Let me state unequivocally that the mindless shooting and death in the massage parlors in Atlanta are horrific, reprehensible and even demoralizing societally. What they are not are hate crimes.
If you are to believe the Huffington Post …….
"LET'S CALL IT WHAT IT IS The words "racist misogyny" need to enter the conversation about the Atlanta spa shootings, writes HuffPost's Brittany Wong. Police said it was "too early" to determine if racism was at play after a gunman fatally shot eight people, including six women of Asian descent. The fetishization of Asian women is, in itself, racist.
On Tuesday evening, police say, 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long walked into three different massage parlors in the Atlanta area and fatally shot a total of eight people, including six women of Asian descent.
Slowly, names of the victims are being released: Delaina Yaun, 33, of Acworth; Paul Andre Michels, 54, of Atlanta; Xiaojie Tan, 49, of Kennesaw; and Daoyou Feng, 44. Other victims have not yet been identified.
Long told investigators he had “sexual addiction” issues and had targeted the spas in an attempt to remove that “temptation,” Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Capt. Jay Baker said in a press briefing on Wednesday."
That is the back story. The only supporting fact for the racist claim is the ethnicity of the dead. Six out of eight of the victims are of Asian origin.
The shooter was crazed and dealing with his inner demons. He believed that he was a sexual addict and was raging against the occasion of his temptation. One can only surmise why he pinpointed massage parlors. It matters not.
What happened was a mentally unbalanced person acting out on his own torments.
It is a classic mental health related tragedy. Innocent human beings attacked by a plagued mind. Hasn’t it happened time and time again. Targets are many times random, unknown to the attacked and not connected to their state of mind except on the margins.
As tragic as the Atlanta outrage and carnage is it is not racist or misogynistic.
The clamor to attach the labels to people of Asian heritage is a blatant ploy to add them to the growing list of victim groups. How quickly will we see the ALM logo and not as All Lives Matter but Asian Lives Matter? How many Asian organization pundits will be trotted out by lame stream media to trumpet the call for victim status to be bestowed on the group.
It is yet one more rock thrown at the make up of our society to claim the systemic attacks are racist in nature.
As hesitant as people might be to call for clarity and not supposition it is necessary to not over react and apply the labels to yet another supposedly targeted ethnic group.
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