Georgia on My Mind

Tangled Thoughts on the Atlanta Shootings

Bowen Yang among the crowd at the Rally Against Hate on March 21, 2021, Columbus Park, Chinatown, NYC

I heard the news of the Atlanta shootings while watching Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. The first words out of her mouth were that 7 people had been killed by a gunman in Atlanta. I held my breath and waited for the other shoe to drop — somehow I knew instinctively that this was not your average mass shooting event (as much as it disturbs me to call any mass shooting and the loss of life it causes “average,” the reality of living in the United States of America today is that mass shootings have become commonplace occurrences). Maybe I had been primed to expect something like this to happen. An increasing number of violent hate crimes against Asian Americans and the escalating rhetoric used to scapegoat us for the suffering inflicted by a global pandemic had put us on notice.

When the words “Asian massage parlor” flashed across the screen my worst fears were confirmed. It’s happening, I thought. Within minutes the death toll was revised to 8 people, 6 of whom were Asian women. Instead of feeling the customary emotions of disgust, anger, and sadness that I have experienced in response to so many events over the last five years — the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, the separation of immigrant children from their families at the border, the testimony and later confirmation of Bret Kavanaugh, the…