The story of the alleged Atlanta shooter highlights the two most common ways Americans think about compulsive behaviors – considering them the results of temptation and treating them as diseases.
The media tends to render Asian Americans as either a ‘perpetual foreigner’ or ‘model minority’ – both stereotypes that have been levied in tandem against immigrants from Asia since the 1830s.
After mass shootings, politicians in Washington have failed to pass new gun control legislation, despite public pressure. But laws are being passed at the state level, largely to loosen restrictions.
Bias-motivated attacks became a distinct crime in the 1980s. But police investigate only a fraction of the roughly 200,000 hate crimes reported each year – and even fewer ever make it to court.
In trying to make sense of the recent mass killing in Georgia, it’s important to see that it was more than just violence against women and anti-Asian hate.
Director of the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies and Associate Professor, Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa