Was Robert Aaron Long motivated by anti-Asian racism when he went on his killing rampage in Atlanta last week? Six of his eight victims were Asian massage parlor workers, so at first the answer seemed pretty obvious: Of course he was.
But then things got more complicated. Racist mass shooters are usually proud to acknowledge their racism, but Long said he didn't care about race. Others who knew him confirmed this. And unlike most racist attackers, he didn't have a Facebook page full of racial fulminations or a Twitter feed that retweeted anti-Asian hate speech. At a conscious level, at least, Long really did seem to be motivated mostly by misogyny and sex obsessions.
And yet, there's still the blunt fact that six of his eight victims were Asian, and Long carried out his rampage at a time when anti-Asian hate crimes had been all over the news. Is it really plausible that this was just a coincidence?
That's debatable, but the bare facts nonetheless suggest that anti-Asian racism really wasn't a major factor in the shootings. I accept this, more or less, and yet I've come to realize that I don't care. Since I'm normally committed to facts above all else, what explains this?
I've been pondering this, and the best I can come up with is a twofold explanation. First, we really don't know anything for sure. And since it was Asian women who Long used to satisfy his reviled sex obsession, it hardly seems plausible that anti-Asian sentiment wasn't swirling around somewhere in his diseased mind.
Second, there is still the bare fact that regardless of anything else, it was Asian women who were primarily Long's victims and he did carry out his killings at a time when anti-Asian hate crimes were on the rise and getting lots of news coverage. All by itself, that seems like enough justification to use the killings as a very high profile way of bringing attention to anti-Asian violence. That's just fundamentally more important than playing angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin over Long's precise mental state.
I realize how inadequate this seems. But for better or worse, it's where I find myself right now.
There was a serious devaluation of Asian women demonstrated by his actions. He killed a couple of guys in the process so its hard to say whether it wasn't just a serious devaluation of people.
The media and most of the public have ghosted the sex workers that were in these facilities. His hatred for them did not compel him to walk to the next room and shoot them in the face. We have created a narrative wherein 65 year old women are making a living giving handjobs to men.
Scammers target the elderly because they're credulous oh but they don't hate them. White teen punks on long island are out "guat bashing" - beating up and robbing Guatemalans - oh but they don't hate them, they just do it because their Guatemalan victims have a reputation for carrying cash. Under New York's hate crime statute, it's not necessary that the defendant actually hate the victim's race, just that the defendant targets the victim on that basis. I like this framework because it cuts through a lot of BS. Targeting based on race is all the evidence we should need.
So, stereotyping versus denigration.
Intriguing basis in law.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/19/stop-giving-racists-benefit-doubt/
Observing from Los Angeles, of course I know all the details of the crazy murderer's thoughts. Kidding, of course.
Still, I would say it's "racism" in the sense that Asian women, and especially poor immigrant Asian women, are able to find employment in shady massage parlors because of a cultural fantasy that people from other cultures are especially open to sex and especially good at it. And that that kind of work is inherently unstable and dangerous. (I see someone above says the media hasn't paid attention to the women, but I'll bet anything it's very hard to get solid information on them because they were probably here illegally and whatever friends and relatives who are here with them most likely want as little attention as possible.) This kind of cultural racism is hardly unknown.
I fail to understand why it's so important on the left to be able to say that a mass murder was "caused" by racism, or to convince themselves that virtually everything bad is "caused" by racism. There are other bad things in the world besides racism! Killing 8 people, regardless of the inner demons that drive someone to it, is REALLY BAD. And no one will ever truly know, not only because there is no lab test that can be given to a killer to establish whether there is a racism protein or enzyme or some other chemical in his or her system. Killing innocent people is a profoundly evil act and a sign of a deeply disturbed psyche. Why can't we leave it at that? The societal damage of racism is in far more subtle and insidious dysfunctions that are hard to root out or even clearly identify, which is why it still persists, not only in the U.S., but in virtually every corner of the globe. But this desperate need to hang the "racism" tag on every evil act just doesn't make sense to me.