Vox Sentences - Atlanta shooting leaves 8 dead

Eight people were killed during a mass shooting in Atlanta, including six Asian women; Uber will reclassify 70,000 drivers as workers in the UK.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Gabby Birenbaum.

• Eight people were shot and killed on Tuesday at three spas just north of Atlanta; six of the victims were Asian women. The killings occurred amid increasing reports of anti-Asian violence, particularly against Asian women. [Vox / Rachel Ramirez]
• The suspect, a 21-year-old man named Robert Aaron Long, is in police custody and has been charged with murder. He claimed the shooting was not racially motivated, instead saying he had a sex addiction and was motivated by a desire to eliminate “temptations.” Police said it is too early to decide if the shooting was a hate crime. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution / Alexis Stevens and Shaddi Abusaid]
• There is a long, racist, misogynist history of fetishization of Asian women that has been used to justify violence and harm. On Twitter, many Asian women and nonbinary people discussed how white supremacist violence is the foundation of hypersexualization. [AsAmNews / Akemi Tamanaha]
• The suspect was apprehended with a 9mm firearm in a car on his way to Florida, where, according to police, he planned to enact more violence related to the porn industry in the state. [NPR / Bill Chappell]
• The South Korean Consulate said four of the eight victims are ethnic Koreans. [NYT / Richard Faucette and Neil Vigdor]
• In Georgia, Asian Americans have been reporting increasing harassment and abuse since the beginning of the pandemic, with many being called racial slurs used by former President Trump, who promoted anti-Asian racism regarding the coronavirus. [Washington Post / Andrea Salcedo and Paulina Firozi]
• Nationally, Stop AAPI Hate reported over 3,800 incidents of anti-Asian hate in the year since the pandemic hit the US. Sixty-eight percent of those incidents were targeted at women, underscoring the role misogyny often plays in anti-Asian hate. [NBC News / Kimmy Yam]
• But anti-Asian hate has a long history in the US, and goes much deeper than Trump or the pandemic. Asians have been legally targeted in the US through policies like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the World War II-era internment of Japanese Americans. They have been victims of the harmful “forever foreigner” trope, particularly on social class lines and based on ethnicity, such as racism toward South Asians after 9/11. [Vox / Li Zhou]
• Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA), the chair of the Congressional Asian American Pacific Caucus, said she met with the Justice Department to discuss hate crimes against Asian Americans. The caucus, and Democrats, are pushing for stronger hate crime laws, gun control bills, and a national day against Asian American hate. [USA Today / Nicholas Wu]

Vox will continue to follow this story. We've compiled this list of resources to help you and your communities learn about the history of anti-Asian racism in America.