Son of Atlanta Spa Shooting Victim Speaks Out

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Now though, we revisit the horrific spa shootings that rocked Atlanta back in 2021. The rampage left eight people dead, including six Asian women. A shroud of grief and fear envelop the Asian American community after that. And it’s a story explored in searing detail in the new documentary “Rising Against Asian Hate,” which is now out on PBS.org. The executive producer, Gina Kim, and Robert Peterson, whose mother was killed in those shootings join Hari Sreenivasan now to shed light on the aftermath of what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Gina Kim, Bobby Peterson, thank you both for joining us. Gina, I want to start with you. Why this film? Why now?

GINA KIM, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, “RISING AGAINST ASIAN HATE: ONE DAY IN MARCH”: It might be helpful if we go back to the height of the pandemic, if we can remember the height of the pandemic when we were all scrolling our phones and we saw one brutal attack after another perpetrated on Asian Americans, the elderly, the most vulnerable in our society. And it was absolutely horrific and it was just a very shocking time. And so, when March 16th happened, when eight people were killed, brutally murdered, including six women of Asian descent we weren’t entirely surprised. We saw the rhetoric ramping up. We saw all these attacks happening and we were just, you know, horrified by what occurred in Atlanta. Attacks against Asian Americans have increased by 300 percent in the past two years, and that’s a staggering number. Violence against Asian Americans is not anything new. I mean, you know, history has shown that our community has been going through this for a very, very long time for decades, for generations. But for me, you know, it is a unique moment. It is something that I’ve never experienced my life. And I’ve had a lot of people say to me, you know, like, this is changing the way they live. You know, people, like my mother, who doesn’t feel safe being out in — going out in public. I have friends who don’t take the subway anymore. And so, this is something that, you know, we thought we had to document and make sure that people understood how grave this issue was.

SREENIVASAN: Bobby, your mother, Young Ae Yue, was one of those women that were murdered in Atlanta. First of all, I guess, how are you doing right now?

ROBERT PETERSON, SON OF YOUNG AE YUE, VICTIM OF ATLANTA SPA SHOOTING: I’m doing OK or as best as I can. Again, I have a good family who can support me and I have good friends and a larger community out there that has really rallied behind my family. So, we’re doing OK.

SREENIVASAN: Tell us a little bit about your mom.

PETERSON: My mother was a Korean woman. She had married my father in Korea. Moved here. Had me in Georgia, you know, and try to live a great life. She was quick-witted. She was funny. She was smart. She loved to cook. And her love language was food. She would feed anybody and share about our culture. She was a great woman.

SREENIVASAN: Can you tell us about how you heard the news? Take us back to that day if you can.

PETERSON: I was getting in bed, I saw that a murder, a killing had happened in Atlanta. And I thought, like most people, that’s bad. But at the same time, my brother was stationed in Japan, in the military, and he called and said he’d been trying to reach her mother via text and he couldn’t. And so, he wanted me to go check on her. And I told him, I would check on her in the morning. And then, that following morning, I drove to these locations and I was looking for her vehicle. And at that time, it was just chaotic and sad and I did not find her vehicle. It was eventually there. I didn’t see it that moment. But then I found my way to her home. And like I said before, my mom’s best friend had left a note on the door to contact her. And at that moment, she didn’t know either that it was actually my mother. But I found out from the medical examiner when I called to identify her body.

SREENIVASAN: Just kind of letting that sink in. You know, when you saw one of the first press conferences that happened after that crime, there were comments made by the Atlanta Police Department which almost tried to humanize the person who did this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The suspected take responsibility for the shootings. He understood the gravity of it. And he was pretty much fed up and had been kind of end of his rope. And yesterday, was really bad day for him and this is what he did.

SREENIVASAN: And there were stories in the press of the time too going out to his neighborhood and trying to find out what kind of person he was. Did you — what were your reactions then?

PETERSON: At the time, I was very much hurt and unseen, felt unseen, where we tried to initially rationalize the perpetrator’s actions. We tried to create a deserving and undeserving group of victims by sexualizing these women, stigmatizing these women and trying to think of ways of why this person could be justified in doing what he did. And no one can do that. He has to take responsibility for that. But then, we have people in law enforcement who don’t see us as Asian Americans, that don’t see the impact that this has in our community, it really hurts. And again, to humanize him rather than to humanize those eight victims, they were having a bad day. We all have bad days where few of us have led to kill eight people across county lines, right, and impact so many families. And for, again, a racialized and sexualize reason. So, that’s the difference with that. And seeing that, really just — it was disheartening to hear again and again by our leadership.

SREENIVASAN: Gina, your film points out how it is difficult to bring hate crime prosecutions against people who perpetrate violence against Asians. We’ve got a clip here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a lot of instances where there were nooses found in the workplace. We know what that means. It was geared towards intimidating black workers. In the Jewish community there is the Nazi symbol. But towards Asian American community, we don’t have one symbol or multiple symbols that really solidify the ideology against Asian Americans. So, it makes it a little bit tougher. So, you have to really look and dig to find evidence of that motive.

SREENIVASAN: So, why is it so hard?

KIM: I found what (INAUDIBLE) had to say very interesting. I never thought of it that way. I mean, absolutely, when you see swastika or a noose, you understand that is an attack on the Jewish people and African Americans. For Asian Americans, there is no one symbol. And also, Asian Americans don’t report at the same level as other, you know, ethnic groups, you know, for various reasons. They might be scared of the police or for — you know, a lot of Asian Americans have been thought, keep your head down, do the hard work, don’t make a lot of noise. And once when they do reporting, a study came out recently from the New York Bar Association that says that only 3 percent of these attacks of these hate crimes are actually ended in conviction. So, when you have numbers that low, I could see how, you know, people aren’t going to be speaking out about happen to them. And so, I think it’s a variety of reasons. But I do think it’s very disheartening to the Asian American community and I do think Asian Americans have felt invisible in our society for a long time.

SREENIVASAN: Robert, the shooter that took your mom’s life, he pled guilty to four out of eight counts. The D.A. did not prosecute a hate crime. The federal government didn’t add any hate crime charges. Why is it important that this be categorized as a hate crime?

PETERSON: That’s right. These are two separate cases, one in Cherokee County where he pled guilty for the murder of those four victims and in Atlanta, where he — where my mother was murdered, we are pursuing the death penalty and the hate crime enhancement. And for us in our family, we do feel that this was a hate crime. And the reason why it’s important to define it and identified it as that, it goes back to what Gina says, right? It tells those in our community that you see us. Everyone at the time knew that this was racially motivated. That this has a gender written all over it, right, and these were Asian American women. And they were targeted not because of a connection to this perpetrator but because of who he saw them as. And so, that’s why it resonated with so many people because they saw their mother in my mother. And so, we can’t say we’re going to be there for the Asian community or support Asian community and invest in the Asian community when we don’t identify what it is when we are targeted. And so, we see this again with Ahmaud Auberry. It is because of Ahmaud Arbery murdered that Georgia has the new state hate crime law. And so — and that took a fight. That took African American community and Ahmaud Arbery’s parents to push for them to be seen. And that’s what we mean when we say Black Lives Matter, or Asian Lives Matter, it’s that we want to count justice as much as anyone else and we deserve to be here. And so, that’s why, for me, it’s very important that we know that he’s guilty but we have to be able to prove and demonstrate that this was racially motivated. And crimes like that need to be condemned.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Go back to whatever — Asian country you belong in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shoved up your ass.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. Well done. Well done, sir.

CHARLES JUNG, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CA ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION: Violence and bias against our community is nothing new. It becomes inflamed whenever there is something that Americans don’t like about Asia. So, whether it’s World War II and Pearl Harbor or whether it’s increased competition from Japan during the ’80s or whether it’s 9/11, Americans are suffering and they feel pain and fear, and I think it’s acutely manifesting in the symptom of Asian hate.

SREENIVASAN: Bobby, you are half Korean, half black. And as if the pandemic wasn’t bad enough, both of these communities, in the case of your mom and the AAPI community and what was happening all over the country, as well as the Black Lives Matter movement and what was happening all over the country. During this time, you were kind of active in both of this sort of movements and what was that like for you?

PETERSON: It’s like, I am black and Korean. My father is black and my mother is Korean and that’s duality of living in America, right? Being Korean and black and being on the margins of society, being invisible to mainstream society sometimes, we know that feels like. And so, you’re right, during that time, we were seeing the interaction between law enforcement and African American males and people in the community were fighting back, right? We were in the streets marching and pushing for change. And then, COVID happened and we had leadership defining it as the China virus. And we’ve seen an increase in AAPI pi hate. And then, again, I think the murder in Atlanta and of my mother was the demonstration of what that can lead to and what that does lead to. So again, it’s an individual who perpetrated these crimes. But that existed in a larger piece, right? That existed in a space where we allow that to happen, where we allowed that hate to fester and not call it out or disregarding. And so, that was the duality of managing both sides of those world.

SREENIVASAN: I wonder how your relationship between the Asian half of your life, so to speak, has changed or evolved after this tragedy and this awareness in your community?

PETERSON: I think I mentioned in the film, this was one of the first times that I felt truly embraced by the AAPI community, right, because that was the group that was most impacted by what happened to my mother. And my mother, again, became a symbol of the pain that our community was feeling. I’ve always been Korean, I’ve always been black, and I’ve always felt proud of that. And my mother made sure of that. My father made sure of that. It was never a choice between the two, right, it would the intersection and the greatness of both. And so that’s what this meant to me. And then, to see that I was surrounded and my family was surrounded by people in the AAPI community in addition to, right, the Jewish community, the African American community was the solitary that we needed and was the breath of America that we are, right? The story that my mother is, the story that my family is. And so, to see that, to be accepted in that way, is a proud moment, for me, my family as well as the community. We’re so thankful for all of that.

SREENIVASAN: Gina, one of the things the film points out, which is obvious to any Asian but maybe not to someone in the audience is the diversity of what it means to be Asian American in the United States. There’s 50 different ethnicities, so many different languages, different regions of the world that people come from and that it’s not some sort of monolith. Similar to the conversation lot of us have about, you know, what is the Latino vote? Well, not all Latinos are the same. Guess what, all Asians are also pretty different. So, how did you deal with that kind of challenge of representation?

KIM: We wanted to make certain that people understand that Asians — Asian Americans are not a monolith. You’re absolutely right. But in this moment, when these attacks are happening against Asian Americans, for a lot of people, they all think we’re Chinese. You know, we’re — Asian Americans are very unique in the sense that we’re seen as perpetual foreigners. You know, we have been in this country since the start of the country for decades, for centuries. And yet, people still look at us as people who don’t belong. And, you know, it’s not just these physical attacks that are taking place, there’s a lot of people who are being verbally attacked. I think over 30 percent of Asian Americans have said that they’ve been verbally attacked. And often, it’s xenophobic taunts like, go back your country. And that’s very painful to Asian Americans. And in the film, we point out the Asian Americans are the largest growing ethnic group in this country. At the same time, Asian Americans have the largest income gap out of any other ethnic group in this country. So, it’s going to be very interesting to see, you know, where this conversation goes and what place Asian Americans find in this society.

SREENIVASAN: There was a recent report by Stop AAPI Hate, it surveys people were victims of these attacks, and I wonder when you were researching and reporting this out, what do you think that sort of correlation is between seeing public officials, whether it’s former president or someone else, other and marginalized the Asian American community, what does that do when it comes to doing one of these crimes or, I guess, for the rest of us, as letting the crime happen?

KIM: The report found that when perpetrators are attacking Asians, they are saying the exact same things as these politicians are saying. They’re repeating the same rhetoric. And so, they’re repeating that — you know, that COVID is because of Chinese people bringing it to this country, or that the Chinese Americans are responsible for COVID. They’re saying that China is responsible for the economic issues in this country and also the national security concerns. And so, when people hear that, they repeat it as they are attacking Asian Americans. And so, words matter. They have consequences and we see the consequences are very, very dangerous and we see some of what, you know, that rhetoric has done in this country.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why is this a global competition to you if every day Americans are still losing their lives and we’re still seeing more cases every day?

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Well, they’re losing their lives everywhere in the world. And maybe that’s a question you should ask China.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sir, why are you saying that to me specifically?

TRUMP: I’m telling you. I’m not saying it specifically to anybody.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A person at the White House, to use the term kung flu. My question is, do you think that’s wrong.

TRUMP: Kung flu.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Kung flu. And do you think using the term Chinese virus that puts Asian American a risk? That people might target —

TRUMP: No, no, no.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Despite his denials, many saw Trump’s rhetoric as the latest example of a thinly veiled race baiting, targeting Asians.

SREENIVASAN: Gina, there were so many different people that you spoke to in the film. What are the next steps? I mean, is there this reckoning that Bobby was talking about? Is there — have these crimes, through this pandemic, unified different Asian communities to try to work on civil rights issues together? I mean, what kinds of solutions are happening?

KIM: This has been a galvanizing moment for the Asian American community, an inflection point, certainly. And we want this, you know, film to be part of the conversation. I mean, in 2016, Asian Americans came out to vote in large numbers. By 2020, that number had increased by another 10 percent. So, Asian Americans, in 2020, they came out in historic numbers to vote at the presidential election. And many people believe that the Asian American vote is the reason why, in Georgia, Senators Warnock and the Senator Ossoff was elected. And tipping the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. And so, I think Asian Americans are grabbing more — you know, grabbing more power. They’re building power. You know, Asian Americans had been largely ignored and have been mostly invisible to the Democratic Party and to the Republican Party. They haven’t been reached out to. Asian Americans are the largest demographic ethnic group in this country. And as we move forward, I think it would be very interesting to see how the two parties reached out to this group.

SREENIVASAN: Bobby Peterson, thank you again and we are incredibly sorry for your loss. And Gina Kim, producer of the film, “Rising Against Asian Hate: One Day in March,” thank you so much both for joining us.

KIM: Thank you.

PETERSON: Thank you again, Hari.