An 80-something Chinese woman was shoved to the pavement in Boston's South End for no reason — and Councilor Ed Flynn wants it prosecuted as a hate crime. He's right. What stinks is that this kind of moral clarity only seems to activate when the victim fits the right demographic box.
The woman was crossing the street near 144 West Canton Street just before 9 a.m. Wednesday when someone knocked her to the ground, according to the Boston Herald. She injured both knees and ended up at Tufts Medical Center. Flynn's staffer Melissa Lo, who translated for the victim, told the Herald the woman "felt targeted" and would have been lying in the road without help from bystanders. "Had a car run by, she might have gotten run over," Lo said.
Police identified a suspect from witness video: 38-year-old Kaitlyn Quick, a homeless woman arrested on an outside warrant, with drug use suspected, per the police report. The arrest charge is assault and battery with injury on a person 60 years or older — not a hate crime. Flynn wants that changed. "I want to see justice for this survivor of a senseless violent attack that I believe was based on racism," he told the Herald.
Good. Prosecute it fully. An elderly woman targeted on the street deserves the full weight of the law. But here's the question Flynn and every other Boston pol won't answer: where is this urgency when the victim doesn't check the right narrative box?
When Americans are killed by illegal immigrants — people who shouldn't have been in the country in the first place — the establishment press and local politicians bury the story or soft-pedal the perpetrator's immigration status. When anti-white or anti-Christian attacks occur, the FBI's own statistics show they're undercounted and under-prosecuted. The same officials who rush to microphones for a hate crime press conference suddenly discover nuance when the victim is the wrong color.
Flynn told the Herald that attacks on Chinese residents have escalated since COVID and that "the worst thing that we can do is deny that we have a problem." Agreed. But the worst thing the political class does is confirm they have a problem — a consistency problem. They only see hate when it serves their coalition politics.
The woman shoved on West Canton Street deserves justice regardless of her race. So does every other victim the establishment finds inconvenient to acknowledge. The law shouldn't have a narrative filter. Either hate crimes matter across the board, or the category is just another political weapon.
