Good, Albeit Biased News

L to R: Anthony Robinson, Derje Blanks, Cameron Moody (KRON4)

The hate-crime articles usually start with the history of racism against Asians.

First is the mention of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943), and next the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. After these two indisputable and shameful examples, writers often add the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin, who was killed by Detroit auto workers who thought he was Japanese, or the difficulty of the Vietnamese "boat people" in being accepted in America.

The history always ends with President Donald Trump and his accusations that the COVID-19 virus originated in China and the alleged scapegoating of Chinese people by President Trump and/or Republicans.

From these articles one would have thought that the violent attacks against Asian-Americans were perpetrated by MAGA-hat wearing, white supremacist trogolydtes, but one would be wrong.

Asians, at least in the Bay Area, have learned to ignore these politicized narratives because they're useless in ascertaining who is originating the current attacks (let's just say that only a minority are white, and the most violent are not).

The police finally caught a group of men who have been targeting Asians (photo at the top of this post): [bold added]

Two men have been charged with robbery in connection to dozens of purse snatchings targeting Asian women throughout the Bay Area, the Santa Clara County district attorney said Saturday.

The men — Derje Blanks, 23, and Anthony Robinson, 24 — were also charged with hate crime enhancements. The office for District Attorney Jeff Rosen said the suspects “used ethnic slurs to refer to their victims,” who were almost all of Asian descent.

“We will hold these defendants and anyone who worked with them fully accountable for their ignorant and destructive behavior,” Rosen said in a press release.

Blanks and Robinson were arrested by San Jose and Hayward police on September 8. Robinson fled in a vehicle and ran a red light, colliding with another car and injuring a two-year-old and her father, according to police.

A third suspect was arrested on Thursday, ending what SJPD called “yearlong, multi-jurisdictional investigation” into the “prolific robbery crew.”

The crime spree began in late 2020, according to the district attorney’s office. The pattern was nearly always the same: The men would follow women in parking lots to their cars, wait until the victim was inside her car and either smash a window or quickly open the door to steal a purse off the passenger seat.

Sometimes, the incidents became violent. There were “numerous incidents where victims were pulled or wrestled to the ground,” and some were injured, according to the district attorney.

Evidence shows that the defendants targeted the victims because they “believed that Asian women don’t use banks.”

“We are sensitive to the hate aspect targeting Asian females,” San Jose police chief Anthony Mata said in a release. “I commend District Attorney Jeff Rosen for pursuing hate crime enhancements.”

The Chronicle has published numerous articles and opinion pieces of the sort discussed at the top, that is, they strongly imply that Donald Trump and his followers are responsible for the recent spate of attacks on Asians.

This article, reprinted in its entirety, never discloses the race of the men arrested. (The photo of the suspects, not a MAGA hat among them, was pulled from the KRON4 website.) For many of the people in the media, if the facts contradict their politics, don't disclose the facts.