New York: President Joe Biden has urged Americans to speak up against hate, warning that “our silence is complicity” in the face of racist acts.
Biden made the remarks in Georgia where he met Asian-American leaders in the wake of Tuesday’s attack on three Atlanta-area massage parlours.
The shootings left eight dead, including six Asian women.
Though police have not called race the motive for the attack, it came amid a spike in anti-Asian violence.
Vice President Kamala Harris denounced Tuesday’s mass shooting that killed eight people.
Harris, whose mother was from India, and who is the first woman and the first Black and Asian American person elected vice president, recounted the long history of discrimination against people of Asian descent in the United States, from laws forbidding Chinese railroad workers from owning property in the 1860s to the forced internment of Japanese Americans in camps during World War II.
“Racism is real in America and it has always been. Xenophobia is real in America and always has been. Sexism, too,” Harris said. “A harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us. The president and I will not be silent. We will not stand by. We will always speak out against violence, hate crimes and discrimination, wherever and whenever it occurs.”
Biden and Harris had originally planned to travel to Georgia to hold a car rally to celebrate the passage of their $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, but canceled it in the wake of the mass shooting.
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