Andrew Sullivan Minimizes Anti-Asian Hate

Last Friday, Andrew Sullivan wrote an editorial at The Daily Dish dismissing the idea that last week's shooting of eight people including six Asians was racially motivated and chided the mainstream media for forming this narrative:

We have yet to find any credible evidence of anti-Asian hatred or bigotry in this man’s history. Maybe we will. We can’t rule it out. But we do know that his roommates say they once asked him if he picked the spas for sex because the women were Asian. And they say he denied it, saying he thought those spas were just the safest way to have quick sex. That needs to be checked out more. But the only piece of evidence about possible anti-Asian bias points away, not toward it.

On Saturday, I made a point of walking to where two of the shootings took place on Piedmont Road. I saw a young man carrying a sign which read, "We Are Not a Virus". What would Sullivan tell this young man? Would he tell that anti-Asian hate is nothing more than a media creation and that he ought not to be there?

One particular passage also perturbed me. Sullivan writes, "None of them mentioned that he killed two white people as well — a weird thing for a white supremacist to do — and injured a Latino."

I would remind Sullivan that a Latino man was killed at the Jewish deli in Jersey City that was targeted by two members of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement in December 2019. According to Sullivan's logic, because a Latino was killed at a Jewish owned business then the attack couldn't be anti-Semitic in nature. That a non-Jew was killed in the attack doesn't change the fact the target was a Jewish owned business. Ergo the fact that non-Asian persons were killed last week doesn't change the fact the targets were Asian owned businesses. This logic has escaped Sullivan's grasp.

Now I\it could be the case that Sullivan is pulling a Tucker Carlson and just wants to be a contrarian or to be provocative for its own sake. At best it is self-indulgent and Sullivan hasn't thought through his argument. At worst, Sullivan is grossly insensitive and only succeeds in minimizing anti-Asian thereby adding insult to injury to a community reeling from hatred and contempt.