Reality in San Francisco. Now you know why they want to distract people with the Arizon law

Asian American attacks focus at City Hall
C.W. Nevius
Thursday, April 29, 2010
On Tuesday, Mrs. Cheng came to City Hall for the first time in the 20 years she's lived in the city. She intended to speak to the Board of Supervisors through a translator, but she uttered just a few words before she began sobbing uncontrollably.
On March 22, Cheng was checking on her daughter who was late coming home on the bus. Standing on the Third and Oakdale Muni platform, she recalls being grabbed from behind, choked and thrown off the 5-foot-high metro stop and into the street.
The impact knocked her unconscious, shattered some of her teeth and left her lying in the path of a bus. The attacker was identified as a 15-year-old African American boy who was charged with robbery. But he threw her to the ground for no apparent reason.
Cheng was just one of the nearly 300 Asian Americans who showed up at City Hall to share story after story about being assaulted, robbed and intimidated. The two hours of testimony were tearful and angry. The need to share their stories was triggered by Cheng's experience; the January beating death of Huan Chen, 83, as he left a bus station at Third Street and Oakdale Avenue; and Tian Sheng Yu, who died after he was punched by an 18-year-old African American man in Oakland.
The stories highlighted what will be a difficult conversation. The speakers said they felt they were being targeted by African American teenage boys.
"I live in constant fear," Cheng wrote in her first interview, which was conducted over e-mail. "I am afraid to go out any more. I can't eat because I have no lower teeth. I have a big lump on the back of my head ... I walk with a limp and need help to move around. I am afraid I may lose my job. I came from China 20 years ago. I came because it offers its people freedom, freedom of speech, good education. How would I have imagined I would become a crime victim? I have lost confidence in America."
African Americans attacking Asians is a reality, said Young Kong, a local talk radio show host on a Chinese language station.
"This is a hate crime," he said. "The supervisors don't want to say it because they don't want to exacerbate the tension. They are too chicken, too politically correct."
Cheng says she has a long-term relationship with her neighbor, who is black, and the people who rushed to her aid were all African American. This isn't a race war. But something is happening here.
"Let's face it, if older black men were being killed by marauding groups of kids, we'd be going crazy," said Lynette Sweet, a lifelong resident of District 10 and candidate for supervisor there. "We in the black community have to take responsibility for our kids." The concern, however, is that the discussion is too polarizing.
No truly great city can allow this. It is time to take a break from debating boycotting Arizona for its immigration policy and look at our own streets.
"This is the immigrant's voice not being heard in a city of immigrants," said Yvonne Lee, a former police commissioner who helped translate for Cheng. "This is years of frustration and fear that has burned into anger."
Bayview police station Capt. Greg Suhr says the police are responding, including adding 32 officers to his station to make Muni safer. But he thinks the racial issue is clouding perceptions.
"We are seeing large kids or kids in large numbers taking advantage of people of smaller stature," Suhr said. We have Hispanics in the neighborhood who are targeted fairly frequently."
That may be, but Supervisor Carmen Chu said she's heard stories of Asians being pushed on the bus, or insulted or spit on.
"Some of the perceptions are based on reality and some on stereotypes," said Chu. "The reality is that they exist. This is something we need to talk about."
Sweet believes there's potential for resolution. She sees hope in the fact that when Cheng was injured, members of the black community quickly identified the attacker, who has admitted the crime.
"People in the Asian community need to vent, and we need to listen to them," Sweet said. "But I have found that after we give people that opportunity, it very often turns into a chance for the community to come together."
That would be great. Because right now the two sides couldn't be much further apart.