This is running late, obviously, and I’m not going to sit here and lie about it. I took my afternoon nap late today and just decided to hang it in, I guess. In any event, I really can’t say I spent too much time paying attention to the news the past couple of days. This ol’ world is getting on my nerves here lately and, frankly, I don’t think I’m missing much.
But enough of that. The rest of the victims of Tuesday’s shooting spree have been identified. They are Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, and Yong Ae Yue. These ladies were workers at The Gold Spa and Aromatherapy Spa in Fulton County, Georgia, and joined the four victims shot at the Yung Asian Massage Parlor in nearby Cherokee County for a total of eight. They were shot by some asshole from Woodstock, GA, and he was named in Wednesday’s piece and I’m not giving him any more press.
President Joe Biden condemned the attacks during a speech at nearby Emory University, which was initially meant to celebrate the passing of his $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. In a closed-door meeting with Asian American community leaders, Biden explicitly condemned the language of the former guy, noting that Trump’s anti-China rhetoric helped inflame this attack.
The Cherokee and Fulton County police are pushing that this isn’t a racial crime. It was instead an attack on sex workers. Though he’s been denounced by his church, a very conservative Baptist-type bunch, the shooter spoke often against porn and wanton sex, as well as the need to eliminate “temptation.” As that goober captain with the Cherokee police said, the shooter had a “bad day,” bought him a 9mm, and did just that.
But is that it? Of the eight victims, seven were women and of those seven, six were Asian, mostly from South Korea. Of the seven ladies shot, only one was under 40 and she was one of the owners. The oldest was 74 and the youngest was 44.
It’s almost a given these were sex workers because they worked in Asian massage parlors, and that’s just how it is, goes the American zeitgeist. However – and this may come as a shock to a lot of people – not all Asian massage parlors are tug-job places. So, to assume this guy shot a bunch of Asian ladies of a certain age because he thought they were sex workers is indeed racist. Racist of him and, frankly, racist of us if our society leads directly to that. And it did, don’t try to pretend otherwise.
Biden laid some of the blame for this at Trump’s feet since he spent most of last year directly blaming the COVID pandemic on China, insinuating either incompetence or outright malice was at the bottom of it. Even now if you have that argument with the healthy portion of the population who think there’s something to that, you have to qualify any statements with acknowledgments that, yes, China is run by a bunch of bastards who probably screwed the whole thing up. Why Trump, his supporters, or the regular dumbass American thinks that absolves us, I have no idea.
But the fact of the matter is there has been a rise in violence against Asian Americans in the past year, and it’s been so significant that Mainstream America is having to pay attention. And as these shootings show, far too many of us fail to even try to differentiate between the various geographical and ethnic backgrounds that make up the Asian world or, for that matter, the Pacific Island world, apparently.
So whether or not the shooter pulled the trigger because he wanted to rid the world of “temptation” is irrelevant. Those eight people died directly because of American racism. The longer we ignore it or try to pass it off as something else, the more people will die. And quite frankly, if this was all done to eliminate sex workers because sex workers are the problem, that really doesn’t make things better. I’m not sure I understand the thinking on that.
Dear Y'all 