Hate Crime in Spanish Harlem?

You may have heard about the recent attacks on Asians in the Spanish/East Harlem neighborhood for the past week. Some jerk was brutally beating & robbing them while in an elevator. It hit close to home for me. One, I live in this area. This has been my neighborhood since I was a child. Two, because I'm half Chinese.

Our neighborhood has been on a high stress level since we heard about it. Cops were on every corner, in every building watching & hoping he would try again. Thankfully, through his stupid mistake of using a stolen credit card, the police were able to identify him. They arrested him while he was on a Greyhound bus heading out of New York City last night. All is quiet, if you can imagine that in a neighborhood in New York.

You may be wondering why am I writing about this crime. Why give this man any more notoriety for his actions. This cowards actions struck a nerve in me since he was only attacking Asians. I wondered why did he choose this area. Not many people know that there was a large community of Chinese living here amongst the Latinos and African Americans years ago. A time when race held no boundary. We all grew up together each learning each other's languages. Engulfing in each other's cultures. We embraced each other. For some stranger to come and try to harm our community, he ignited a family's outrage.

I'm relieved that this is all over and he will be behind bars. My son is especially relieved when he came home from school today no longer seeing the Wanted posters in our building. I was very open with him about the incident. I didn't want to instill fear in him but I wanted him to be aware that there are some very mean people in the world.

He being a quarter Chinese my son said to me one night "Mom, I'm happy that you don't look Chinese because that means the robber won't come after you." For that I'm very relieved.

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