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.

#BlackMastodon

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)

People that see the few hyper-amplified anti-Asian hate crimes committed by Black people in San Francisco, move to Portland, Oregon, or Seattle, Washington, or Vancouver, Canada to feel safer.

But... there are fewer Black people in those places... and more incidences of Anti-asian hate crime.😢

The *least* Black of those places, Vancouver, is the Asian hate crime capital of North America. 🤷🏿‍♂️

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2021-vancouver-canada-asian-hate-crimes/

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

@mekkaokereke Still enjoying and learning from your threads. This specific point bothers me so I dug into it. My issue is that the claim in the Bloomberg article doesn't appear to be normalized for the proportion of Asians in the population. So, I attempted to do that myself. Just checking the top 6 in the data presented in the article, Boston appears to have the worst number of hate crimes per 100,000 Asians. The worst city in Canada is Montréal.
Profile table, Census Profile, 2021 Census of Population - Canada [Country];British Columbia [Province];Ontario [Province]

Statistics Canada's Census Profile presents information from the 2021 Census of Population - Canada [Country];British Columbia [Province];Ontario [Province].

@ejsarge @mekkaokereke
Hmm. I get where you going with normalizing by Asian population, but I'm not sure if thats the correct metric. That would measure how often a an Asian person might experience violence, which would be strongly skewed by small numbers of Asian people.
If you divide by total population of non-asian people, you'd get a measure of how likely a non-asian person is to commit such a crime.
Still not sure if that's what we're looking for but is measuring perpetrators, not victims
@Artemis201 @mekkaokereke I was looking into the claim that Vancouver was the anti-Asian hate crime capital. Metro Vancouver has a *lot* of Asian folks so higher total numbers would be expected. I thought about, but didn't attempt, Mekka's additional claim about who caused it.

@ejsarge @Artemis201

I think this convo is fine. Good actually!

These threads are opening points for people digging into the facts and history behind my snark and typos. Edward now has a better understanding of Asian hate, and what it feels like to be an Asian person living in Vancouver or Boston.

Some people reading this will think Boston is more racist. Others say Vancouver. It's not important that we all pick one winner. It is important that we agree that both are unacceptable.

@mekkaokereke @ejsarge
Thanks! I definitely wasn't trying to go into this to throw shade on specific cities or methods. This discussion just made me curious about different ways to look at the hate that exists. I appreciate the discussion you all have provided.

@Artemis201 @mekkaokereke @ejsarge It is an interesting statistical puzzle. A racially homogenous community might have no instances of racist attacks, but still have violent racists. A more diverse population may have more observed racial conflict simply because of more inter-racial interactions.

There are lots of ways to slice the numbers (and adjust significance based on small numbers of observations). But any single statistic will surely be an oversimplification of the lived experience.