Amidst a season of mass shootings in the United States, I woke up to a piece of news on the homepage of the World Journal, the largest Chinese-language newspaper in the United States. An elderly Korean American man in Flushing, Queens, was approached and shoved at a gas station by a man he did not know, who shouted, “I hate Chinese!” When the attending police officer learned the man was not physically injured, he advised him to let it go. “You just had a bad day.” The old man replied, “Isn't there a nationwide problem with hate against Asians? I don't want this person to take to the streets and continue to hurt others.” The NYPD filed a case but recorded it merely as a violation, noting that there was no injury. Only physical injuries fall under New York's hate crime statute. Other abuses—punching, slapping, spitting—do not qualify.1...

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