I can’t stop thinking that I could have been Christina Yuna Lee

Editor’s Note: Amara Walker is a correspondent and fill-in anchor for CNN. It’s the same feeling that overcame me when a man went on a shooting spree in three Atlanta-area spas last year, murdering eight people in two counties, six of them Asian women. What’s alarming, but not shocking, to me is that 65% of hate incidents are reported by Asian American women, according to Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition that tracks anti-Asian attacks. It’s difficult to separate ourselves from the personal stories and lives of the Asian women who’ve been brutally attacked and killed, starting with the Atlanta Spa massacre in March 2020, to the January subway killing of Michelle Go, and the February murder of Christina Yuna Lee. I, along with countless Asian American girls and women, have become accustomed at an early age to being on the receiving end of racially charged catcalls like, “Me love you long time,” or, “Me so horny;” phrases that were popularized by the portrayal of a Vietnamese sex worker in Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam War film, “Full Metal Jacket.” These degrading tropes fetishizing and sexually objectifying Asian women have become so ingrained in American culture, they’re flippantly used in mainstream music by 2 Live Crew and Fergie, and even in TV shows and movies such as “South Park” and the “40 Year Old Virgin,” without much afterthought to the harm they cause.