem to be confirming my fear that the righteous condemnation of hate crimes may be used for cover for silencing those who find fault with the PRC's handling of the outbreak at the point of origin, which was the point of my first comment here.
Maybe I read poorly.
But you seem to believe that the government of China should be viewed as directly responsible for the uptick of violent anti-Asian attacks in the United States. I don’t see the link, I don’t think you make any case whatsoever supporting such a claim, and that is precisely the idea that I am arguing against.
To be clear, I don’t believe that you endorse anti-Asian speech and violence. If my previous writing was ambiguous about that, then I apologize. But I hold fast in my position that there isn’t any need to hold China to account for America’s home-grown and home-amplified anti-Asian racism epidemic.
I don’t think that you can thread the needle between the government of China’s actions and American anti-Asian violence, especially when the catalyst is clearly the previous Republican administration, American right-wing media, the American social media cess pool, and local racist blog commenters, etc.
When we talk about our AAPI friends and neighbors facing violence and inflammatory rhetoric, it serves no purpose to pivot to Beijing, the Uyghurs, or Taiwan other than to take the focus off of American racism and white supremacy. [Insert something about removing the plank form our own eye, etc...]
You read me wrong
My point is that I worry about a conflation between anti-AAPI hate incidents (I'll include incidents where slurs have been flung ranging up to murder) and honest criticism of how China handled the response.
Conversely, I totally get the point that criticism of China could be used as a pretext for hatred, but I don't think said criticism should be muted because of it. G.W. Bush declared war on al-Queda, but he made sure to note that the war was not against Islam, but extremists within that community. Everyone is looking at the misogynistic murder spree in Georgia (yes, race had something to do with it, but it's complex) as anti-Asian violence (again, it's there, but it's not as simple as people make it out to be) while not doing the same when a Muslim opens fire in a grocery store in Colorado (which most likely wasn't linked to religion, but we don't know at this point.)
What is wrong with you?
In English, would that be "do the verbal attacks on Asian(-Americans) suggest that the perpetrators a)blame China for the Covid-19 pandemic and b)feel that this is justification for their actions against people who are not Chinese and may not even be of Chinese descent, but who merely 'look Chinese'"?
Assuming so, my answer is "and so fucking what?" So fucking what if that's what they think? News flash, not all sincerely held beliefs deserve respect; indeed, many deserve nothing but contempt and disgust. Bigoted sociopaths frequently use anger over the imagined actions of a group to target individuals who are, or are perceived to be, members of this group. This is well known. It's why there was violence against Sikhs following 9/11. It's inexcusable, and it should be confronted honestly and head-on and called what it is. But you have to whatabout and pearl-clutch over an entirely hypothetical "kind of silencing that a certain totalitarian government near Taiwan engages in to thwart honest political dialog". So your notion of "honest political dialog" is pandering to these racist fantasies about the "Chy-na virus" as if they were good-faith arguments?
The subject is about anti-Asian hatred happening right here in Boston. And you are once again trying to deflect blame and dilute responsibility. What is wrong with you?
Stop
The actions of the Chinese government don't have anything to do with people of Asian decent living in Boston. You are not helping by bringing up completely unrelated topics as if they have to do with this.
I seriously hate our society
We've been reduced to this. Racists walking up to people, screaming slurs at them, and walking away.
WHAT THE GOD'S NAME THINKS THIS IS OK?
oh right, because everyone online has no meter anymore and some people have decided that their racists online persona is their in person persona. They also seem to think, unlike their online world, that they can say whatever they want and get away with it.
There's a reason why I commonly say "Power behind keyboard", sadly people seem to think this makes them self important enough to bring it into the real world. Sure racists are gonna be racists online and offline. But the past several years have turned up the notion that it is OK to be this vile in person, not just online.
Thank you MAGA.
Thank you MAGA for forcing me to look at internet-less and electricity-less cabins in Northern New Hampshire. Why the fuck would I want to be apart of a society that seems to think its OK, and a society which the vast majority of people just turn a blind eye to.
We suck.
Please do this:
As Fred Rogers said, “look for the helpers.” There is much beauty and compassion and goodness in the world. Make a conscious practice of looking for it and you will start seeing it everywhere.
Outrage generates page clicks. And so our robo-curated media stream feeds us things to be outraged about. Not because journalists or social media mavens are bad people, but as a simple and inevitable consequence of fairly simple, dumb rules that amplify stories that generate clicks and get forwarded and commented on.
So if you start consciously looking for evidence of goodness, not only will you be making yourself happier, but by reading and forwarding such stories you will also be a force for steering social media in a more humane direction.
Better still...
Better still, BE the helper. Sharing feel-good stories can be just as illusory as sharing the stories that you claim are meant to generate outrage (and, Bob, seriously, we SHOULD be outraged over things like this). The goal is not "making yourself happier" or "steering social media in a more humane direction" - it's ending racist attacks like this.
Adding to your great sentiment
I want to say none of this is new, I was born in '81 and recall the 1st time a white person screamed the n-word at me being around middle school (in Hyde Park, natch).
Ignorance makes people bold af and has been remarkably consistent in the history of mankind. We now have the technology to record & share these incidents and you're able to hear directly from these folks, finally. The same goes for police violence and gov't bs.
MAGA is the same ignorance but they still treat social media like they're talking to their buddies. Shame them and keep your peace
While MAGA and their leader
While MAGA and their leader are some of the worst offenders they are not alone and they didn't create the mess they just breathed new toxic life into it.
Too many times when someone got nasty online and I called them out on it I got chastised for taking the internet too seriously. As if being behind a screen and saying something awful should be different than saying it on the phone or in person...
Now with the pandemic for the past year the online world became more real than it even was before and people are melding their personas. They have become accustomed to being nasty trolls. It takes practice to be civil and too many of us don't realize how our online selves are poisoning our own decorum outside.
Maskless AND white?
The two greatest sins-being white and not wearing a mask. I trust that there was a quality photo taken of this person? The fact he didn’t have a mask should make it easy for police to identify. I’ll wait for the photo to be released.
But...
....you didn't. You got in early with your reverse-racism dogwhistle.
White victimhood
Ah yes. An Asian man endures violent hate rhetoric and you have a pathological need to re-center this as a story of white victimhood. It’s good to see that a Republican is laser-focused on what’s important here (as usual).
Glad to see you doing big
Glad to see you doing big things to help the Asian community as usual. I’m sure the millions of non whites who come to this blog and read your comment are cheering over your heroics.
Ah yes
More racist deflection intended to prevent any discussion of racism.
Interesting how this always seems to happen with people who can't take responsibility for their behavior or think they are specially exempted from demonstrating self control.
See also: whataboutism
Change the subject
You can’t form a substantive rejoinder so you choose the cowardly sh**-poster tactic of changing the subject (to me). Your deflections show your hand and offers no ideas, only racist rhetoric.
It’s interesting that you frame yourself as a spokesperson for non-whites here on UHub and say that I don’t do enough to support the Asian community. What kind of hubris are you smoking that you presume to have insight into what non-white UHub community members think or don’t think about my comments?
Perhaps I am not doing enough, but at least I speak out against hate. You, on the other hand, can’t even achieve the bare minimum of “don’t be racist”, rendering your criticisms irrelevant. If members of the Asian community want to comment on my UHub participation, I welcome it and I pledge not to be as fragile and as defensive as you.
(*Also, If you don’t want to be criticized for racism, feel free to retract your accusation that Ye’s eyewitness account is untrustworthy. You offer no credible argument that Ye’s account should not be believed, clearly insinuating that his account should be considered suspicious because he is Asian. Or keep playing the clownish white victimhood trope. Your call.)
It seems like you are the
It seems like you are the racist police and that everyone to you is racist if someone brings anything up that goes against your opinion. Judge strangers on the internet all you want. It doesn’t make you any better of a person or any less racist. It means nothing that you think I’m racist. You are just a random person on the internet who thinks you are less racist than everyone else. I never said the story couldn’t have been true. You are more than welcome to believe it is a valid occurrence.
Moving on from racism
Why are many Republican polititicans so into sexual assault and pedophila?
Gaetz
Jordan
Hastert
Trump
Guiliani
Etc...
If you're out here proudly identifying as a Republican, I hope your friends know to keep their teenaged children well clear of you. I'll give Gingrich credit though - he left his cancer stricken wife for a woman who was at least of an appropriate age.
Not a denial
I notice that you neither deny your racist intent nor try to clarify your statement as to why it should not be looked upon as a.) re-centering anti-Asian hate speech into white victimhood (thus minimizing the subject of the story) and b.) insinuating that an Asian American man’s eyewitness account is suspicious.
You also had the opportunity for self-reflection and the chance to say “perhaps my comment could be construed as offensive; I will consider wording my comment differently next time”. But you do none of that and you deflect, deflect, deflect. Methinks the lady doth deflect too much.
Your racist comments are a matter of UHub record. You offer a feeble “ I never said the story couldn’t have been true” as a defense; but that doesn’t change the fact that you do imply that it is untrue and that this Asian man should be looked at with suspicion.
Your racism speaks for itself. And your non-denial crystallizes your position.
There isn't a lot to wonder...
No, in fact, this is the exact manner in which you showed your entire racism-apologist ass:
Dude, your response to AAPI people being treated in a completely shitty fashion, up to and including beatdowns of old people, is to cry like a little boy about how hard it is to be white. You are pathetic.
No need for a photo
You can just go ahead and take a look in the mirror.
I've been sexually harassed
I've been sexually harassed on the street on a regular basis since I was twelve. Don't have any photos. Your expectation that there would be seems to be based on the mistaken notion that this sort of this is rare and that police would take any notice or action.
And, Saturday Night Live
And, Saturday Night Live votes for Boston yet again, https://www.boston.com/culture/entertainment/2021/04/04/snl-boston-racism