Andrew Yang Denounces 'Deadly Anti-Asian Racism' After Atlanta Shootings

New York democratic mayoral candidate Andrew Yang is calling the shootings that left at least eight people dead at massage parlors in the Atlanta area "devastating."

Yang, a former democratic presidential candidate, held a news conference Wednesday following the Tuesday attack that left six victims of Asian descent, seven women and eight victims in total, dead.

The suspect, who is white, told police the attack was not racially motivated and that he potentially had a "sexual addiction," officials said Wednesday.

Still, authorities said they were investigating whether the deaths were hate crimes amid concerns over a wave of attacks on Asian Americans.

"Anti-Asian racism is deadly, it's real and is growing stronger and more powerful. And we call on people of every community to come together and say that Asian Americans are human beings. Asian Americans are just as American as everyone else," said Yang, who grew up in New York.

Citing multiple recent incidents of attacks against Asian Americans in the city, Yang said it was time to "come together and say that this cannot be allowed to continue in New York, in this country."

He encouraged people in the Asian American community to continue living their lives despite the fear and called on elected officials to do more.

"Some of these incidents were not treated as hate crimes, and that's unacceptable. And people in the Asian American community know that we are being targeted and we need our leaders to step up and recognize the same," Yang also said.

The attack was the sixth mass killing this year in the U.S., and the deadliest since the August 2019 Dayton killing that took the lives of nine people, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.

It follows a lull during the pandemic in 2020 that had the smallest number mass killings in more than a decade. The database tracks mass killings defined as four or more dead, not including the shooter.

Many suspects who commit mass shootings have a history of violence against women. Still, the attack haunted members of the Asian American community who saw the shootings as an attack on them, given a recent wave of assaults that coincided with the spread of the coronavirus across the United States.

The virus was first identified in China, and then-President Donald Trump and others have used racially charged terms like "Chinese virus" to describe it.

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