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Notice Something Odd About the NYPD’s Presser on Asian Hate Crimes…Like How It Shreds the Left’s Narrative

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  March 26, 2021 1:35 PM

There’s been a lot of chatter about the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes. Asian-Americans are being targeted, yes—but the narrative may not be reflective of what liberal media outlets are disseminating. They want us to believe that white supremacy and Donald Trump are to blame. Calling COVID the ‘Wuhan coronavirus’ is what led to this recent spate of attacks. No, the virus came from China. That is a fact. You see the ‘my ethnicity is not a virus’ signs, though that sentiment seems to stop within lefty circles when they want to bash white people. There’s always a boomerang, folks. Whatever liberals dole out, eventually it will come back to split their lip open like a fool with a boomerang. Always. These people have no principles, only feelings that can land you in a lot of trouble. 

The recent NYPD presser on anti-Asian hate crimes shows pictures of the suspects who look rather…nonwhite. I mean when that slide of those who were arrested was shown, there was not a white face on that screen. 

This all stems from the horrific mass shooting in Atlanta where Robert Aaron Long shot and killed eight people, many of them Asian women. Cue the white supremacy and hate crime talk, though we don’t know yet why he did this. That’s what Andrew Sullivan noted in his piece on Substack, which relates to the NYPD presser here. We once again see the woke narrative replacing what’s factual. He goes long into the recent spa shootings committed by Long, the infusion of ‘critical race theory,’ which is worth a read, but he also notes that a good chunk of hate crimes committed against Asians in New York City were done by nonwhites. That shreds the white supremacy angle. He does say that Trump’s “China virus” rhetoric fanned the flames. I disagree, but here’s a key passage:

This isn’t in any way to deny increasing bias against Asian-Americans. It’s real and it’s awful. Asians are targeted by elite leftists, who actively discriminate against them in higher education, and attempt to dismantle the merit-based schools where Asian-American students succeed — precisely and only because too many Asians are attending. And Asian-Americans are also often targeted by envious or opportunistic criminal non-whites in their neighborhoods. For Trump to give these forces a top-spin with the “China virus” made things even worse, of course. For a firsthand account of a Chinese family’s experience of violence and harassment, check out this piece.

The more Asian-Americans succeed, the deeper the envy and hostility that can be directed toward them. The National Crime Victimization Survey notes that “the rate of violent crime committed against Asians increased from 8.2 to 16.2 per 1000 persons age 12 or older from 2015 to 2018.” Hate crimes? “Hate crime incidents against Asian Americans had an annual rate of increase of approximately 12% from 2012 to 2014. Although there was a temporary decrease from 2014 to 2015, anti-Asian bias crimes had increased again from 2015 to 2018.” 

Asians are different from other groups in this respect. “Comparing with Black and Hispanic victims, Asian Americans have relatively higher chance to be victimized by non-White offenders (25.5% vs. 1.0% for African Americans and 18.9% for Hispanics). … Asian Americans have higher risk to be persecuted by strangers … are less likely to be offended in their residence … and are more likely to be targeted at school/college.” Of those committing violence against Asians, you discover that 24 percent such attacks are committed by whites; 24 percent are committed by fellow Asians; 7 percent by Hispanics; and 27.5 percent by African-Americans. Do the Kendi math, and you can see why Kendi’s “White Supremacist domestic terror” is not that useful a term for describing anti-Asian violence.

But what about hate crimes specifically? In general, the group disproportionately most likely to commit hate crimes in the US are African-Americans. At 13 percent of the population, African Americans commit 23.9 percent of hate crimes. But hate specifically against Asian-Americans in the era of Trump and Covid? Solid numbers are not yet available for 2020, which is the year that matters here. There’s data, from 1994 to 2014, that finds little racial skew among those committing anti-Asian hate crimes. Hostility comes from every other community pretty equally.

The best data I’ve found for 2020, the salient period for this discussion, are provisional data on complaints and arrests for hate crimes against Asians in New York City, one of two cities which seem to have been most affected. They record 20 such arrests in 2020. Of those 20 offenders, 11 were African-American, two Black-Hispanic, two white, and five white Hispanics. Of the black offenders, a majority were women. The bulk happened last March, and they petered out soon after. If you drill down on some recent incidents in the news in California, and get past the media gloss to the actual mugshots, you also find as many black as white offenders.

This doesn’t prove much either, of course. Anti-Asian bias, like all biases, can infect anyone of any race, and the sample size is small and in one place. But it sure complicates the “white supremacy” case that the mainstream media simply assert as fact.

And that NYPD presser complicated that narrative pretty well.