FBI calling stabbing at Midland Sam's a hate crime
https://www.cbs7.com/content/news/FBI-calling-stabbing-at-Midland-Sams-a-hate-crime-569233691.html
An FBI report obtained by ABC News says the stabbing of three Chinese-Americans at the Sam's in Midland was a hate crime.
The document detailed the incident in which "three Asian American family members, including a 2-year-old and 6-year-old, were stabbed … The suspect indicated that he stabbed the family because he thought the family was Chinese, and infecting people with the coronavirus."
The FBI is warning that there's an increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans as the coronavirus crisis continues to grow.
"The FBI assesses hate crime incidents against Asian Americans likely will surge across the United States, due to the spread of coronavirus disease … endangering Asian American communities," according to the report, which was done by the FBI’s Houston office and distributed to local law enforcement agencies across the country.
"The FBI makes this assessment based on the assumption that a portion of the US public will associate COVID-19 with China and Asian American populations."
The 19-year-old who investigators say stabbed and cut the four people at the Midland Sam's Club told police he was attempting to kill a family shopping in the store, according to an arrest affidavit.
Pictures posted on Facebook show that the father and his son were cut very badly across their faces. The son, who is very young, has a cut reaching from behind his ear all the way across to his eye.
Police say Jose Gomez also stabbed a Sam's employee in the leg when he tried to stop Gomez. His hand was also cut up as he tried to get the knife away from Gomez, according to the affidavit.
The worker and an off-duty Border Patrol Agent were able to get the knife out of Gomez's hand and hold him until Midland Police arrived.
Gomez is charged with three counts of attempted capital murder and one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
https://salphotobiz.smugmug.com/People/Social-Justice-Helping-the/i-mMkqX5M
Trump’s “Chinese Virus” and What’s at Stake in the Coronavirus’s Name
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/whats-at-stake-in-a-viruss-name
It was only a matter of time before Donald Trump enlisted such language to serve his nativist agenda. Although COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has killed more than twenty thousand people and affected countries around the world, Trump’s fixation on its origins in Wuhan, China, has encouraged a rash of anti-Asian bigotry in the United States. Acknowledging such harassment during a White House briefing on Monday night, Trump urged the public to “protect our Asian-American community.” But this paltry call for tolerance does not compensate for the prejudice that he and other figures on the right have helped foment. This month, Trump has taken to referring to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus,” presenting the label as a corrective to Beijing officials’ claims that the American military was the source of the outbreak. Countering misinformation, though, is hardly the same thing as implicating an entire people. Last week, an Asian-American journalist reported that a member of the President’s staff called COVID-19 the “kung flu” to her face. This Wednesday, the Washington Post reported that representatives of the G-7 countries failed to agree on a joint statement about the pandemic, because the Trump Administration insisted on using the term “Wuhan virus.” “China is to blame, because the culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs and things like that,” Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said in a recent videotaped interview, defending Trump’s label. “These viruses are transmitted from the animal to the people, and that’s why China has been the source of a lot of these viruses, like SARS, like MERS, the swine flu.”
Good News Racism
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