Las Vegas 'Mall Karen' racially abuses Asian woman in viral TikTok, punches her 6-year-old son
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA: A TikToker reportedly claimed that a White woman hurled racist anti-Asian slurs at her and her six-year-old son before attacking the young boy at an upscale Las Vegas mall. “This woman attacked my son. She punched my six-year-old while yelling racist, anti-Asian things,” TikToker @uhmmajo wrote of the incident, which occurred at the tony Shops at Crystals, located in the CityCenter complex.
The unidentified woman could be heard yelling the word “China” during her allegedly racist rant. She was then seen turning around and leaving before being escorted away by a mall security guard. But the mother said on TikTok, “I hope the cops picked her up. Mall security just let her go. Yes, we are pressing charges.”
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The video was shared by @uhmmajo on Wednesday, July 7, and has since gone viral beyond TikTok, and has been shared extensively on Twitter as well. A Twitter user shared it saying, “Racist in Nevada harasses Asian woman and her 6-year-old son.” They added, “This racist POS was last seen at Aria / The Crystals mall in Las Vegas, Nevada harassing (and allegedly striking) a 6-year-old boy because he was Asian.”
This racist POS was last seen at Aria / The Crystals mall in Las Vegas, Nevada harassing (and allegedly striking) a 6-year-old boy because he was Asian. pic.twitter.com/1QjFIZwTaW
— Marjorie Gaylor Queen (@Tim_Tweeted) July 7, 2021
Anti-Asian bigotry has been on the rise in the US, with this year alone witnessing several instances of violence being perpetrated against Asian-Americans, some of which have even led to fatalities. As per a report by the American Psychological Association published earlier this month, even before the deadly Atlanta-area spa shootings in March, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) had faced nearly 4,000 hate incidents since the pandemic began, a 149 percent rise over the previous year.
Reported episodes ranged from verbal harassment, insults, and jokes to violent attacks in schools, businesses, and other public spaces. “For the Asian American communities that are experiencing this, it just feels like an all-out assault,” said William Ming Liu, PhD, a counseling psychologist and chair of the Department of Counseling, Higher Education, and Special Education at the University of Maryland.
Another report from Stop AAPI Hate -- that surveyed more than 400 Asian-Americans -- found that respondents’ “primary stressor during the pandemic is racism. They're actually saying they're more concerned about other Americans' hate than they are about the pandemic.”
Asian Americans reported lower levels of psychological distress than other groups in the US before the pandemic. But during the pandemic, about 62 percent of Asian American survey respondents said they or their family members had experienced covert or overt discriminatory incidents - which led to an increase in depression and other disorders across the board, according to the report.
One in five Asian Americans who experienced racism displayed racial trauma, the reported said, adding that this trauma could manifest as depression, intrusive thoughts, anger, hypervigilance, decreased self-esteem, and other deleterious disorders.
As per the Daily Mail, over 300,000 Asian and Pacific Islander Americans reside in Nevada, making up around ten percent of the state's total population. The Las Vegas metropolitan area has the third-largest population of Asian Americans outside of California out of all major West Coast cities.