Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !
I still haven't made it to Black history. Still on white US history.
Q: Why does it seem like so much of the anti-Asian hate that I see on TV and in newspapers is done by Black people? It seems like Asian folk should be legitimately afraid of Black people! Why does it seem that way?
A: Racism. Most Asian hate attacks are done by white folk. Asian folk are significantly safer from Asian hate, when they are around Black folk.🙂🙃
Newspapers lied on us.
90% of the US Anti-Asian hate attacks, are done by white folk
https://npr.org/transcripts/980437156
And yet the press focuses on Black-on-Asian violence (~5% of total). Because racism. So our "solution" is a carceral one that Asian groups oppose🤦🏿♂️
Because it'll harm the Black and brown folk that racism has told us to expect are causing whatever problem US society has.
If Black folk were at least as prejudiced against Asian folk as white folk are, we would expect at least 13% of the Asian hate attacks to be done by Black folk. But we don't see that in the data. We see the opposite. And we see white US folk significantly over-represented in Asian hate crimes.
A racist news media cannot fairly report on crime involving Black people. Instead, it shapes opinions and pushes false narratives about crime and Black people.
It plays into the "Southern Strategy."
This is beyond simply saying "newspapers do this to make more money!" and "If it bleeds, it leads!" Given changing demographics of who buys newspapers, it *costs* newspapers money to push this tired, debunked, racist narrative.🤡
Newspapers are starting initiatives to "win young Black and brown people over."
vanityfair.com/news/2021/09/inside-ag-sulzbergers-top-times-project
This initiative is so incredibly misguided that it's bound to fail.
Young Black and brown folk don't trust the NYT, because it's not trustworthy.🤷🏿♂️
It's not about marketing the good stuff better. It's about not printing the misleading, anti-Black, anti-brown, anti-trans stuff.
NYT would increase circulation more by canceling this initiative, and going 12 months without printing any anti-Black content, and by being early or on time, instead of embarrassingly late, to any of the most important civil rights stories of our time: police reform, Trump, transphobia.
It's easy to see how Twitter's anti-woke obsession drove away key user segments in a matter of months, and made the business not viable. It's harder to see how newspapers have done the same exact thing to themselves, slowly, over 50 years, as the demographics of who buys news, has changed beneath their feet.
If your business depends on everyone paying a monthly fee, to hear rich white men lie about and harm them... I don't know how to tell you this, but that business is not long for this world.
Newspapers' anti-Black framing doesn't just hurt Black people. It hurts white people and Asian people too. It scares people that don't know white US history into making poor decisions.
The US passes laws not based on crime, but based on how white people feel about crime. How white people feel about crime, is largely based on fabrications by news coverage.
US media can invent a crime wave whenever it is convenient. Usually around elections, or after any progressive politician or DA is elected.🤡
This playing fast and loose with the truth, hurts Asian people too. For example, it is true that San Francisco is one of the worst cities in the US for incidents of Anti-asian hate. But that's because San Francisco is one of the *least Black* major cities in the US. 🙂🙃
Detroit is 77% Black. It's the Blackest US city and it's a rough place. No one wonders why Detroit isn't the Asian hate capital of North America.🤔
(RIP Vincent Chin. Killed in Detroit 40 years ago... by racist white autoworkers)
@knewman Without even thinking too hard, you can name just two white nationalist anti-Asian crime that killed more people than all of those incidents put together.
My point is that 3 incidents of a Black man punching a random elderly Asian person in San Francisco, will be amplified by the US news media more than *dozens of murders* of Asian women by white supremacists.
There is surveillance footage of those crimes as well. They don't get shared in the same way. That is an intentional choice.
You're making justifications that aren't supported by the data.
Most of the sharing of one of the most shared videos of a Black man punching people in SF, was done well after the man was already identified, arrested, and charged. A mentally ill homeless man walked down the street punching people. He was on many cameras. Arrested. Charged. Still shared by the usual crew.
His sequence was part of what got Chesa recalled. An effort funded by the same right wing Trump supporters.
No.
You keep not hearing what I'm saying.
There were around *20 times* as many videos of white nationalists attacking people, mostly women. There are lots of these videos, even in the East Bay.
Videos of Trump supporters yelling racial slurs at people, and telling them to stop wearing masks. Punching people. Threatening to shoot them.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FSuxmaY6XXY
These videos are just much less likely to be shared.
Because racism.
I don't know how to explain to you that there are way more videos of white people killing Asian people. If you go to the worst parts of the internet you can find them.
I don't know how to explain to you that the police get videos of both white and Black people killing Asian people, but that they're more likely to release the Black ones to TV reporters, and that the news is more likely to show the Black ones on TV.
At this point I'm giving up. ✌🏿
mekka okereke 
Kevin Newman