Violence against Asians: When Is Racial Hate a Crime?

In this article we focus on the mass shootings of Asian women at Atlanta spas in 2021. After the perpetrator killed six Asian women, he told the police that he wanted to eliminate "all Asians" and spoke of the "temptation" of the massage parlors and spas. We ask at what point will these forms of anti-Asian violence first be acknowledged, and then seen as a clear and present danger? To answer these questions we trace the historical roots in US history, and domestic and foreign policies of such violence. We reflect on a history of imperial politics, the means and methods of writing global power, including armed conflicts with and in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and the more recent US-China rivalry and antagonism. Second, we argue that divisions and hierarchizations as articulated through these policies are political technologies of control of subjects and territories which are bounded for capture and for experimentation toward the reproduction of a global order of the West and the Rest. In sum, we suggest that the asymmetrical and unequal sexualized landscapes and Othering that produce such violences ought to be critiqued, disrupted, and publicly challenged.