Yes, the Atlanta shooting was a hate crime fueled by racism and misogyny
On March 16, 2021, a white gunman was charged with killing eight people in three separate spas in Atlanta. Six of those victims were Asian women. According to the shooter, he saw spas as the source of his sexual temptations and believed that eliminating them would suppress these urges. Even though the shooter correlated the spas with his sexual desires, there is no evidence that the spas had any connections to sexual work. Shortly after the shooting, Cherokee County sheriff spokesman, Jay Baker, commented on the situation saying that the shooter did what he did because he was “having a bad day.” Baker’s statement makes it seem as though this shooting was not race-based, instead, the shooter could only resolve his personal sexual issues by targeting multiple spas, with eight victims caught in the crossfire. Let’s dissect this.