CNN's Lisa Ling Calls Out Anti-Asian Racism: 'It's Open Season On People Who Look Like Me'

CNN host Lisa Ling expressed frustration and grief during appearances on her network this week as she discussed the Atlanta spa shootings that left eight people dead, including six Asian women. 

“When it seems like it’s open season on people who look like me, who look like my parents, who look like my children — it’s really hard to think about anything else,” Ling told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Wednesday. 

“Every time I open my social media ... I am seeing and hearing about more attacks on Asian people,” she added. “And frankly, I am right now just sick of seeing the face of the man who massacred eight people last night. In fact, I had to scour the internet for the names of the people he killed.”

Ling, whose parents immigrated to the United States from Taiwan and Hong Kong, went on to criticize the idea that the shootings were not racially motivated. The suspect, Robert Aaron Long, told authorities he had a “sexual addiction ” and had targeted spa workers to “take out that temptation,” according to police in Cherokee County, Georgia. 

“If this were a synagogue or a Black church, there wouldn’t be a question,” Ling said. “This terrorist targeted three Asian massage parlors. And asking the assailant whether this was racially motivated and taking his word for it seems like a joke to me. I mean, we know this is definitely a hate crime against women.”

In another CNN appearance Thursday morning, Ling noted that Atlanta is a “hotbed for sex work and sex trafficking, but yet [Long] chose to attack massage parlors that he knew were run by Asian people.”

Ling also mentioned Xiao Zhen Xie, a 76-year-old woman in San Francisco who fought back against an assailant  who punched her in the face in an unprovoked attack on Wednesday. Footage of a wounded Xie yelling at her attacker in Taishanese as he was wheeled away by paramedics went viral. 

“While it was great to see her stand up for herself and fight back ... you should have heard her cry out with her bloodied face,” Ling said. “You hear the pain and the anger in her voice. She’s crying out in the language that my ancestors spoke.”