The notion that white supremacists are responsible for violent attacks on Asians falls apart under scrutiny, according to a political science researcher who collected and analyzed a database of such attacks.
Wilfred Reilly, assistant professor at Kentucky State University, collected publicly available information on about 100 attacks on Asians reported in the media in the past 14 months or so.
“I don’t think any of them have turned out to be the work of a kind of white racialist, like someone affiliated with an actively prejudiced group, or even a Proud Boy in a street fight, something like that,” he told The Epoch Times in a phone call, referring to the right-wing group that has engaged in street fights with members of the anarcho-communist Antifa network.
Reilly characterized the attackers on Asians as “diverse urban goons, mostly black,” though that doesn’t mean at least some of the perpetrators weren’t biased against Asians.
The suspect was identified as black in over 60 percent of the cases. Another more than 25 percent were white, he said. Black people comprise about 13 percent of the population. White people about 60 percent.
“None of the whites seem to be racists,” Reilly said, referring to what could be gleaned from their background, such as their “online association with any racial or radical group.” Similarly to the black suspects, the whites fitted a profile of an “urban thug,” he said.
“People are looking for easy scapegoats,” he said, and “white supremacy” fits that bill.
“In fact you just have a diverse group of goons beating up and robbing Asians,” he said.
Asians face the least violent crime of the races and ethnicities listed by the 2019 report—less than 0.8 percent fell victim that year, compared to 2.1 percent of whites and Hispanics and less than 1.9 percent of blacks.
“What reduces crime against Asians isn’t that whites or blacks target them less. They target them more,” Reilly said.
The reason, as the data shows, is that only about 24 percent of violent crimes against Asians are committed by other Asians. For whites against whites, that percentage is over 62 percent, for blacks on blacks it’s over 70 percent, and for Hispanics some 45 percent.
“They don’t have that home team disadvantage that most of us do,” Reilly said.
For other groups, conversely, Asian perpetrators are barely on the radar. Though comprising about 6 percent of the population, they have been identified as only 2.2 percent of attackers on whites, 0.6 on Hispanics, and less than 0.1 percent on blacks. The report cautions that the latter two figures have a limited statistical value.
The investigation hasn’t so far uncovered an anti-Asian motive on the man’s part.
Hate crimes are crimes for which authorities seek a higher penalty, alleging that the perpetrator was motivated by animus toward characteristics such as race, religion, and sexual proclivities.