NEW YORK, March 20 (Xinhua) -- It's been two years since a mass shooting in the Atlanta area shocked the United States and thrust to the national forefront what many Asian Americans already knew: They were not immune to racism, and they were targets in a wave of violent hate that rose alongside the COVID pandemic, reported San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday.

Insidious stereotypes of the Atlanta murderer are "at the root of the racism directed at Asian Americans, which runs far deeper than the bigotry-fueled coronavirus conspiracies fanned by Donald Trump during his presidency," said the report.

Six Asian American women were among the eight people killed in shootings at three spas in and around Atlanta. Robert Aaron Long, who is serving life in prison for four of those killings, held a belief in racist, misogynistic views that objectify Asian women appear to have played a role into why he went on a shooting spree, according to the report.

"The United States is a nation of immigrants but also a country of xenophobia; each new group -- from Asia, Europe and Latin America -- has endured it and has been the scapegoat for whatever the country's economic or social ills are at the time," said the report.

"Has our country risen to the challenge of confronting Asian hate since the Atlanta massacre?" The data says no, the report said.

The advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate began tracking incidents in March 2020, and through March 2022 it received 11,500 self-reports of harassment and physical attacks.

"Anti-Asian hate hasn't ebbed, and that seemingly doesn't bother much of the country's political leadership and electorate," the report noted.

"As long as we allow elected officials to use their outsized influence to spew racialized rhetoric, to scapegoat our communities or any other communities with impunity, this will continue," Cynthia Choi, one of the co-founders of Stop AAPI Hate, was quoted as saying. "So, we need to speak out at every turn."