A grim September reminds us the assaults on Asian Americans have not stopped

From a brutal, fatal beating in Virginia to a horrific, grisly beheading in Texas, a stabbing at a Wyoming rest stop, and a Texas politician’s xenophobic dog-whistles, the message being sent to our communities is clear, loud, and dangerous: You don't belong here.

September has been a devastating month for the Asian American and South Asian American communities, proving yet again that the toxic mix of political scapegoating and street-level racist violence continues to put a target on the backs of all Asian Americans.

Beaten to death

In Norfolk, Virginia, our elders are once again paying the ultimate price for simply existing in public spaces. Bert Atienza, a 77-year-old Filipino-American, died from blunt head trauma following an altercation inside a local Walmart. 

The spark was agonizingly mundane: Atienza reportedly spoke up when a teenage employee nearly struck his wife with a heavy shopping cart. Rather than defusing the situation, the teenager called her parents to the store. Travis White and Erika Mitchell arrived, cornered the elderly man, and brutally beat him. 

Both parents have now been charged with second-degree murder. It is a reminder of how quickly routine interactions can turn deadly for Asian American elders when bias takes over.

South Asians most targeted

The casual brutality facing our community members reached an unthinkable horror in Dallas, Texas. Chandra Mouli "Bob" Nagamallaiah, a 50-year-old Indian motel manager, was brutally murdered and beheaded by a co-worker. 

The senseless violence erupted from a minor dispute when Nagamallaiah instructed the employee not to use a broken washing machine. When Nagamallaiah asked another worker to translate the instruction due to a language barrier, the suspect—identified as Yordanis Cobos-Martinez—flew into a rage, retrieved a machete, and launched a merciless attack. 

Nagamallaiah’s wife and son rushed from the front office in a desperate attempt to save him, only to watch helplessly as the horrific violence unfolded. It is a devastating illustration of the vulnerable, frontline realities immigrants face while trying to earn an honest living.

The danger extends far beyond retail aisles and hits our highways. On September 13, a 28-year-old Sikh truck driver, identified only as Singh, survived a horrific, unprovoked attack at an Interstate 80 rest area in Sweetwater County, Wyoming. 

Singh was followed into a restroom and stabbed 17 times. A nearby family rushed to his aid, applying life-saving first aid until emergency responders arrived, 

while suspect Andrew Kris Bzdak was arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder. 

Community advocates point out that this didn't happen in a vacuum, following a wave of online hostility targeting South Asian truck drivers—including a since-deleted Department of Homeland Security graphic featuring a Sikh driver with the text "Get off our roads." 

Civil rights groups are demanding a federal hate crime investigation into how official messaging reinforces such violence.

Unapologetic racism in Texas

The violence on the streets is fueled directly by the rhetoric coming from those seeking power. In mid-September, Bo French, a Republican nominee for the Texas Railroad Commission, sparked massive outrage after posting a photo on X showing South Asian students celebrating a University of Texas at Austin football victory. 

French captioned the post claiming "Americans have been displaced by foreigners." The reality, of course, is that the students targeted are actual American citizens, many born and raised right here. 

In a rare display of bipartisan unity, the comments drew sharp condemnation not just from Democrats, but from top Texas Republicans—including Senator John Cornyn and Governor Greg Abbott—proving that French's overt xenophobia crossed a line even for his own party.

View from the edge

This alarming surge in hate incidents against the AAPI community did not emerge in a vacuum; it traces its roots directly back to the scapegoating of the pandemic era, when bigoted rhetoric from Donald Trump and top administration officials deliberately linked Asian bodies to a global health crisis. 

By popularizing terms like "Chinese virus" and "Kung flu," highest-level political figures gave mainstream permission for xenophobia to fester, turning public health anxieties into open season on Asian Americans. The rhetoric that once weaponized a pandemic has since metastasized into a permanent political tool, laying the groundwork for the modern dog-whistles and street violence we see today.

Whether it’s political rhetoric that treats Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners or unprovoked violence on our streets and highways, the assault on our community is ongoing. 

We can no longer afford to treat these hateful acts as isolated incidents or chalk them up to bad days. Silence is no longer an option, and waiting for institutions to protect us out of the goodness of their hearts is a fatal mistake. 

Though the attacks against us no longer make the front pages, it is not any less disappointing that many people still don't see us as fellow Americans and instead use as scapegoats for political purposes.

Until we actively dismantle the pipeline connecting political hate speech to street-level brutality, our elders, our workers, and our youth will continue to walk with targets on their backs. The time for polite outrage has passed; our survival demands collective, uncompromising resistance.

What's even more frightening: there are still a few days left in September.

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