Asfears about the coronavirus increased in early 2020, Asian Americans — especially Asian American women — began to sound the alarm about a rise in anti-Asian violence, harassment, and hate. But it took the mass murder of six Asian women in Atlanta to catapult anti-Asian violence onto a national platform. On March 16, a 21-year-old White man murdered eight people in three massage parlors in the Atlanta area, including four Korean and two Chinese women. The massacre shocked, horrified, and outraged the nation and generated an outpour of empathy.
Asian Americans were still mourning the victims in Atlanta when less than a month later, on April 15, a 19-year-old White man opened fire at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, murdering four Sikhs among a mass killing of eight workers in total. Both massacres were targeted attacks against Asians, yet only the mass murder in Atlanta elicited a massive, sustained, and resounding cry to “stop Asian hate.”