Why I Don’t Care If It Was a “Bad Day” By Shreya Rajappa @shreyarajappa A high school student living in sunny California, Shreya Rajappa enjoys writing creative non-fiction and impassioned Op-Ed articles. She credits her intersectional identity as a bisexual, feminist young woman with Indian and Sri Lankan parents for her desire to become involved in journalism to represent others who share aspects of her identity and to bring awareness to social issues involving marginalized communities. In her free time, she watches movies, takes pictures, tie-dyes clothes, and plays basketball.
I
t’s been 14 days. 14 days since shots rang out in those spas in Atlanta and Acworth, Georgia, ricocheting off walls and bodies. 14 days since the upward trend in anti-Asian hate crime occurrences reached a new, horror-inducing peak. 14 days since 8 people, 6 of them Asian women employed at the spas, lost their lives and the lives of their loved ones were forever changed, left behind with a gaping void, a loss. It’s a loss for the world at large as well, but this loss wrenches at the heartstrings in a slightly different way for the Asian community, for Asian women in particular. This makes us feel like the target that’s been on the backs of East Asians, at least ever since our former president made racist remarks about China and COVID-19, has now ex-
10 | Overachiever Magazine
panded, becoming easier The facts tell us that for people to aim at them. the shooter blamed his “sex Many Asians are now re- addiction” for his irreprealizing that the victims of hensible actions and then these shootings and previ- proceeded to murder six ous hate crimes could have Asian women, playing into easily been their grandpar- the racist fetishization of ents, parents, siblings, and Asian women. Asian womfriends. It could’ve easily en have been fetishized in been themselves. America for as long as his Now, if you aren’t tory can remember, this Asian yourself, imagine how fetishization being coined it feels to be Asian and hear “yellow fever.” There’s the that the shooter claimed Page Law of 1875 that tarhis murders weren’t racial- geted Asian women, blockly motivated, that he killed ing them from entering the these people because of USA because of the racist his “sex addiction,” want- belief that all Asian women ing to eliminate sources were prostitutes. There’s of “temptation” for himself. the Lotus Blossom (also Imagine how it feels to hear known as China Doll or that an officer on the case Geisha Girl) stereotype, insaid that the shooter had tending to paint Asian womsimply been “having a bad en as submissive, obedient, day.” Imagine how it feels hypersexualized objects to be dismissed in this that exist solely for white way, especially when these men’s pleasure. In 2019, shootings were racially mo- “Japanese” was one of the tivated hate crimes. two most searched terms
