Late Night writer Karen Chee attacks the racism and misogyny at the root of the Atlanta killings
Aux Features Karen Chee
After the mass murder and hate crime that saw eight people at three Atlanta spas—six of them Asian women—shot to death by yet another murderous white guy with access to firearms, late-night talk shows once more had to find ways to process national tragedy. Seth Meyers, whose Late Night has made a welcome habit of sharing the spotlight with the show’s writing staff, took some time at the top of Thursday’s show to turn things over to Late Night writer Karen Chee.
Chee, who’s Korean-American, was unsparing in addressing not just the fact that yet another heavily armed white man went on a mass shooting spree directly targeted at members of a minority community, but how the police and the media have practically tackled each other to be the first to assure the country that race was not really a factor. “Most media outlets have failed to call it what it is—a hate crime,” began Chee, also calling out one Jay Baker, the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office police captain who all-too predictably went on TV to explain away shooter Robert Aaron Long’s (“a racist, misogynist, and a coward,” said Chee) calculated, three-site murder spree as the result of being “fed up,” and of Long having had “a bad day.” (Baker—wait for it—has also been outed as both a former employee of noted racist murderer haven and international mercenary outfit Blackwater, and a fan of sharing anti-Asian social media posts, and has been quietly removed as spokesman for the case.)
Chee, who, like everybody, has had some bad days during this time of deadly pandemic, lockdown isolation, and living in New York every day, scoffed, noting that her last bad day saw her not so much acquiring all the guns and ammo she could carry and going human-hunting, but “an entire Domino’s pizza and lying in bed and rewatching Ted Lasso.” Calling murderer Long’s act “a textbook hate crime,” Chee continued that people like Baker and others refusing to call it that are engaged in the age-old white American pastime of “continuing to erase Asian people as they’re being killed.” Noting that the killer has been cited as having a particular grudge against Asian women, and that the spas he targeted were a “temptation” the purported sex addict wanted to “eliminate” (according to multiple reports), Chee was unsparing in letting America know that our society’s stereotyping of Asian women as either “cold and unfeeling or as sexualized objects” is a big factor, too.
Citing the fact that overall hate crimes against Asian people have risen astronomically since Donald Trump and his minions started scapegoating China for the COVID pandemic with hacky racist labeling, Chee said this latest explosion of murderous hatred is just another manifestation of “centuries-old racism.” Steering non-Asian viewers toward writers like Erika Lee, Kimberly Yam, and Cathy Park Hong for some much-needed perspective, Chee also suggested that we, as a country, face up to a whole lot of overtly anti-Asian government policy over our frequently whitewashed history. (Google the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, the Japanese WWII internment, or the paltry punishment given to the two white men who murdered Vincent Chin for some harsh truths about our truly shitty history in this area.) Chee also suggested viewers—should they be still “able to function” at this point in our national nightmare—donate to places like the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance and the Asian American Journalist Association, and take part in online “bystander training” to better know how to handle things the next time some asshole starts spouting Fox News racist talking points in your vicinity.
50 Comments
Two white people died in this shooting, this was not a racist incident. Please try to rub two brain cells together once in a while.
All evidence so far suggests this was a very disturbed person lashing out at sex-traffickers. I don’t see any racism involved; the ethnicity of the women was coincidental. If this horrible crime had happened in Bismarck ND, I suppose they would have all been Swedes.
That coincidence was selection—his “sex addiction” targeted who he thought was available and vulnerable because they fit a racist conception of sex. Leaving aside the spin of the perpetrator’s self-description of his motives, (killing people who would be the trafficked victims, except he thinks he’s the victim and apparently he’s the victim of misinformation since people think he’s racist but on no he isn’t)—he skipped any number of other places (like strip clubs or other spots for sex addicts) in the Atlanta area to go after these Asian populated spaces.
Considering he drove to separate locations to seek out his victims, their ethnicity was very much not coincidental.Yours isn’t the shittiest take on this whole affair, but it’s damn close
Misogyny is in the mix too, but there’s clearly a racist element to how he picked the kinds of business and kinds of women on which he’d focus his hate. This idea that asian women go hand in hand with sex work, so their race was pure coincidence, is racial bias in and of itself, and needs to be examined as such.
Interesting choice of words, sex-traffickers. It’s very evocative of certain perceptions of these murdered women.
Incidentally, I hope that your conclusions of what would have happened if it had happened in your imagination give you comfort.
That last sentence is an interesting muddle of rhetorical flaws. One is called “hypothesis contrary to fact,” where you attempt to refute reality by inventing a counterfactual example. And in this situation it’s actually a false hypothesis contrary to fact, because human trafficking in North Dakota absolutely involves Asian women (https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a15466/sex-trafficking-north-dakota/). Of course, that’s in keeping with the first two sentences, where you use “sex trafficker” in place of “sex worker” and then use the term “lashing out,” which is an emotional response, in place of “murdering,” which is what the guy did. You also imply that Asian women are so overrepresented in sex work that a murder spree targeting sex workers could kill exclusively Asian women by “coincidence” and then say that you don’t see any racism, which amounts to a pretty solid self-own.
You’re a very unintelligent person
Very well stated.
Multiple eyewitness reports have stated that he was screaming about wanting to “kill all Asians”, so, there goes your theory
I don’t see any racism involved K, Jack. That’s nice, Jack.
The only good takeaway from this situation is that people are starting to not believe the bullshit narratives being fed to them by the outrage-hungry media.
It’s totally woven into the fabric of the murders – I don’t know how you can in good faith argue otherwise.All the other replies to you covered the bases pretty well. If you aren’t arguing in bad faith, I suggest that you have some pretty big blind spots that you may want to consider.
“All evidence so far suggests this was a very disturbed person lashing out at sex-traffickers.” Actually, none of the evidence suggests this. If he was “lashing out at sex-traffickers”why did he kill sex workers and NOT the people supposedly trafficking them?
I agree with everything except for the Japanese internship camps. Like the Imperial Japanese aren’t really deserving of any sympathy are they? But apart from that she’s 100% y’all are all racists.
Please tell me you’re not saying that the US was right to imprison law abiding citizens based only on the fact that they were ethnically Japanese?!? And that’s INTERNMENT camps, not internships. Note that German-American citizens weren’t imprisoned without cause or evidence of wrongdoing, just Japanese Americans. Hmm…what could be the difference? I really hope I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying here, because otherwise…I don’t really know where to start.
Whatever else y’all want to bicker about, German internment absolutely existed. As did Italian.
Thanks for the historical note – I hadn’t realized other ethnicities were targeted (albeit in much smaller numbers, and a much smaller portion of the overall communities). Regardless, and I can’t believe I have to say this, it is wrong to place *anyone* in a concentration camp based on their ethnicity (or religion, or, really, anything). I don’t feel like pointing that out to someone counts as “bickering” – the original post appears to be supporting the use of such camps, and as such is so wrongheadedly racist it’s hard to comprehend. The tone of your correction comes off as belittling to that main argument, the sort of “whataboutism” that people use all the time to distract from conversations about racism. I’m sure that wasn’t your intent.
Even further, German Nazi POWs that were taken prisoner in American POW camps were CONSISTENTLY treated far better than the Japanese-Americans that were imprisoned for having broken no laws, and for the racist insinuation that people that look a certain way cannot be trusted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_United_Stateshttps://www.stripes.com/news/special-reports/featured/d-day/german-pow-asks-why-did-america-give-their-young-men-for-us-1.583219https://www.army.mil/article/195355/former_german_pow_says_thank_you_americaI’m not saying that POWs should be held in squalor, but the contrast is fucking unbelievable. America is and always has been totally and completely racist.
What the fuck?
This… Pretty much says it all.
There is no countdown clock on Kinja that *requires* that you post before checking that you’re about to say something irredeemably stupid. You lose no internet points for taking 20 seconds to check Google.
Let’s just assume you’re making a joke in very bad taste.
Are you saying the US government literally interned the government of Empire of Japan and not Japanese-Americans?…You have the exact mindset that thought that we couldn’t trust American citizens. For the sake of your own ignorance, please click the links mentioned and try educating yourself before you post again.
In his version of events, the Imperial Japan was punished for their war crimes with internships. Unpaid internships. At Miramax. Working on Clerks 2. It was brutal.
This is pretty obviously a hate crime against Asians, not simply against women. From my occasional drives through Atlanta over the recent decades, I would think that it would be a lot easier to find a random strip club than an Asian spa. That this gun-toting fucktard would drive to multiple locations and ONLY target women at Asian spas says exactly what his agenda was. Unfortunately, the MAGA/Fox crowd will dismiss this as some frustrated guy acting out; that the ethnicity of the victims was a coincidence; and that the easy access to a gun means nothing. On the other hand, I’m sure Jordan Peterson will chime in that we need to better support the Incel community to prevent unfortunate incidents like this. Idiot White Males: we will be the death of this nation.
That’s the thing, if he’s targeted who he perceives to be sex workers, the fact that he went for ASIAN MASSAGE WORKERS itself is very, very racist.
There’s a lot of white supremacy at play in racism against Asians and Asian-Americans, and racism in America.But to be clear; white people are not the only people assaulting asians in America.
Yeah, there’s a pretty disturbing rush by people tripping over themselves to fault Trump and angry white men which overlooks a lot of anti-Asian hate crimes by other races.
You can definitely fault Trump and angry white men for some of this.We’ve learned that the naming of illnesses really matter. Spanish flu: not from Spain, still caused a backlash on Spain. Swine flu: we don’t catch it from pigs, all the pigs get slaughtered anyway. So we KNEW Asians would get backlash if we called it a Chinese virus because: ya’ll racist and clump Asians together, and because, well, history.Scientists specifically named it covid or SARS-CoV2 to avoid this. Trump and his cronies EXPLICITLY IGNORED THIS AND PROMOTED NAMES LIKE KUNG FLU AND CHINA VIRUS. Trump was a nominal leader of a country. His administration constantly told people that JINA was at fault for the JINA VIRUS. With that kind of screaming emphasis. And hey, look, exactly what we knew would happen, happened.So yes, Trump is at fault. White angry men are at fault. But racism is a pretty blunt thing, and certain people seem to be willingly or naively ignoring that these attacks are not just from white people.
It’s not naively it’s willingly as progressives and large swathes of the media can’t face the fact that African Americans commit a disproportionate amount of racist hate crimes, especially against Jews and Asians.
“Swine flu” was the more PC term. At the outbreak it was also frequently called “Mexican flu” with unsurprising, attendant stimatization.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3907032/
Did you just #notallracists in a discussion about racism?
Like the cowardly author of this article most people don’t want to address the fact that according to study from 1992-2014 African Americans were four times more likely than a white person to commit a hate crime against Asian Americans.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7790522/#!po=42.7632
There is absolutely no evidence that these murders had anything to do with race. But it fits a convenient narrative, and narratives are what make $$$.
Other than the fact that he exclusively targeted Asian-run businesses and predominantly killed Asian people, you mean? That seems like evidence, in that you would be able to bring it up in court as part of a case that he engaged in racist behavior. I mean sure, some people are making a case for the fact that it’s just a coincidence, but where’s -their- evidence? I would argue there’s far more very obvious evidence that it -is- a racial crime than that it isn’t. On the isn’t side, all I’ve seen is “nuh uh, he had a different reason”. But I somehow doubt that you’re actually interested in talking about evidence.I’m also confused as to who you think is making this “$$$” off the lucrative biz of calling a mass murderer who targeted people of a specific race racist.
Massage parlors typically employ Asian women. If I went in and shot up my local diner, would people say it was because I hated Greek people? Come to think of it, they probably would.
So I was right, then. You aren’t interested in evidence.There are any number of sex-related businesses this guy could have shot up, if it was only about that. He skipped strip clubs and porn shops and everything else and drove across the city to specifically go to three Asian run businesses and kill Asian people. If I take your assertion that all massage parlors typically employ Asian women as fact (ignoring, for the moment, that it treads toward the exact harmful stereotypes that are the problem here), it does not make the point you are trying to make. If we assume that it is common knowledge that Asian women work at massage parlors, then when someone decides to shoot up a bunch of massage parlors, logically it follows that they did this knowing they were going to shoot a lot of Asian women. So why would I not entertain the notion that this hypothetical person intended to target Asian women? He would have made the conscious choice to go to a place where he knew Asian women worked, and then to kill them. Just like in this case.In short, you are free to believe whatever you like about the reasons behind these killings, but you were the one who brought up evidence, and it is an actual fact that the man -did- target Asian business and kill Asian people, so saying there is literally no evidence that he might have been targeting Asian people is disingenuous. On the flip side, you have offered no evidence supporting your case whatsoever.As to your hypothetical, if you went into a diner you knew to be owned and staffed by Greek people and shot a bunch of Greek people, it would absolutely be reasonable to believe that one very likely reason you might have done so is that you hated Greek people. After all, the information we would have would include the fact that you went to a place where you knew they would be and shot a bunch of them. Are you suggesting that it would be more reasonable to believe that you just hate… diners?
lol you are hilarious.
So I was right, then. You aren’t interested in evidence. ::checks homie’s post history::
COUNTERPOINT: I think he may just be a gasping fucking moron. Occam’s razor and all that.
If you drove to three different diners and they were all Greek diners, yeah I’d think some kind of anti-Greek vendetta was a contributing factor.
You’re an idiot.
FYI he’s a troll. It’s his thing. He either pretends to be stupid or he’s really that stupid.
I dare you to elaborate on this. How does this “convenient narrative” of yours make anyone money? Go on. Try to explain yourself.
Keeping people divided and at each others’ throats, encouraging people to hate a group of people based on their identity (even if it is the RIGHT kind of hate, i.e. against white males), has been good for business since the invention of the newspaper.
I know. I’m so tired of people getting rich off calling this a hate crime!
Division is good for the media. Anger is good for the media. Hate is good for the media. Outrage is good for the media. If you don’t understand how, there are basic media literacy courses available at your local community college.
So let me get this straight: It’s racist to say COVID originated in China? What happened to believe in science?
It’s not racist to say the outbreak started in China (although that hasn’t been 100% established yet). It’s racist to scapegoat China as a way to avoid responsibility to the incredible number of ways we have mishandled the response. It’s also racist to stigmatize Asian people for the outbreak. It’s racist and unscientific to attach China to name for the disease. The scientific name is Covid-19. Nice strawman though.
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