I don't know if you're POC or not, but for some of us, this is a personal safety issue and also, it just kind of sucks to feel under siege in society all the time.
To be sure, I have lived in places in the rural U.S., and not all of them are bad. There are places where the folks seem to vote for a hateful candidate, but when you meet them, it's actually not what it chalked up to be. And then there are other places. It's not as simple as rural vs. urban either. I would rather live in parts of rural California than in most East Coast cities.
When I'm in a place full of a hateful side, I will know it, and I will generally avoid returning except on occasion. Also, at some point in your life you will get older. You own't want to deal with that anymore. Anyone thinking otherwise is kidding themselves. It'll be fun and games until you're the elderly Asian person whose skull has been bashed in. When you're young and feeling indestructible, cool. One day that will end. Maybe it will be the passing of a relative, or welcoming someone to the family. The day will come when your priorities change.
In all, it's not our jobs to spend our lives being the canary in the coal mine. There's this idea of individualism in the West, yes? We need to go where we can grow, or at the least be safe to try.
Now if we were to pick this apart, I will explain to you why I still would have a hard time trusting any statistics, given the things others have said (not just folks commenting on these threads).
I grew up in the NYC of the 80's. Then, as now, most of the violent crime against Asians was committed by black folks, as another responder has pointed out (albeit in a way that I find unhelpful). Indeed, until you move up in social class, you will be targeted, as an Asian person, by disadvantaged people from lower social classes (no, they won't just be black, I can say that from personal experience).
The emphasis here is on social class. Economic class on its own is not quite good enough. (To go off in a tangent, you have to move up in economic class, and leverage that to move up in social class, which tends to put you in friction with already-established social elites, but like I said, that's another matter, and moving up in social class still makes you relatively safe physically.)
Anyway, there has been quite a discrepancy between attacks on Asians in 2020s west coast cities versus NYC. I know this because I still have older relatives on the ground in NYC. There has also been historically much greater discrimination in NYC than west coast cities, e.g. in SF. This is what happens to Asians in general in the U.S., because of the role we'd been slotted as a model minority.
So, I don't have to be directly, physically attacked by the majority in order to feel unsafe.
What leads to the lack of safety I've experienced is something like the bamboo ceiling, and for me to be part of an economically-advantaged but politically-disadvantaged group, by construction. I would expect to be different, in Germany (and in particular, the AfD parts of East Germany), just as much in the U.S. When I read the history books, I understand that such a situation tends to lead to inevitabilities I'd rather not get into here, when e.g. the economy goes bad – and this would not just be about Germany. It may not be violent today, but there's no telling about tomorrow.
With that all said, I will concede to you that Germany would still be safer than the U.S., because all things being equal, if you're stuck in the same social situation but one place is more violent than the other, then you will probably survive in the less-violent place for longer.
But it's still not encouraging to compare Germany to the U.S. For me, that's like considering jumping from one pot of hot water into another. This isn't just a debate about statistics. The first and second generations, being recently emigrated, will often frame such things in terms of: should I stay here, or should I move there, when these comparisons are made. Because ultimately, you can talk about statistics and the theory of how it all is, but when you're a canary in the coal mine, "should I move there" is where the buck stops. With that question you're not just debating anymore. You're taking your life in your own hands.
To that end, you will ask questions about being different, and being disempowered socially. If they don't get you in this generation, the internalized prejudices will get your kids in the next. Moving to a different place with a totally different culture, where there's a lot fewer people who look like me, and where a party like the AfD has the hold that it does, does not justify itself. If I were my parents, emigrating to the West, and doing it all over again in today's context, Berlin might be an alternative – not Leipzig or Dresden, but that is kind of a moot point for those of us already Westernized in the U.S.
> Because ultimately, you can talk about statistics and the theory of how it all is, but when you're a canary in the coal mine, "should I move there" is where the buck stops.
Why did this end up in favor of the US instead of Germany in your head? I would consider things like Kenosha, Charlottesville, Minneapolis and the Capital Riots as a sign to not move there.
>It'll be fun and games until you're the elderly Asian person whose skull has been bashed in.
German and European descendants have essentially nothing to do with this phenomenon. In fact, white elders were the primary targets of brutal rapes, assaults, murders, and home invasions by the same POC criminal groups before the US had a large Asian population. Such violence on the streets and in schools was the primary cause for white flight to the suburbs are rural areas. It was a series of decisions made from the exact perspective you’re describing. This view is generally not taught in US schools but is extensively documented in primary sources, such as “Left Behind in Rosedale:”
European descendants remain victims in ~90% of interracial crime between these two groups today. Similar number for Asians, similar lack of media attention paid. Bet you never heard of the gang assault and murder of Ee Lee:
The parent comment was highlighting anti-Asian hate attacks in the US. These attacks are overwhelmingly committed by Afro-American men. If you'd rather talk about ethnically-motivated mob attacks in Germany, there's no need to look as far as 30 years back:
>The shelter was originally intended to house 300 refugees a month, but by summer 1992 it was averaging 11,500 refugees per month. Primarily Roma from Romania
I don't remember any war in 1992 in Romania. The social problems involving Roma people in Europe are well-documented, on the other hand.
Is war the only thing that puts people's lives in danger?
There was no declaration of war but neither was for Russia's invation of Ukraine.
If you would have looked it up, you would have found out it was a civil war.
There was a revolution in 1989 which toppled the communism regime which was followed by a long period of turmoil of riots and violent uprisings till the mid '90 (the mineriade were the most infamous) which saw extreme poverty, crime and people being beaten in the streets.
A lot of it was because the people who came to power after the revolution were the same cronies who ruled during comunism, typically members of the communist party and the secret police.
Going from comunism to capitalism isn't some binary switch you can toggle on/off without issues, even though you might not think of it because there was no declaration of war.
Edit: if you downvoted, would you mind explaining? Or do you not believe in history?
Scott Cummings uses terms like "black invasion" to describe demographic changes in the neighborhood. It's difficult to separate his obvious biases from his work, leaving a slanted product unfit as an accurate record. Lukas is a much more reliable narrator, however, and Common Ground is an excellent work.
Your statistics are uninteresting; the largest demographic is indeed the primary recipient of inter-demographic action from the second-largest demographic. This is to be expected in any interaction across any demographic boundary. Trying to use to it to advance some agenda is disingenuous, especially since 80% of all white people murdered are murdered by white people -- in other words, you're dealing with marginalia here.
The claim about the "lack of media attention" for black-on-asian violence is similarly absurd, since there is plentiful media coverage of the problem as a whole and your provided example in specific, as demonstrated in the sources cited by your Wikipedia link.
> Scott Cummings uses terms like "black invasion" to describe demographic changes in the neighborhood.
So what? That’s how the elderly people getting robbed, raped and murdered saw it. Does their suffering count for nothing?
Elder whites in Rosedale were specifically targeted for violence. The verbatim confessions of the perpetrators admit this. The crime data record this. The same pattern now repeats with elderly Asians. Whatever you think of the author, a committed liberal whose distaste for the racist speech of some interview subjects is palpable, the facts stand on their own.
If you want to talk statistics, the racial disparities in both inter- and intra-race violence remain even at comparable income levels. They are especially pronounced between blacks and Asians. It’s not necessary to speculate as to reasons in order to note that it’s true. Without acknowledging something’s happening, it cannot be addressed and is impossible to fix.
The lack of attention to anti-Asian violence relates to the identities of the perpetrators, as you know. These stories also fall out of the news much quicker than, for instance, the killing of Ahmaud Arbery.
If you take a random directed graph and separate the nodes in two sets A and B you would expect* the arrow from A to B to be about the same as those from B to A regardless of the relative size.
White flight was unadulterated racism. It wasn’t because the black family that moved down the street started being violent. It’s because whites did not want to live on the same street as them.
Of course caucasians would be a victim of ~90% of interracial crime, those are the general population demographics in most places that are not urban in the US.
> Of course caucasians would be a victim of ~90% of interracial crime, those are the general population demographics in most places that are not urban in the US.
What does it have to do with anything?
Let's simplify and assume interracial crimes only include a white person and a black person (e.g. we're excluding other races to simplify the model). If both races had equal propensity for crimes, the whites (as well as the blacks) would victims of 50% of interracial crimes.
Given that whites they were victims of 90% of interracial crimes, it must mean that the other races were the perpetrators of 90% of interracial crimes. The fact that whites are the most populous race does not change anything there.
The primary historical sources contradict your opinion. Racism was a part of it, certainly. The other part and the reason for much of the racism was excessive violence and crime. Here’s another book from the era which documents this, note the top review:
>Of course caucasians would be a victim of ~90% of interracial crime, those are the general population demographics in most places that are not urban in the US.
Do you understand that this number includes urban areas?
How are you qualifying “primary historical sources”? Nothing in the links you posted indicate these to be official primary historical sources other than you claiming them to be so.
To be sure, I have lived in places in the rural U.S., and not all of them are bad. There are places where the folks seem to vote for a hateful candidate, but when you meet them, it's actually not what it chalked up to be. And then there are other places. It's not as simple as rural vs. urban either. I would rather live in parts of rural California than in most East Coast cities.
When I'm in a place full of a hateful side, I will know it, and I will generally avoid returning except on occasion. Also, at some point in your life you will get older. You own't want to deal with that anymore. Anyone thinking otherwise is kidding themselves. It'll be fun and games until you're the elderly Asian person whose skull has been bashed in. When you're young and feeling indestructible, cool. One day that will end. Maybe it will be the passing of a relative, or welcoming someone to the family. The day will come when your priorities change.
In all, it's not our jobs to spend our lives being the canary in the coal mine. There's this idea of individualism in the West, yes? We need to go where we can grow, or at the least be safe to try.