Anti-Asian crimes are not due to white culture

Over the past week, I’ve watched and read about Asians fearing for their lives, even afraid to jog in a relatively safe part of the Bay area due to possible harassment.  It’s unnerving. Anti-Asian crime is real. It’s jumped significantly compared to overall hate crime in the past year. As an Asian-American, I don’t want to live in fear. So what matters to me is to understand what is happening.  

I’m not a criminologist, but my intuition tells me that the intent behind a crime should matter as much as the identity of the victim. If we are to understand how to help prevent crime in the future, we have to understand why they are happening in the first place. 

That’s why it’s infuriating to see how these vile acts are being used as propaganda to further a narrative. I’m talking about the causal connection between crimes against Asians and white supremacy, and by extension Republicans or what’s broadly referred to as white culture and privilege. Once again, Democrats are hijacking a narrative for political gain. And even more infuriatingly, they are choosing to select the incidents that fit their narrative and that work towards their ends, and conveniently deselecting the incidents that don’t.

It isn’t helpful to frame the issue in a way that doesn’t seek to find a solution for everyone.  Following the horrific mass killing in Atlanta where six of the victims were Asian, USA Today ran an article with the headline: “Stop Asian hate; Stop black hate; Stop all hate.” According to the article, hate crimes can only be perpetrated against “non-white” groups, and the Atlanta shootings “presents a chance for communities of color to effectively address the common enemy of white supremacy.” We don’t know if this was a hate crime, and hate crimes can most certainly be committed against any group. 

Preliminary police reports showed the suspect, who had a sex addiction driven by his religious guilt, wanted to eliminate the temptation at the spas he frequented. These parlors were listed in a “red light district” and were linked to sexual services. It appears we could possibly blame oppressive religious indoctrination or an oversexualized society. But to immediately blame it on white supremacy without truly understanding the underlying facts and potentials of the case creates division in a place where we should be seeking healing.

This narrative applied indiscriminately obfuscates what’s really happening. It’s abusive, dehumanizing, degrading and dangerous because it’s confusing the issue and leading us all down a path that will increase, not decrease, hate. 

“Stop Asian Hate” is the latest rage bubble against whiteness. It’s replacing the rage bubble of 2020, which was BLM. And as I mentioned in my book Unequally Yoked, BLM replaced the rage bubble of #metoo. We are continually inflating rage bubbles against the status quo, and with each one, the number of aggrieved gets larger and larger. 

Lest someone calls me “tone deaf” and says “We should despise all hate crimes, but 2021 is the moment to stand up in solidarity for anti-Asian hate!” Sure. I stand with that. But I don’t stand with defaulting to racism as the prime mover of evil in our society. Things are a lot more complex than that. 

Factless based claims

On March 18, CNN had a scathing and hyperbolic headline: White Supremacy and Hate are Haunting Asians. Yet the first line of the article reads: “It’s immaterial whether the accused killer in the Atlanta spa shootings admits to a racist motivation.” 

Daily Show Trevor Noah also dismissed the probability that the Atlanta shootings could be driven by sex or religious guilt. “Murders speak louder than your words,” he stated while suggesting white culture was to blame. 

The cultish icon of the woke age, Ibram X. Kendi tweeted: “Locking arms with Asian Americans facing this lethal wave of anti-Asian terror. Their struggle is my struggle. Our struggle is against racism and White supremacist domestic terror.”

The New York Times editorial board, along with the Washington Post, have written that the rise in anti-Asian sentiment is due to Donald Trump’s calling of COVID-19 the “Wuhan virus.” Never mind that the first known case came from Wuhan, China and the World Health Organization is now in China investigating the source. 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said there was “no question” that Trump’s rhetoric led to anti-Asian hate crimes. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Ca) told MSNBC host Chris Hayes that the killings were “the culmination of a whole year’s worth of hate stoked by xenophobia of Donald Trump.” In another Hayes interview, a black feminist and activist suggested that white supremacists and the Trump administration “created a rhetorically-violent environment for Asian American folks, blamed them for this pandemic, ginned up the public and created this context for things to be unsafe.” During a recent congressional hearing, Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY) said Asians are fighting hate and bigotry because “anti-Asian rhetoric like China virus and Kung flu” have left Asians “traumatized and fearful for their lives.”

Is the person behind rhetoric to blame?

Rhetoric can certainly influence. But is the person behind the rhetoric to blame? Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La) was shot by a gunman who was inspired by Bernie Sanders. Is Sanders to blame? In the shooting of five white officers in 2016 by a black gunman who told police he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers, should we blame Obama, who had riled racial tensions?  

There are a lot of crimes out there, every day. White on white, Asian on Asian, black on black, black on Asian. It isn’t just white people. Yet when it isn’t white perpetrators it’s cast in a different light. 

When a black 19-year-old killed an 84-yr-old Asian man last month, why did CNN report that there was “lack of evidence pointing solely to anti-Asian bigotry” and the suspect was a man preying on the vulnerable and elderly? What about the Asian stylist punched in the face by a black woman hurling racial slurs?  Last year, a video caught two men dragging an Asian woman and in another video a black man assaulted an elderly Asian man. Are these anti-Asian crimes? What about hate crimes in general? In upstate NY this month, two black teens were arrested for allegedly setting an elderly white man on fire. Is this a racist crime? Reports of the the Boulder shooting that left 10 white people dead refers to the non-white male suspect whose family emigrated from Syria as having mental illness. Why isn’t this investigated as a hate crime? Search “Boulder or Colorado shootings'' and most reports refer to the problem of mental illness or loose gun laws. Search for “Atlanta shootings” and most reports refer to the problem of racism. Something’s not right.

By Trevor’s logic, all crimes are racist because intent doesn’t matter. 

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistic report in 2018 titled: Criminal Victimization, white Americans were not the largest perpetrator of crimes against Asians. The percentage of whites and Asians carrying out crimes against Asians were the same: 24 percent, whereas blacks committed 27.5 percent of those crimes. These are not categorized as racially-motivated crimes. We don’t know the motives or intent. But if we are to apply the same standards the media is applying to the Atlanta shootings, then yes all of these are racially-motivated crimes.

The point is we’re not addressing the problem

There is an anti-Asian problem. I get it. As an immigrant, I recall being the only Asian in a very white school where some of the white kids weren’t sure if they could be friends with me because I was “oriental.” In another neighborhood, I was chased down by three black kids because I was different from them too. I don’t doubt this type of unfamiliarity with people drives some to do bad things. 

But there’s questions to ask: Are Asians being targeted because many are successful? Are they being targeted because Asian women are sexualized? Who’s committing the crimes and what is their motive? Is the 24/7 news media hype machine causing more hate crimes? Is it a combination of the above that’s been exacerbated by lockdowns that are driving everyone insane? (In 2020, murders rose 35 percent in the Bay Area while homicides jumped  nearly 40% in NYC and up 50% in Chicago.) 

As I’ve also said in the past, if American culture is so racist, why are Asians doing so well? They account for under 6 percent of the population yet the household median income for Asian Americans is 38 percent greater than the national median income. At Apple, 23 percent of the highest paying tech jobs are held by Asian. Even in 2010, a decade ago, Asians made up more than half of the Bay Area workforce, which included high-paying tech and engineering jobs. 

If Republicans are so racist, why did the Trump administration sue Yale for discriminating against Asians in college admissions? If the current administration is not racist, why did they drop this lawsuit that discriminates against Asians? When a school drops a program for high-performing kids solely because many who qualified were Asians and whites, why is this not racist?

Democrats, like Kendi, will say because “If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.” They’ll say their progressive discriminatory policies enabled Asians and people of color to succeed, therefore they’re not racist. I agree and disagree. Democrats and Republicans both have laid the groundwork for such policies. Republicans were just as much behind affirmative action (which are a form of preferential, or said differently “discriminatory”). Their goals aligned in wanting equal opportunity and safety nets. But I don’t subscribe to the notion that discrimation until there are equal outcomes is a good thing, that’s called communism. It doesn’t work. 

This is why the current political battle isn’t between Republicans vs. Democrats. It’s actually Republicans against socialists. Socialists are on the move and in fact have a toe, and possibly a foot, in the White House since the White House is also promulgating the same racist narrative. The socialists have found a magical hammer, racism, and they can use it to hammer any political nail. If you defend America’s traditional values, capitalism and the Judeo-Christian ethos whose goal is not equal outcomes, you are racist. Essentially the entire Republican party is racist. Equal outcomes taken to its logical end doesn’t make sense.

Socialists want more power in the hands of their government and to use that platform to shape our values, ethos and definition of equity. Inflating rage bubbles has become their go-to political strategy. Select incidents that fit the narrative; re-cast those that don’t; spin the media and social media machine; call everything that contradicts the narrative bigotted and move the social agenda forward. Rinse and repeat.

As an immigrant who’s had success in America, I like America’s traditional values and capitalism. They’ve changed my life. I was given an opportunity to create an amazing life that would not have been available to me in any other country of the world. I’m grateful for America. But rage bubbles distract me from being grateful. They drive me and many to fill ourselves with hate and resentment so we forget the blessings that inspire us. 

Not all media are complicit. NBC News legal analyst explained why the Atlanta shootings are “not being classified as a hate crime. But these reports are few. We need more of this and less emotion. Yes, America needs to work on race. We always will need to. But what leads to crime isn’t just racism. We won’t find those underlying cracks in our foundation if we are so myopic. 

Rage bubbles move us backward, not forward. 

Image source on social media: Vox

Why Democrats use the 'false equivalency' argument

President Trump was acquitted of impeachment charges for the second time. Whether he should have been convicted or subject to impeachment in the first place will be forever debated. The residual question is when are comparisons fair and when are they false equivalencies? This topic matters not just for understanding the impeachment, but for our continued national dialogue.  

However inappropriate Trump’s actions and rousing words were after Nov. 3 through Jan. 6 it’s hard to believe he foresaw the fatal uprising. And that is the issue: whether Trump incited the mob’s assault on Capitol Hill that left five people dead on Jan. 6, 2021. The House charged Trump with “incitement of insurrection.” The word incitement means the “action of provoking unlawful behavior or urging someone to behave unlawfully.” This is not a cut-and-dry analysis. The burden of proof for both provocation and insurrection are high, in light of the highly-charged rhetoric coming from Democrats in the last year with impunity. 

Democrats, such as NBC News anchor Chuck Todd, says bringing up what others have done is a “lazy version of whataboutism,” a tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without disproving the argument. In other words, Democrats' use of inflammatory speech in the past that resulted in violence is a false equivalence to Trump’s rhetoric which ended in violence. 

Why is it that some see these situations as morally equivalent while others do not? Who gets to decide?

It comes down to whether there is alignment on what is true. Clearly, there is very little  alignment between conservatives and progressives on what is true or false, wrong or right, good and evil. And if there is no alignment, how can then there be equivalence? Everything is a false equivalence.

In the last year, a new social-cultural system of truth - aka religion, whose moral compass is driven by a sense of collective social justice has come into full force. And while it should be separated from government, it’s very much entwined and embraced by the Democratic party. This new religion believes the US is a racist and oppressive nation rigged against anyone in the minority, and morality is defined by the good works performed in the name of equal outcome (read socialism). 

Anyone who stands up for this supreme truth is justified and righteous. Anyone against this truth is considered violent, harmful, intolerant, immoral, in denial, unaware, unenlightened, and of course racist, deplorable and stupid. In other words, not “woke” to the racist and oppressive sin that bedevils us.  

This is the lens we must look through to understand Trump’s second impeachment trial and why the Left believes their words or actions and similar words and actions carried out by conservatives are considered a false equivalence. 

What the trial videos revealed

During the trial, Democratic House managers offered up a lot of emotional provocation through a 13-minute video dramatizing the Jan. 6 uprising laced with Trump’s words as mobs attacked the Capitol. No one wants to see footage of the Capitol being ransacked. But to make the causal link requires a high bar of evidence, which was not presented. Importantly, the House might have gone against its own rules, which bars the dissemination of videos “distorted or manipulated with the intent to mislead the public.” Indeed, reports are already referring to the carefully-edited film as “a massive body of video evidence of the alleged offense.” Next time I go to trial I’d like to be able to create my own video montage of the defendant, and set it to evil Star Wars music.

If Republicans wanted to create causal links between rhetoric and violence, they would have far more b-roll to choose from to recreate the months’ long inflammatory language and encouraging calls for unruly protests in 2020 while showing buildings burning down, police killed and dozens of statues toppled. Trump’s defense team didn’t take that cheap shot. 

Smartly and accurately, they produced a nearly 10-minute clip capturing many Democrats using incendiary remarks (such as putting a bullet in Donald Trump) as well as the often-used political rallying word: “fight.” Why did Trump’s lawyers zero in on that word? Because Democrats did. Here are some of the words spoken by Trump they say incited the mob. “We fight like hell,” said Trump. “And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.” 

Immediately, Democrats dismissed the video comparing their rhetoric with Trump’s as a false equivalency.

Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) remarked that the comments in the video did not have the same dire consequence but rather shows “a history that in no cases resulted in deaths, deaths of police officers, rioting behavior.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn) called the argument a “distorted equivalence” because Trump “invited this mob to Washington.” 

Never mind that in one of the video snippets from August 2020, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass) invited unruly behavior, saying there needs to be “unrest in the streets for as long as there’s unrest in our lives.” Another clip showed CNN’s Chris Cuomo in early June 2020, saying “Show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful.” Or when Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) insouciantly said in July 2020 that “people will do what they do” referring to the destruction of the Christopher Columbus statue. 

Those permissive comments were just a few of the many that created the tolerance for violence.  In September 2020, two LA County sheriff’s deputies were shot in the head in Compton. Protestors outside the hospital tried to block entryway to the hospital and shouted “Death to the police” and other “derogatory” words, according to an eye-witness. In October 2020, the Guardian reported that at least 25 people died in the 2020 Floyd protests. Let’s not forget how Seattle’s Mayor Durkan allowed protesters to take over several city blocks in her city, an uprising she referred to as a “summer of love.” The takeover ended in shootings and two deaths. In Minneapolis alone, fires were set to 150 buildings, some burned to the ground. Billions of damage had been caused across the country; Rampant iconoclasm on government property ensued. 

Another senator who appears in the video saying “fight,” sought to ridicule his clip by explaining that he used the word in the context of changing healthcare reform. Never mind that Bernie Sanders’ spirited speeches about healthcare reform inspired a rabid follower to critically shoot Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA). Scalise didn’t blame Sanders.

The point is causal links aren’t often made because they’re hard to prove and often don’t explicitly exist. It’s hard to know what triggers any crazy person. Moreover, what insane radicals do should not undermine and delegitimize the protests - an argument often used by the left in 2020. Democratic protests were to fight for social injustice which is held to a different standard because the system is racist and oppressive. 

The Jan. 6 protests on the other hand, Democrats say, were driven by baseless lies and conspiracy theories about a stolen election. Never mind that Trump protesters were fighting for election integrity. A fight Democrats were 100% behind since 2016, spending tax-payer dollars to fund a $32 million investigation into alleged Russian collusion with Donald Trump. After a two-year investigation, it was determined there was no collusion. That fight for election integrity wasn’t considered a lie or unjust then. Why should it now?

When standards matter

To be sure, Trump’s conduct in isolation was not good. It was unpresidential and narcissistic. But if that were the bar, then presidents would be impeached in their first 100 days. It was also right to investigate the situation, albeit in a cursory way. It was found, rightly so, that his words and actions were not impeachable. There was no causal link made. There was no evidence of a concerted premeditated coup. There were no constitutional grounds. All this matters.  

What also matters is context. We just witnessed the year - 2020 - in which violence across the country ensued, largely with impunity. And yet in August at the Democratic National Convention, Democrats failed to condemn the violence, destruction and killings after the death of George Floyd. Protests were encouraged; unruliness was encouraged. Punishment was ignored in the name of social justice.

Punishment matters. In a Ted Talk, Jonathain Haidt, a professor of moral psychology, said that “cooperation decays without punishment.” To solve cooperative problems it’s not enough to appeal to people’s good motives, but to have punishment applied to everyone for the same actions. We’ve become a very permissive society when it comes to rude and entitled behaviors in the name of social justice in order to redeem a guilty conscience. Since 2015, we have seen a rise of micro-uprisings across college campuses, where in some cases professors were taken hostage, fires were set off, people were pepper sprayed -- all in the name of social justice. Much of these actions by progressive activist students went on with impunity by progressive college administrators who felt the weight of the guilt of their forefathers. But permissiveness should never be allowed to compensate for guilt.  

President Trump should be rebuked for his words, as should the senators, representatives and mayors I mention above!

Should we be surprised therefore that we saw similar and broader uprisings in 2020 with progressive leaders falling back on the same claim that the protests were “mostly peaceful.” Jonathan Turley in an Op-Ed piece said it well: “The search for moral clarity will be lost if Americans cannot distinguish between the behavior of the accused and that of his jury.” In other words, standards matter. If there are no standards for the accused and the accuser, there will always be a false equivalency.

But let’s just get the big fancy terms out of the way. 

If you hear someone say, “It’s a false equivalence or whataboutism,” just say, “What you’re really saying is, ‘the right is bad and the left is good.’” What Democrats are really saying is that there is no equivalence because conservatives are guilty for everything that seems wrong in the world. Some on the left care about social justice but many use it as a convenient cudgel for guilt they feel inside. Why do Democrats use the “false equivalency” argument? Because they want to release themselves of their guilt. They want to feel innocent. The only way they can is to place that guilt on someone else. That’s often done through double standards. 

Case in point: Gina Carano and Pedro Pascal, both stars of the Disney show “Mandalorian” compared a group of Americans to Nazis. Lucasfilm, the company that owns Disney, said the  “social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent.” Carano, a conservative, was fired; Pascal, a progressive, was not. Why?

Because we can’t compare the two situations. You see, it’s a false equivalence. But hey, at least Gina, and by extension all conservatives, are carrying the guilt.