United States: Were the Atlanta killings both racist and misogynistic?

The murderous attack, with the death of eight people, including six women of Asian origin, brings to the fore the notion of intersectionality in discrimination.

The United States is torn apart with a semantic debate. A white man killed eight people in Atlanta on Tuesday, including six women of Asian descent. He swears he was not motivated by racism but by a “sexual obsession”. Since then, the qualification of the facts has divided. Were these killings misogynistic? Racists ? Or both ?  

By reporting that Robert Aaron Long wanted to eliminate “the temptation” which he said represented the targeted massage parlors, the police offended more than one. “These statements refer to the perception of Asian women as sex objects,” notes Catherine Ceniza Choy, professor of ethnic studies at Berkeley University. “And that hurts.” 

Asian Americans “are victims of specific” stereotypes that refer “to the fantasies of white men,” she told AFP, citing the typical example of the big-hearted prostitute, the heroine of the film “Le Monde”. by Suzie Wong “. “They are racist because they specifically target Asian women, but they are also sexist and sexual,” she notes. 

Concept of intersectionality

For her, like many others, the bloodbath in Atlanta is therefore a mixture of racism, sexism, contempt for the poor, the gun problem in the United States and mental illness. In short, it is “intersectional”. Or as the New York Times sums it up : “Racism and sexism intertwine to torment Asian-American women.” 

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