Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 389 ｜ Anti-Asian Crimes & Our Obligation to the Truth

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Today

00:00:16.480 we are going to talk about a tough subject, an uncomfortable subject. That is the charge

00:00:22.880 of white supremacy as the reason for the recent reported surge in anti-Asian hate crimes.

00:00:29.580 We're going to look specifically at the mass shooting that occurred in Atlanta last week

00:00:34.480 where a white man shot nine people, seven of them were Asian women. The races are important because

00:00:42.500 that's part of the conversation that we're having. That's part of why we're talking about this.

00:00:48.160 We're going to talk about some of the accusations being made about his motives, the assumptions

00:00:53.560 that are rising about the cause of this kind of terrible crime. We're first going to remember

00:01:00.600 the victims. We're going to remind ourselves why we care when things like this happen,

00:01:07.160 why we cannot get swept up in emotional performative activism on Instagram and media narratives

00:01:14.520 rather than remembering what it means as Christians in particular to care about the loss of life.

00:01:21.680 We're then going to talk about the Atlanta incident, what happened, the suspect, his stated

00:01:28.120 motivations, the reaction to these stated motivations, the immediate analysis from politicians, from

00:01:34.160 journalists, activists, and pastors about why they think he did this, the accusations of white

00:01:39.420 supremacy, the attempt to make anyone who criticizes China a critical race theory culpable in this,

00:01:45.740 not just for this crime, by the way, but for all recent crimes against Asian Americans,

00:01:51.480 and why these kinds of accusations just do not match up with reality. We'll also talk about the

00:01:59.320 obvious hypocrisy that we see from some of these accusers in light of all of this. We're going to

00:02:07.060 talk about why assuming motivations without knowledge or even at times contrary to objective knowledge

00:02:13.300 actually stops us from seeking real answers and real solutions to real problems. And then finally,

00:02:19.700 we are going to end with why Christians have an obligation to the truth. Why we cannot under any

00:02:26.820 circumstances exchange God's perfect justice for secular justice? Why our knowledge of the gospel,

00:02:33.480 why our hope in Christ should make our reactions to news like this slower, more measured,

00:02:41.120 truthful, truthful, more human centric, more, more hope filled than that of the world.

00:02:47.720 So let's talk about specifically what happened in Atlanta. So eight people were killed at three

00:02:54.780 massage businesses in Atlanta and nearby Cherokee County on Tuesday, March 16th. This happened in

00:03:01.740 what has been reported as a surge of anti-Asian hate crimes over the past year. And we'll talk a little

00:03:07.720 bit more specifically about about that charge, about that claim in just a minute. Robert Aaron Long

00:03:14.600 has been charged with eight counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault. Six of the victims

00:03:21.500 were Asian, two were Caucasian, seven were women. So here are their names. Soon Chung Park was 74,

00:03:29.600 Hyun Jung Grant was 51, Soon Cha Kim was 69, Young A. Yu was 63, Delaina Ashley Yuan,

00:03:37.380 was 33, Zhaoxi Tan was 49, Daoyu Feng was 44, Paul Andrea Michaels was 54, LCSR Hernandez-Ortiz was 30,

00:03:50.440 and he was seriously injured. He is, I think, still at the hospital and hopefully recovering from his

00:03:58.360 injuries. This is reported from Atlanta's 11 Alive. Authorities said the first shooting happened at

00:04:04.200 Young's Asian Massage in Cherokee County just before 5 p.m. on Tuesday, March 16th. Four people

00:04:10.360 were killed there and one man was injured. The owner of a business next door said she had a bullet

00:04:15.160 come through her wall. They were screaming. And I told my husband, can you see what happened with

00:04:19.820 them? They may need help, she said. Just 45 minutes later, a second and third shooting happened in

00:04:25.060 Midtown Atlanta, where police said more, three more people were killed at the Gold Spa and a fourth at

00:04:31.180 the Aromatherapy Spa on Piedmont Road. Those businesses are across the street from each other.

00:04:36.840 Police said they quickly identified Long as the suspect after they put out surveillance photos

00:04:41.100 of the gunman and Long's family contacted them. Law enforcement said they then used Long's phone

00:04:46.860 to track him down and arrest him in Crisp County Tuesday night. They said he told them he was headed

00:04:53.080 to Florida to commit similar acts. So that is completely chilling, that rendering of what

00:05:01.800 happened. I cannot imagine the terror of being a witness to that or being one of these victims who

00:05:07.360 watched another victim die and knowing what's coming for you. I can't imagine what possesses a person to

00:05:14.420 commit something like this and then to go on to keep doing it after that. You have to be so desensitized

00:05:20.820 to violence and so callous towards human life to continue committing these kinds of crimes over

00:05:28.280 and over again. Andrew Yang had a Twitter thread that cited descriptions of a few of the victims

00:05:34.300 that the media had gotten from friends and family members. So here's what we have so far.

00:05:41.800 Delaina Ashley Yuan was 33. She was described by a friend as someone who seemed to have a light

00:05:47.540 around her that just drew you in. She was a mother to a teenage son and a baby girl. She and her husband

00:05:53.900 had gone for a couple's massage the day of the shootings, and so she was not apparently someone

00:05:59.900 that worked there. Zhao Ji Tan was 49. Those who knew Zhao Ji called her a, quote, curious, hardworking,

00:06:07.860 and caring woman who was always filled with joy. The next day would have been her 50th birthday

00:06:12.760 when she would have shared her favorite strawberry fresh cake with her only daughter. That's what

00:06:18.740 Andrew Yang says in his commentary. Paul Andre Michaels, 54. He grew up in Detroit to a big family

00:06:26.380 leaving to serve in the army. He ultimately followed his brother to Atlanta where he did electrical work

00:06:31.660 and met his wife. His brother described him as hardworking, generous, and caring. And then you have

00:06:37.200 LCSR Hernandez Ortiz, who again is injured, but hopefully is going to survive. He arrived from

00:06:44.700 Guatemala a decade ago and opened his own auto repair business in Atlanta. He has a 10-year-old

00:06:49.940 daughter whose birthday is next week. LCS is now in the hospital due to injuries endured during the

00:06:55.000 shooting. And then lastly, Yuan Jung Grant, 51. Her eldest son considered her both his mother and a

00:07:03.660 friend. She was fun, hardworking, and loved to dance. They would go for sushi dinners before she left

00:07:08.380 for work. Before coming to America, she taught elementary school in Korea. So those are some of

00:07:15.200 the descriptions that we've been able to get from some of the victims that were affected in this tragedy

00:07:22.480 last week. We don't know much more about these people, but what we know as Christians about them

00:07:30.240 is enough to mourn. We don't need proximity to them. We don't have to have known them. We don't

00:07:36.380 have to be able to relate to their life or their station. We don't have to look like them. They don't

00:07:42.120 have to represent a cause or a belief system that we share for us to care. Some of those things like

00:07:48.480 relatability or proximity can obviously understandably increase our sadness, but we don't

00:07:54.740 need these things to mourn. Because we care and we mourn because these people were made fearfully and

00:08:01.780 wonderfully in their mother's womb. People that, like all human beings, were made in God's image.

00:08:08.580 Every single one of them, by nature of being human, had a life that was worth more than the life of any

00:08:15.080 other kind of creature on earth. More than the most majestic animal, the most loved pet,

00:08:19.720 the worth of the most magnificent features of creation is nothing compared to the value of just

00:08:27.900 one of their lives. That's how we as Christians view human beings, as that valuable. Because we

00:08:35.140 believe that humans are image bearers, no matter our race, no matter our ability or our disability,

00:08:42.080 no matter what talents we bring to the table, how much money we make, how many friends we have,

00:08:47.220 how many accolades we've earned. This is how the Christian worldview is distinguished from something

00:08:53.160 like secular humanism, which asserts that we're just evolved animals. We're just clumps of matter.

00:08:58.400 We're just material objects with no great purpose, with no divine origin, with no soul.

00:09:04.200 And the fact, and this is something that we kind of talked about last week, last Monday, I believe it

00:09:09.220 was, the fact that atheists, that secular humanists still mourn death, goes to show that even those who deny

00:09:16.120 God have eternity written on their hearts. Ecclesiastes 3.11 says he has made everything

00:09:23.660 beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart yet so that he cannot find out what

00:09:33.040 God has done from the beginning to the end. If we were truly just a product of the evolutionary process,

00:09:39.960 soulless clumps of matter, surely we would have evolved to be able to accept the single

00:09:46.400 inevitability of human existence. We'd grow accustomed to the most persistent and the most

00:09:51.560 common human experience, but we don't. It's still shocking to us. Death is still disturbing. It's

00:09:57.800 devastating, especially when it happens to someone that we love. And just as an aside, by the way,

00:10:04.300 that's part of why communism always stops before it starts. It's a secular ideology that's built on

00:10:10.580 the secular humanism that views people as material, that is endlessly adaptable, moldable. It tries to

00:10:17.700 coerce people into a communist system using whatever means possible, shame, torture, imprisonment,

00:10:23.120 famine, murder. We've talked a lot about all these things and what kind of causes and pushes communism

00:10:29.540 before. But like a beach ball trying to be pushed underwater, human nature just keeps popping up.

00:10:37.000 Human beings will always long for personal private property, for profit, for family, some form of

00:10:42.740 freedom. And they will never give these things up to the state voluntarily. History shows us this over

00:10:49.620 and over again. And communists and fascists and all kinds of totalitarians will always seek to take

00:10:55.620 these things to the point of death. And because humans just can't shake the shock of injustice and

00:11:02.720 murder, there will always be a remnant of dissent. We can't shake the shock of death because we know

00:11:09.980 deep down inside of all of us that it's not supposed to be this way. There is a memory, or maybe it's an

00:11:16.620 expectation, or maybe it's both buried deep inside all of us of something that is different.

00:11:21.700 Maybe it's the inherited memory of walking in the cool of the shade of the Garden of Eden,

00:11:27.680 naked and unashamed, in perfect fellowship with our Creator. Maybe it's the knowledge that there is

00:11:33.740 something after and beyond this life, something to look forward to, something beyond the here and the

00:11:39.740 now to seek and to live for. Maybe it's that hope against hope, that heaven is real, that we really

00:11:47.960 were created, and that we are wanted and loved and redeemed and saved by an all-powerful ruler of the

00:11:54.280 universe who one day will right all the wrongs, who will end all injustice, who will do something

00:11:59.280 about the sickness and the sorrow and the evil we see in the world, that one day up will be up,

00:12:05.380 down will be down, truth will be revealed, and everyone will know it. Things will be as we,

00:12:10.760 in this inexplicable way, know that they should be. No death, no sadness, no pain, just peace under the

00:12:19.540 perfect rule of our good, just God and King. So that is why we as Christians mourn, because these

00:12:27.500 are people, and they matter, because they're more than just matter. They're image bearers,

00:12:33.780 they're souls, and we carry this heavy weight of sadness in us because of the knowledge that it's not

00:12:39.400 supposed to be this way, that the consequences of sin so often play out in these devastating,

00:12:46.680 deadly ways, that we are still waiting, and sometimes more impatiently than others, for all

00:12:52.040 of this madness to stop for redemption. And whenever I struggle with the question of why evil happens,

00:12:59.700 and I do struggle with this question, just like every believer ever has, why such horrible abuse and

00:13:07.060 torment and persecution and wickedness is allowed to persist for so long, why so much happens that

00:13:14.440 seems so utterly cruel, and why this all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God seems to be, at times,

00:13:21.520 not doing the things that I want Him to do to stop it. I have to force my eyes back to the Scriptures

00:13:27.820 and remind myself He's not doing nothing. He's not doing nothing. Isaiah 13, 9 tells us,

00:13:35.840 Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land desolation

00:13:41.980 and to destroy its sinners from it. And that doesn't seem like an encouraging passage, but

00:13:47.760 to anyone who has wrestled with the cruel existence of evil, it is. It means that God

00:13:54.520 is doing something. His wrath is being stored up. It's being built up. It will be unleashed on

00:14:00.940 evildoers. Wickedness and sin and Satan will fully and finally be destroyed. He's not doing nothing.

00:14:08.180 He's not absent. He will exact perfect divine revenge on the wicked, and all those that He has

00:14:14.520 graciously redeemed through Christ will be spared. I also love Psalm 37, here, verses 34 through 36,

00:14:23.480 although I really recommend the whole chapter. Wait for the Lord and keep His way, and He will

00:14:30.340 exalt you to inherit the land. You will look on when the wicked are cut off. I have seen a wicked,

00:14:36.180 ruthless man spreading himself like a green laurel tree, but he passed away, and behold,

00:14:41.460 he was no more. Though I sought him, he could not be found. So every child abused, every baby aborted,

00:14:48.420 every civilian casualty of war, every victim of totalitarianism, every person oppressed or

00:14:54.680 neglected, every life lynched, crucified, murdered will be avenged. Everything stolen, every lie told,

00:15:01.960 every instance of extortion, manipulation will be paid for, will be defeated. Our only hope as sinners

00:15:08.600 ourselves is to trust in Christ for our salvation so that we will be saved and live forever in joy and

00:15:16.660 peace with our God. So in the midst of sorrow and confusion of devastating, depressing news stories

00:15:24.660 like this one, the Christian's view of what's going on in this is so much bigger than the myopic media

00:15:31.100 narrative. If we are to maintain our hope and our obedience to God, it must be bigger than what we see

00:15:38.440 on social media, the talking points parroted by pundits, bigger than the headlines, deeper than the

00:15:43.960 Instagram posts, more complex than the tweets, wiser and wider than the knee-jerk reactions that we see.

00:15:51.400 Because we view it in light of both the temporal and the eternal. Yes, these were mothers, these were

00:15:57.940 fathers, these were friends and sisters. Yes, this may speak to problems that need to be dealt with here

00:16:03.660 on earth. But more than anything, we feel what Romans 8 describes as creation's groanies, like that of

00:16:10.620 childbirth, as it, along with believers, are painstakingly waiting for Jesus' return for

00:16:16.620 everything to be made right. And so, in light of all of this, what does this mean? How does this affect

00:16:23.060 how we react to a media report of a man killing eight people? First, I think that it means that we

00:16:28.780 are bound by love and a deep care for both the victims and the people in their lives who will mourn

00:16:35.200 them. We pray for those that they left behind, that they would know the gospel if they don't already,

00:16:40.160 that somehow God would be glorified in all of this, that God would not allow Satan to get what

00:16:45.960 he wants here, which is more division and hate and fist-shaking at God, that instead what Satan

00:16:51.660 meant for harm, God would, in a way that we cannot understand, use it for good. If you are in the area,

00:17:00.560 maybe it means that you can see how you can help in tangible ways. Maybe your church is helping the

00:17:05.740 victim's families. Maybe there is a way that you can offer that kind of support. As Christians, we run

00:17:11.520 into the sadness. We are eager to share the weight of others' burdens. We are eager to listen. We are

00:17:18.220 eager to help. Second, I think that it means that we are bound by the truth, which means we are slow

00:17:25.320 to react. And I have not always kept this rule, by the way, but I am always so glad. I can just tell

00:17:31.640 you this from personal experience, and I hope that you'll learn from my mistakes. I am always so glad

00:17:35.900 when I wait to react to something until I get all the details. I have many times regretted hastiness,

00:17:43.880 but I have never, ever regretted pausing to consider the weight and the truthfulness and the necessity of

00:17:51.000 my words. Proverbs 29 20 says, do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool

00:17:59.400 than for him. That also means that we have to try as hard as we can to decipher what is actually true.

00:18:06.200 We can't ascribe motives without knowledge. We don't conjure up causes of incidents to confirm our

00:18:11.060 preconceived biases. We don't seek ways to shift blame onto people or groups of people not involved

00:18:16.940 because it feels good or is convenient. And we've all failed at this, me included, for sure.

00:18:23.320 Social media and its perpetual rewarding of hastiness and foolishness and callousness has

00:18:29.760 gotten the best of all of us. We are all guilty in this way. But man, by the power of the Holy Spirit,

00:18:36.080 we have to try. We have to be different from the world in this way. It also means that we resist

00:18:43.340 partiality. Proverbs 28 21 says, to show partiality is not good, but for a piece of bread, a man will do

00:18:52.380 wrong. So that means our sadness and our outrage is not dictated by the skin colors or the political

00:19:00.640 parties or the socioeconomic classes or the genders of those involved. Yes, those factors might be

00:19:09.140 important, but they don't determine how sad we are when an image bearer is killed or assaulted in some

00:19:16.880 way or victimized. It means when the perpetrator of a crime is a white man, we are no quicker to

00:19:23.920 ascribe racialized motives to him than we are if it were a black man. It means that our ears don't

00:19:31.100 only perk up when the story fits into our political narrative and that our indignation isn't only expressed

00:19:37.300 when a story advances our agenda. And oh man, how many of us have shown this kind of partiality for

00:19:44.520 a piece of bread, for a like, for a retweet, for a pat on the back to feel included among our peers or

00:19:50.640 among people that we see as important. It's not of God. That doesn't mean that we can't have opinions

00:19:58.280 or perspectives or priorities, but when these things blind us to the truth, when they motivate us to push a

00:20:05.020 narrative about something that is not actually true or make us callous towards other forms of

00:20:10.020 injustice, other crimes, that's a problem. And I'm telling you, we've talked about this a lot before,

00:20:17.080 that that is exactly what I have seen happen among Christians in the past year. Immediately latch on to

00:20:23.860 a mainstream narrative, latch on to a mainstream assumption about something. Whenever a white person

00:20:30.100 is a suspect or the perpetrator, the immediate accusation is of white supremacy and of systemic

00:20:36.600 racism without even a question about what the truth is, without even a care in the world to

00:20:42.340 the cases that have occurred that don't fit into that box. Why? Because it feels good. It feels right.

00:20:50.760 It feels empathetic. It feels loving. We're applauded by both the world and a huge chunk of the church.

00:20:57.080 That feels amazing. And quite honestly, to question the narrative or the assumed motives

00:21:02.680 or the pervasive cause when it comes to any incident involving a white perpetrator and a

00:21:07.540 non-white victim is really uncomfortable. And maybe we're convinced that that would just be

00:21:13.740 a toxic product of our white privilege. What an incredible tactic sin has employed to stop people

00:21:21.280 from ever asking themselves in these kinds of situations, what is true? Just post the black

00:21:27.140 square, share the post, repeat the talking points, read the books, and never allow yourself to look

00:21:31.960 beyond what you're being told. James 3.17 tells us, but the wisdom from above is first pure,

00:21:39.760 then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, and sincere.

00:21:47.980 So godly wisdom is open to reason. It's not shut off by bias and narrative. Reason is driven by truth,

00:21:56.660 by facts. And this is where we get into the uncomfortable part of the episode, separating

00:22:01.600 fact from fiction to ensure that we are being open to reason, that we are employing the wisdom that is

00:22:07.680 from above with the truth, with the facts that are available to us when it comes to looking at the

00:22:14.560 cause of these things and the trends. And whether or not this is indicative of systemic anti-Asian

00:22:20.420 racism and white supremacy, we've got to look at the facts that we have.

00:22:29.000 So the popular accusation that we have seen paraded across the press and our social media this past week

00:22:36.140 is that the man in Atlanta shot and killed these people because of his own racism, as well as

00:22:42.420 the white supremacy that exists in this country. We are being told that anti-Asian violence is because

00:22:48.200 of white supremacy. It's because of Trump and his supporters calling the coronavirus, the China

00:22:54.060 virus, and that this incident shows us how we have to root out the kind of white nationalism

00:22:59.900 that we see from the right. Here are some examples of that particular accusation from CNN.

00:23:06.900 Why anti-Asian American violence is rising, along with white supremacist propaganda.

00:23:13.740 This is a headline in The Nation. The massacre in Atlanta was as predictable as white supremacy.

00:23:20.160 This is from Representative Ocasio-Cortez. Dismantling racist anti-Asian violence means

00:23:26.180 standing up to white supremacy, the same ideology that asks us to empathize with those who commit

00:23:31.860 racist violence rather than the families destroyed and communities targeted by it.

00:23:36.780 I don't even know who's doing that.

00:23:40.700 Cori Bush says,

00:23:42.160 To our Asian neighbors, family, and friends, I know that the world seems more scary today,

00:23:47.040 more cruel. Know that we love you. And I think that that statement alone, by the way, is fine.

00:23:52.120 Then she goes on to say,

00:23:53.940 We mourned those killed last night in Atlanta with you. We will dismantle white supremacy alongside you.

00:24:01.400 Ayanna Pressley,

00:24:02.440 Eight lives were stolen. We stand in solidarity and deep compassion with our AAPI family in Georgia

00:24:09.460 and across the country. Racism, misogyny, and white supremacy are a threat to all of our communities.

00:24:16.360 Mingha T. Pham said this tweet went viral. It has, as of right now, almost 76,000 retweets.

00:24:24.880 He didn't have a sexual addiction, and we'll get more into that claim in just a second.

00:24:31.260 He had racist, sexualized fantasies about dominating Asian women. In other words,

00:24:36.480 he had fantasies of white supremacy and acted on them, name it. But here's the truth.

00:24:43.720 We have no idea if this was motivated by race. We just don't know. It might have been,

00:24:49.980 but we do not know that. So here's what's being reported by Atlanta's 11 Alive.

00:24:56.120 Quote,

00:24:56.400 As of Wednesday evening, Long is being held at the Cherokee County Detention Center.

00:25:01.340 Officials said Long told them he was a sex addict during interviews and that he targeted the spas

00:25:06.840 because of temptation. He apparently has an issue, what he considers an addiction, and sees these

00:25:12.140 locations as something that allow him to go to these places. And it's a temptation for him

00:25:18.260 that he wanted to eliminate, Cherokee County Captain Jay Baker said in a press conference.

00:25:24.940 The New York Times also reports Robert Aaron Long, the man charged with killing eight people

00:25:30.120 in a rampage at Atlanta area massage parlors, spent several months being treated for what he

00:25:36.020 described as a sex addiction and regularly went to massage parlors for sex, one of his former

00:25:41.460 roommates at a halfway house said. Tyler Bayless, the former roommate, said in an interview that he

00:25:47.520 lived with Mr. Long at the house in the Atlanta suburb of Roswell for about five months beginning

00:25:53.080 in August 2019. Nearly once a month, Mr. Long, who is then 20, would admit to Mr. Bayless and others

00:25:59.700 in the apartment that he had again relapsed by visiting a massage parlor to have sex with an

00:26:04.900 employee, Mr. Bayless said. He said Mr. Long's admissions were always paired with discussions about

00:26:10.160 his Christian faith and his relationship with God and his parents. It tore him up inside,

00:26:14.520 Mr. Bayless says. Now, we only have these people's word for it. That's what he's saying.

00:26:22.120 We don't know for sure. But it is true that massage parlors are sometimes a front for prostitution.

00:26:28.500 That's not just like a random accusation. The New York Times writes, although many massage parlors

00:26:34.020 are just that, places to get a massage, experts say there are more than 9,000 such businesses in the

00:26:39.220 United States that are fronts for prostitution and that many of the women working there are being

00:26:44.080 exploited. In 2020, Street Grace, a faith-based anti-trafficking organization, used a popular

00:26:49.600 website used by those who frequent such spas to identify 165 illicit massage businesses in Georgia,

00:26:56.820 more than three-quarters of which were in the greater Atlanta area. The organization set up cameras

00:27:01.780 outside the shops and reviewed the comments on the review site, on the review website,

00:27:06.200 RubMaps, to estimate that the illicit massage industry in Georgia has more than 1,000 customers

00:27:12.560 a day and an estimated annual gross revenue of more than $42 million. Yvonne Chen, an advocate for

00:27:21.700 sex trafficking victims who works with Asian women who work at massage businesses, said not all of them

00:27:27.040 are willing to provide sex to their clients, but those who refuse are often attacked by their customers.

00:27:32.520 I don't, it goes on to say, I don't think there's enough discussion of the violence that comes from the

00:27:37.620 buyers, she said. Customers often go on membership-only review websites where they describe in detail

00:27:44.000 what sexual services employees at a given spa are willing to provide. The two spas targeted in the attacks

00:27:49.160 in Atlanta, Aromatherapy and Gold Spa, have dozens of comments on RubMaps. So, like, from what we see,

00:27:56.840 from what this guy said, as well as what the reports are, what his friends have said that he has said in

00:28:04.120 the past, this actually seems plausible that he was engaged in this kind of behavior. Again, that

00:28:08.940 doesn't mean that we know for sure all of his motivations or that there was no other kind of

00:28:14.300 motivation involved, but very credibly, we see that he probably did have some kind of sex addiction

00:28:20.700 and that he was visiting these parlors. That doesn't justify anything. I'm not trying to say

00:28:25.920 that, well, we just need to have a more nuanced, you know, look about this and have a little bit more

00:28:32.860 sympathy or understanding. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying, like, we need to be clear about

00:28:38.060 what is probably true about his motivations and what his experiences actually were. And if we want

00:28:43.600 compassion for these victims, which I think that we should absolutely have, we need to be looking at

00:28:48.120 this problem. We need to be looking at the fact that a lot of these women are being exploited and

00:28:53.680 a lot of these women are subject to this kind of violence. Instead, here's what we get from an

00:29:00.000 article in the Washington Post. The alleged killer told police that race wasn't a motive, but given his

00:29:05.760 targets, that is just not credible. Partly, no doubt, those incidents came thanks to President Donald

00:29:11.520 Trump's insistence on calling the coronavirus the China virus and the Kung flu. Many recognized early that

00:29:18.100 such words aligned him with the strain of hatred and accompanying vigilante violence that has

00:29:24.800 existed in the United States for as long as Asian immigrants have been here. White supremacy depends

00:29:31.660 on pitting people of color against one another so they don't see their shared cause. Racial profiling

00:29:37.020 does not stem from the same stereotypes for Asian Americans, Black people, Muslims, and other groups,

00:29:41.400 but it serves a common purpose to define who is essential and who belongs to the nation. The best way to

00:29:46.320 keep Asian Americans safe is for the United States to improve its economy and promote global equality

00:29:51.640 for everyone without fear-mongering about the countries their ancestors left. So there's really

00:29:58.920 a lot there. First, I want to acknowledge that yes, absolutely, there has been anti-Asian racism in this

00:30:05.260 country, and I have no doubt that it still exists in the same way that there has been and still exists

00:30:10.540 anti-Black racism. All kinds of racism, all kinds of isms exist, and unfortunately will always exist. I would say

00:30:18.060 at one point were systemic, and thankfully there have been so many improvements in this country to ensure that

00:30:24.260 people of all different kinds of backgrounds can exceed and are given the same kinds of opportunities. We had

00:30:31.640 Chinese railroads, we had Japanese internment camps, Asian populations, especially where they are

00:30:38.100 concentrated in different parts of the country, have seen forms of harassment that other groups haven't

00:30:44.260 seen. So I want to acknowledge that yes, absolutely, there has been a history of targeting Asian people,

00:30:51.660 and unfortunately, as we will get to in just a minute, it seems like they are still being targeted

00:30:56.080 sometimes by some people. But I want to kind of unpack this analysis from the Washington Post. I

00:31:04.720 want to point out everything that we're getting from that article. Not just is it whiteness and white

00:31:10.040 supremacy we are reading, but it's also Donald Trump. It's also criticism of China that causes this. The

00:31:15.820 original headline to this article was actually titled, Anti-China Rhetoric Leads to Anti-Asian Violence

00:31:22.000 So we see what's going on here. We see that we are being told that we can't criticize China. We can't

00:31:35.900 talk about the origins of the coronavirus without being complicit in these kinds of terrible murders

00:31:42.980 like the one that happened in Atlanta. But here's the truth. And again, I believe that we're bound to

00:31:48.060 the truth if we're looking at this objectively, which we should. There is not a country in the

00:31:53.540 world who systemically oppresses more Asians than China and the Chinese Communist Party. I'm not

00:32:02.180 talking about the Chinese people. I'm talking about the leadership in China. They have one million of

00:32:08.060 their own people in concentration camps as we speak because they are Muslim, where they're forcibly

00:32:13.240 sterilized, where their babies are aborted, sometimes at full term, where their men are tortured

00:32:20.020 and abused, maimed, where their children are indoctrinated, where some of their organs are

00:32:26.020 harvested and then sold. They have completely taken over Hong Kong, the CCP, which used to be autonomous

00:32:32.800 and has jailed or killed every dissenter. They hid the data about the coronavirus and disappeared the

00:32:38.540 researchers and the scientists that spoke out about it. Their lockdowns reportedly consisted of

00:32:43.200 welding people into their homes until they died of starvation. According to the New York Times,

00:32:48.120 they kicked African immigrants out of their own apartments. They kept them out of restaurants in

00:32:53.220 China, accusing them of being vectors of the virus. They employ slave labor right now to make their

00:32:59.000 products. They steal other countries' intellectual property. They are currently colonizing poor countries

00:33:04.380 in Africa and South America. Their own people do not have freedom. They don't have rights. They don't have

00:33:10.840 privacy. They don't have free speech. They don't get to worship who or how they want. They don't have

00:33:15.940 any liberty to speak of. There's no such thing as a human right there. And for decades, they have used

00:33:21.700 racial tensions in the United States as propaganda to convince people both here and abroad that the

00:33:27.480 United States has no right to criticize them. And if you believe that, then you've bought into the

00:33:33.120 propaganda. Anyone who uses the tragedy of what happened in Atlanta to say that we should not

00:33:40.280 criticize the CCP or point out where the virus came from and was actively covered up is doing the bidding

00:33:47.800 of the most brutal and oppressive and racist regime on the planet. Now, should we always distinguish

00:33:55.960 between Chinese people and the CCP? Absolutely. Should we ever view people of any skin color or nationality

00:34:02.260 is inherently bad or dirty or less than in any way? Absolutely not. Should we ever use a virus as an

00:34:09.360 excuse to discriminate against a certain type of person? No. But should we also be able to have the

00:34:14.800 sense to call out corruption where we see it while still loving our neighbors that hail from a different

00:34:20.760 country? Yes. Plus, there is absolutely no data proving any kind of correlation or causation between

00:34:28.440 Trump naming the origin of the virus white supremacy and the reported rise in violent crimes against

00:34:35.040 Asian people. And here's another here's another point. And so we've read continually that there is a

00:34:42.560 rise in hate crimes against Asian people. I think I saw, according to CBS, like 150 percent rise from last

00:34:49.840 year. Here's what we don't really know. We don't we don't know how that is being defined, how that's

00:34:57.920 being recorded, what the methodology of that study is. So it's really hard to know why is this happening?

00:35:05.600 Where is this happening? According to whom? Because the reality is, as we'll read in a report in just a

00:35:11.620 second, violent crimes have been up over the past year, unfortunately, against all different kinds of

00:35:16.700 people. You might remember, I think it was at the beginning of 2020, we were having a very similar

00:35:20.740 conversation about repeated attacks on the Orthodox Jewish community in places like New York. And we were

00:35:27.120 also being told that it had to do with white supremacy and white nationalism. That narrative didn't go very

00:35:31.660 far because it just wasn't true. We have the reports and we had the data before us. But there's a lot of

00:35:39.280 confusion, I think, that's shrouding this conversation and this claim. I don't doubt that there are

00:35:45.940 there that there is an increase in crimes against Asian Americans. But I think that we need a little

00:35:51.700 bit of clarity on the reporting. So I'm just going to say that as a caveat for any of you who are

00:35:57.660 wondering, like, where are these numbers coming from? We keep hearing there's a surge in anti-Asian

00:36:02.200 violence. Where are we seeing that? What are the reports about that? We're going to get into some of

00:36:06.280 that. But know that there's still a lack of definitions and a lack of clarity and a lack of

00:36:10.940 of sourcing around that that makes it very difficult for us to have a proper analysis.

00:36:16.740 And so that's actually why I would say people are able to kind of make this commentary of,

00:36:22.520 well, this probably has to do with Donald Trump and criticizing China and white supremacy and things

00:36:27.260 like that, because there's still so much vagueness surrounding the reporting and surrounding the

00:36:32.280 claim. But I will read this report from The Spectator by Zaid Jelani.

00:36:38.020 Quote, Democratic lawmakers have been quick to blame former President Donald Trump's anti-China

00:36:43.460 rhetoric for the violence. A lengthy New York Times op-ed on the topic goes back further,

00:36:49.120 positioning the latest spree of violence as an extension of white mobs in the 19th century,

00:36:54.220 brutally assaulting immigrants. The article carefully avoids identifying the ethnic background

00:36:58.320 of the assailants in this year's attacks. In New York City, hundreds of people marched in a rally

00:37:03.440 that called on the city to unite against white nationalism. A piece of art promoting the event

00:37:08.640 demanded justice for Vicha Radhanapakti. Radhanapakti, who immigrated to the United States

00:37:16.180 from Thailand, was brutally assaulted in San Francisco in late January, and he died soon after.

00:37:21.840 But here's the problem. There is no evidence that Antoine Watson, the 19-year-old charged with

00:37:28.100 killing Radhanapakti, is a white nationalist. Watson isn't white. He's African-American. In fact,

00:37:35.340 almost all of the suspects in the recent high-profile attacks against Asian-Americans that

00:37:39.260 are drawing public attention are from minority groups. We don't know how many of the attacks are

00:37:44.460 even motivated by ethnic hatred to begin with, he says. Yaha Muslim, an African-American man who is

00:37:50.500 the center of one of the highest profile attacks on Asian-Americans, is reportedly homeless and

00:37:55.060 mentally ill, and prosecutors have yet to bring hate crime charges against him. As an aside,

00:38:01.240 this definition, hate crime, can be arbitrary, but it usually means it's motivated by some kind

00:38:08.600 of specific animus to do with someone's race, to do with someone's gender, even someone's

00:38:13.040 disability, just to try to make that as clear as possible. Over the past year, the article goes on

00:38:19.460 to say we've seen a huge spike in violent crime, particularly shootings and homicides. It's possible that

00:38:24.540 these crimes against Asian-Americans are simply part of a larger crime wave that is making major

00:38:29.280 American cities increasingly unsafe. Some of these crimes, however, involved explicit invocations of

00:38:35.680 anti-Asian hatred. One Seattle court filing from January I reviewed described Samuel Green

00:38:41.360 shoving Asian-American Catherine Yeager so hard that it knocked the wind out of her while saying Asians

00:38:47.160 need to be put in their place. Again, Green is not a white supremacist. He is black. These are not

00:38:54.420 the only cases. I looked at the recent reports of crimes against Asian-Americans without looking

00:39:00.980 for any kind of suspect or any kind of perpetrator. It's actually very hard to find who the suspect is

00:39:06.140 in a lot of cases. So I just found what I could find in the reporting of the recent cases. So within

00:39:12.380 the span of what is considered like the surge of anti-Asian hate crimes, which I think would go

00:39:18.200 probably to like February of of 2020 until until now. And these are some of the cases that I could

00:39:26.760 find. According to New York Daily News, an ex-convict with a history of victimizing elderly Asian people

00:39:32.080 has been charged with murder and a brutal death of a 75-year-old man who was shoved to the ground

00:39:36.680 during a strong arm robbery in California, authorities said Thursday. The suspect fled the scene but was

00:39:42.040 arrested a short time after the incident. He was identified as Teontae Bailey, a 26-year-old criminal

00:39:48.380 with multiple convictions for assault, burglary, other crimes, according to officials. This elderly man,

00:39:55.420 like the headline says, was an Asian man. Bailey is also an African-American. According to ABC,

00:40:04.120 a man named Salman Muflihi stabbed an Asian man in the back in Chinatown in New York. We don't know

00:40:12.900 his race, but I would guess that it's probably likely that he is not a white supremacist. According

00:40:19.120 to People, quote, on January 31st, three elderly people were attacked in Oakland's Chinatown district,

00:40:24.960 including a 91-year-old man who suffered lacerations, abrasions, and a contusion to the left

00:40:30.800 thumb. The other two victims included a 60-year-old man and 55-year-old woman, Oakland police previously

00:40:36.700 said. Yahya Muslim, 28, was charged with three counts of assault with force likely to produce

00:40:42.940 great bodily injury and one count of elder or dependent adult abuse. These were Asian people

00:40:48.980 that were victimized by a man with the last name of Muslim who was also African-American. ABC Eyewitness

00:40:56.020 News in New York obtained a video of another unprovoked attack on an Asian man on March 3rd.

00:41:01.580 This man was also African-American. New York Daily News reports, quote, a 68-year-old man punched in

00:41:07.500 the face by a stranger on a Tribeca subway train, leaving him in critical condition, was the latest

00:41:12.420 victim of anti-Asian hate. A Good Samaritan who helped the victim told the Daily News. Police arrested

00:41:18.260 a subject, Mark Matthew of the Bronx on assault charges Sunday. I'll put a picture of the suspect

00:41:25.160 up. We see from the picture that he is an African-American man. New York Daily News reported

00:41:33.500 an Asian man riding a train in New York City that was dragged off the train by a man saying,

00:41:38.380 you're infected, China boy. So this would obviously be an instance of obvious racism.

00:41:43.640 We don't know the race of the perpetrator. I'll put the picture up so that you can see. It seems

00:41:50.140 kind of ambiguous. A San Francisco woman, according to CBS 5 in San Francisco, was randomly attacked by

00:41:57.200 a man on Market Street. We don't know who the, well, actually, no, we do know who the suspect is now.

00:42:02.820 We didn't get a good picture of him, but it looks like from the video that it is probably the white

00:42:08.000 guy that's on the stretcher. And we don't know exactly what happened, but it seems like he just

00:42:12.840 totally randomly attacked these two Asian elderly people in San Francisco, according to NBC in late

00:42:20.600 February of last year. So still within the span of a reported surge of anti-Asian hate crimes,

00:42:25.980 quote, Dwayne Grayson, 20, is facing charges, including robbery and elder abuse, as well as

00:42:30.060 a hate crime enhancement and Saturday's attack on a 68-year-old man who is Asian, collecting

00:42:35.260 recyclables, police said. He's also accused of probation violation for a prior robbery conviction.

00:42:39.760 Dwayne Grayson is also African-American. The video of this assault and harassment is awful.

00:42:46.440 If we look at the most recently available data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which is

00:42:52.740 2018 when it comes to this particular statistic, it shows us that Hispanic offenders account for

00:43:00.380 7% of crimes against Asians. White offenders account for 24.1% of violent crimes against Asians.

00:43:07.500 Asian offenders also account for exactly 24.1% of violent crimes against Asians. But Black Americans

00:43:15.060 account for 27% of crimes against Asians. And remember, both Hispanics and whites account for

00:43:22.640 much larger shares of the total American population than Black Americans do. And also what's interesting

00:43:28.100 about that is that every other race is primarily victimized by people of their own race. So white

00:43:33.280 people tend to kill white people. Hispanic people tend to kill Hispanic people. Black people tend to

00:43:37.520 kill Black people. But only among Asians do we see another demographic as the primary offender.

00:43:44.260 And another thing to know is that the bulk of these crimes are happening in San Francisco,

00:43:48.640 in New York, and LA. So when you're thinking about people's politics, which politicians are probably

00:43:53.200 influencing them or whether or not white supremacy is the culprit, I think it's important to keep that

00:43:59.460 point in mind as well. And I mean, I don't know what to say. I'm not making a judgment about all of

00:44:06.240 this. I understand that even reading those reports and reading that data is offensive. I'm not trying

00:44:11.840 to be offensive or to cause controversy. I'm not making any judgments about any particular group by

00:44:16.580 reading these headlines. I'm not ascribing motives or painting with a broad brush. It's just what it is.

00:44:22.680 I have no agenda behind reporting that. It makes no difference to me. Whether it is white people or

00:44:28.580 Black people doing the victimization of Asian people, in any case, I think it should be prosecuted

00:44:33.960 to the fullest extent of the law and that we should do everything we feasibly can to protect vulnerable

00:44:40.080 communities from violence. But I do care about what's true. I do care about false narratives.

00:44:46.520 According to the outlet SFGate, walking to a convenience store in San Francisco's

00:44:51.100 Visitation Valley last fall, Rongshi Chen eyed a pair of young Black men coming his way. With no

00:44:58.440 warning, the men grabbed the 64-year-old, lifted him and threw him into the concrete. They kicked his

00:45:02.800 ribs, broke his collarbone and made off with $200 credit cards and Chen's identification. He's not

00:45:08.640 alone. At least four high-profile attacks involving Blacks and Asians have occurred since January in San

00:45:14.000 Francisco and Oakland, including the beating death of Tianxing Yu, 59, last month. Two 18-year-old men

00:45:22.600 have been charged with murder. Others, including the police chiefs in San Francisco and Oakland,

00:45:29.460 are just as emphatic that the problem is not hatred of Asian Americans, but a hazardous

00:45:36.040 collision between angry young men and a vulnerable population with cash in their pockets. And so this

00:45:42.860 is a problem that's been going on for a long time. The data that I just read you about the

00:45:46.820 disproportionate number of crimes committed against Asians being by Black Americans has persisted.

00:45:58.540 If you look at the justice data from 1993 to 2018, you'll see that consistent pattern that has remained

00:46:05.700 pretty much stagnant. Now, I think it's probably true that as this 2010 article is saying the police

00:46:13.260 chief said in San Francisco and Oakland, that there's not necessarily an indication of most of

00:46:18.600 these crimes being what is considered a hate crime, meaning people targeted for their race. And it's

00:46:24.080 important to note that according to FBI data on hate crimes, about 2.4 of all hate crimes are classified

00:46:29.920 as anti-Asian hate crimes. 205 in 2019, 46% of those were committed by white people, 15% committed

00:46:37.860 by black people, 34% by someone of unknown ethnicity. So again, that's very vague. And the

00:46:44.120 definition of hate crime is very vague and how they decide what's a hate crime is also very vague and

00:46:48.180 sometimes arbitrary. But that particular statistic, if we're taking it at face value, is more in line

00:46:54.440 with the population sizes with the proportions of both groups. It is odd, by the way, how few of

00:47:02.120 these we tend to hear about. There is a long history of tense Asian and Black relations. Outlets like

00:47:09.700 Fox and the Brookings Institute, who, by the way, I think has produced a lot of good and really helpful

00:47:14.500 stuff. They tried to say that it's actually still the fault of white supremacy and white people when a

00:47:20.780 person victimizes an Asian person because of what they call the, quote, model minority myth that

00:47:26.320 they claim white people use to pit Asian people against black people in order to try to, you know,

00:47:33.720 not have them on the same side. But while it may be true that white Americans discriminating against

00:47:40.100 both Asian Americans and African Americans, or they have discriminated against these two groups,

00:47:45.420 and while it's true that our history is unquestionably rife with different kinds of

00:47:51.600 discrimination and isms, the idea that this myth is today perpetuated by white people and is the cause

00:47:58.480 of Black-on-Asian crime is literally preposterous. It's infantilizing. It robs people of moral agency

00:48:05.940 in an effort to stick to a narrative in which whiteness and white supremacy are always the culprit.

00:48:11.020 Plus, it ignores the facts Asian Americans do statistically, objectively, have among all

00:48:18.220 ethnicities in America, including white people, the highest graduation rates, the lowest crime rates,

00:48:23.440 the lowest divorce and fatherlessness rates, the highest median income. Asians between 12 and 20

00:48:29.040 are half as likely as the average young American to drink underage. Asian students do on average 50%

00:48:35.020 more homework than the average American student. That's not a myth. That's just true. And I understand,

00:48:41.020 that is very disconcerting. It's very inconvenient to the whole narrative that every system that is

00:48:47.660 in place in America today is created to uphold whiteness and to uphold white supremacy. Because if

00:48:55.320 that were true, the fact that Asian people on average are doing better than white people in all of these

00:49:01.140 categories, it puts a real wrench in that theory. And so I understand why people don't want to talk

00:49:07.200 about that. And they want to pretend that that doesn't exist and that it's actually just some

00:49:10.940 sort of myth that white people are perpetuating, again, to uphold white supremacy. But it's a faulty,

00:49:17.840 it's a faulty premise. It's a wrong narrative. It's not factual. Lauren Chen, who is half Chinese,

00:49:24.320 she pointed some of these things out on Twitter. She then posted some of the DMs that she got from

00:49:30.700 people. She originally said, you know, like, I'm from an Asian family, we value these things.

00:49:35.920 And she got a very vicious response from some people. She got some messages that said, for example,

00:49:43.280 your house probably smelled like cat stew and bats, old Kung flu, cuss word, cuss word that I won't say.

00:49:51.500 Also, another message called her the B word, you eat cats and dogs. You are a C-H-I-N-K,

00:49:57.740 y'all eat effing cats. This was not, by the way, these messages that she posted from people

00:50:03.400 in reaction to this were not from white supremacists. The fact is this, quote,

00:50:09.420 model minority trope is something that is used much more by progressives than anyone else to

00:50:15.000 try to justify discriminating against Asian Americans. And here's how, according to The Guardian,

00:50:21.560 Biden administration drops Trump era discrimination lawsuit against Yale. The lawsuit had claimed

00:50:27.120 university discriminates against Asian American and white applicants, which via affirmative action

00:50:33.140 is actually true. And the Trump administration was trying to go after Yale because of this,

00:50:38.240 because they were purposely discriminating against these two groups. And the Biden administration

00:50:42.420 decided to put an end to the lawsuit. The Trump admin, the Trump admin federal prosecutors had argued,

00:50:48.740 quote, the university violates civil rights laws when it discriminates based on race and national origin

00:50:52.980 in its undergraduate admissions process. And that raises the determinative factor in hundreds of

00:50:58.020 admission decisions every year. And that's absolutely true. In order to meet certain quotas,

00:51:03.580 universities will discriminate against Asian students because there would be too many Asians

00:51:08.560 and not enough of other groups if they simply allowed it to be by merit. That's just the fact.

00:51:13.800 The Biden admin announced February 3rd that it had dropped the discrimination lawsuit. So apparently,

00:51:18.520 when it comes to discrimination against Asian Americans, we don't care enough to actually pursue

00:51:24.500 justice in that kind of situation. According to ABC 7, San Francisco School Board votes to end

00:51:30.640 merit-based admission to Lowell High, move school into lottery system. And apparently the motivation is

00:51:37.020 because, again, there are too many Asian students. San Francisco Board of Education voted to end the

00:51:42.980 merit-based admission at Lowell, a top academic high school. The article says, quote,

00:51:47.240 in October, because of the pandemic, the San Francisco School Board proposed eliminating

00:51:50.720 selective merit-based admissions at Lowell for one school year. But when racist incidents resurfaced at

00:51:56.680 the high school last month, the board quickly proposed a resolution to make the change permanent.

00:52:02.260 According to California School Dashboard, about 50 percent of the students at Lowell are Asian,

00:52:07.840 18 percent are white, 12 percent are Latino, and 2 percent are African American. They're trying to change

00:52:13.060 that last one. And so they are, I mean, explicitly, they say they're taking away merit-based admission

00:52:21.280 to change those numbers, which I think sounds a lot like bigotry. But there are ongoing questions

00:52:26.840 and concerns about whether moving Lowell to the lottery system will end or address racism at the

00:52:31.740 school. You're just shifting racism. You're just kind of renaming and re-manipulating racism to go

00:52:40.100 against one group because you're afraid that Asians, if you keep it merit-based, are going to continue

00:52:45.100 to be the dominant percentage at that school. And so you get rid of merit altogether and you use a lottery

00:52:54.700 system in order to make it more superficially diverse. And so that kind of discrimination from

00:53:01.100 progressives is apparently okay. This is a really interesting article from the pages of the Wall Street

00:53:08.600 Journal, the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal titled, The Woke Model Minority Myth for

00:53:13.920 Progressives' Asian American Achievement is an Embarrassment. Quote, The North Thurston Public

00:53:19.240 Schools in Lacey, Washington made headlines in November when their equity report classified Asian

00:53:24.140 Americans along with whites instead of as students of color. Apparently, the Asian Americans were doing

00:53:29.740 too well academically to be students of color. After what the district said was an overwhelming public

00:53:35.100 response, it admitted its category choices had racist implications and dropped the equity report

00:53:41.440 from its website. Modern progressive theory more or less divides the nation between oppressors defined

00:53:47.220 as whites and the oppressed defined as everyone else. You guys know exactly what that is if you listen

00:53:52.720 to this podcast. In this framework, achieving success puts you on the side of the oppressors and thus makes

00:53:58.720 you white or white adjacent, even if your family came from China or India. Asian Americans are caught

00:54:05.020 in a bind. Condemn the system of white supremacy and privilege along with other people of color or be

00:54:10.700 banished from the victim group as white adjacent, says Wen Yuan Wu, Executive Director of Californians for

00:54:17.620 Equal Rights. The progressive contention is that admitting students on individual merit is really about

00:54:23.260 upholding white dominance. What about Asian American success then? In this narrative, that's using the

00:54:29.060 model minority myth as a wedge against African Americans to send in the false message that with

00:54:34.300 strong families and hard work, America's racism can be overcome. In reality, by applying different

00:54:40.100 interest standards for different racial groups, the equity movement is stoking racial resentment and

00:54:44.820 pitting one group against another. In the past, anti-Asian bigotry took the form of direct assaults.

00:54:49.980 These reflected claims that anti-Asian Americans were inferior and capable of assimilating or stealing

00:54:55.480 jobs. But today, many Asian Americans are learning that the progressive form of discrimination may be the

00:55:01.120 most insidious of all. And what do progressives say to a Chinese American or Indian American when she realizes

00:55:07.020 their ideology means her children will be held to higher standards to get into college simply because of

00:55:12.240 their race? Asks Wai Wa Chin, a charter president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of

00:55:17.680 Greater New York? Should we really have to tell her children they must accept that because of their

00:55:23.620 race, they will have to work harder to get the same opportunities as others and accept this new racism

00:55:28.580 as the price of woke America? Now, I'm not saying that this form of progressive discrimination and

00:55:37.480 what I think is anti-Asian bigotry is what causes these anti-Asian crimes. I don't know enough to say

00:55:44.140 that. I'm not prideful enough to pretend to be able to make that kind of causal argument. All I'm trying

00:55:50.940 to say is that history, as well as our current reality, is a lot more complex than white bad,

00:55:58.760 non-white good. And when we fail to see that, when we turn into these morally flimsy, intellectually weak

00:56:06.000 people who can't see our problems for what they are, it means that we can't actually address the

00:56:12.600 issues at hand. We look at a case like what happened in Atlanta, where a white man shot and killed a

00:56:18.000 group that was predominantly Asian. And we decide that it must be indicative of widespread systemic

00:56:23.580 racism and white supremacy that is being weaponized against Asian people. We rush to blame Trump and

00:56:30.340 white people and conservatives for these crimes. And we make this case about those things without

00:56:35.060 any kind of knowledge supporting it. And actually, contrary to the knowledge that we do have about

00:56:40.120 patterns of recent crimes and completely ignoring other factors that might come into play, we fail

00:56:45.440 then to reach any kind of real solution. When we try to use this one horrifying instance and say that

00:56:52.020 it characterizes all of our problems, we lose our ability to think clearly. We won't look at the

00:56:58.020 problem, for example, of exploitation and trafficking reportedly occurring at some of these salons when

00:57:04.000 we are focused on the problem only being white perpetuated racism, when we don't even have the

00:57:11.720 facts to support that. We won't talk about these women being forced into vulnerable situations in which

00:57:17.000 frustrated men take out their their violence and anger on them. We won't talk about why so many young

00:57:22.860 people today are turning to pornography and some to prostitution instead of forming real relationships with

00:57:27.920 women. It means that we will mourn for this situation as we should, but we won't hear about or care about

00:57:35.620 as much a shooting at a Dallas nightclub in which eight people were shot because it doesn't perpetuate

00:57:41.140 any sort of pattern that we hope to prove or make a useful political point. And most people won't hear

00:57:46.860 or care about Sequoia Turner, the eight-year-old black girl that was killed by a BLM rioter in Atlanta last

00:57:53.280 year or the six-year-old girl in Texas who was just shot in the chest twice and killed on Friday by a

00:57:58.900 relative because she spilled some water. Her black life isn't as politically useful because she was

00:58:03.620 killed by someone who looked like her. We probably won't hear quite as much about the mentally ill man

00:58:09.360 in Rochester, New York, who was burned alive in his home by two black teenagers because he's white.

00:58:14.820 It's not politically expedient. It doesn't advance any kind of narrative. That's what happens

00:58:19.940 when we fail to see things as they are. When we are so dogmatically

00:58:26.880 loyal to one particular storyline and one particular narrative, we refuse to see reality

00:58:36.360 and we lose our moral compass in the process. Maybe this guy, Robert Long, was a racist. Maybe he did

00:58:43.380 fantasize about dominating Asian women. Maybe he was inspired by anti-Asian rhetoric. That is absolutely

00:58:48.980 a possibility, but we have no idea if that's true. We don't know. And for the people who are pointing

00:58:54.900 to the police officer saying or paraphrasing what Robert Long said is his reasoning for committing

00:59:00.740 the murder, saying he had a bad day, and then they're trying to claim this is whiteness at work.

00:59:06.160 Just remember, when Antoine Watson murdered Vishar Radhanapakti, the district attorney in that case said

00:59:13.240 Watson was just throwing a temper tantrum. So again, let us be fair. We can't just rush to confirm our

00:59:20.800 own biases. All of this is very complex. There are a lot of different parts to it. America is not just

00:59:27.080 split into white oppressors and non-white people who are being oppressed. And again, when we try to fit

00:59:33.540 everything into those two categories, we lose moral clarity and we become intellectually mushy,

00:59:40.000 rushing to confirm biases in this story. Not just when it comes to race, but also when it comes to

00:59:45.960 ideology, is exactly what's happening right now. Not just in the media, but also in the church.

00:59:52.800 I will talk about that in just one second.

01:00:02.140 So we have Salon articles about how this is a result of purity culture in the Baptist church.

01:00:08.180 And I mean, give me a break. I've got my problems with some of the stuff that teens were taught in

01:00:14.280 church about sex when I was growing up. I've talked about that. Some of it was anti-gospel,

01:00:19.200 unhealthy, unproductive. But let's just blow the tiniest gust of air into that house of cards that

01:00:25.820 people are trying to build with this argument by asking for some numbers to back up that assertion.

01:00:30.760 You think most of the guys raping and beating up women every year are Baptist church-going kids who

01:00:35.420 got the purity talk at church camp? I'm not saying that doesn't happen. I think it definitely does.

01:00:40.520 But you're going to tell me that's the trend the data indicates? It doesn't maybe have anything to

01:00:45.940 do with the rampant objectification of women in our culture, easily accessible pornography,

01:00:50.460 which, according to Trafficking Hub, can apparently be tailored by whatever racial proclivities and

01:00:55.720 perversions a person might have. That's not a possibility.

01:00:58.620 I don't think an analysis of victimizers is going to support the claim that rapists and

01:01:04.680 sexual assaulters in this country are predominantly products of misguided youth pastors. Again,

01:01:09.600 not saying that that's not a problem, but to go so far as to say that this dude's murder rampage

01:01:15.580 was due to that just does not hold up to any scrutiny. Robert P. Jones reported this,

01:01:25.440 not incidental, he says on Twitter. Atlanta murder suspects, SBC Church, Southern Baptist

01:01:31.780 Convention Church, belongs to Founders Ministries, a group that claims the white fragility is pro-racism,

01:01:37.560 calls critical theory, critical race theory, godless and materialistic ideologies, equates women

01:01:43.080 preaching with abuse. I don't know if that last one is true. Then Dr. Anthony Bradley,

01:01:50.480 who is a religion professor at King's College, he responded to Robert Jones's tweet like this,

01:01:57.260 again, CRT, critical race theory, is not the threat SBC leaders should be worried about.

01:02:02.800 It's the anti-CRT gang using the faux-CRT hysteria to mask their Jim Crow-era evangelicalism,

01:02:10.040 the same one that they called MLK a communist. The discipleship crisis is their errant gospel

01:02:17.040 understanding. So trying to translate this, because Founders Ministries has spoken biblically

01:02:23.940 and logically and kindly, by the way, against the godlessness, against the illogic of critical

01:02:30.020 race theory, which we've already seen so much of as we've been talking about this subject today,

01:02:35.540 and because the church that this suspect was one time a part of is a part of Founders Ministries,

01:02:40.660 being against CRT is somehow to blame for this, and being against CRT is being a Jim Crow,

01:02:46.820 so evangelical. So when Ariel Robinson and her husband, a black couple from South Carolina,

01:02:52.580 beat their adopted daughter to death days after Ariel Robinson tweeted about her white adopted

01:02:58.260 kids having white privilege, this was just a couple months ago, we can't make any connection

01:03:02.480 between the possible toxicity of that kind of thinking. But when a murderer who went to a church

01:03:07.620 that's part of a ministry that recorded a few podcasts about the inconsistencies of critical

01:03:13.080 race theory with the Bible, it's totally fair game to say that this is part of the problem that

01:03:17.760 inspired this guy to commit murders. The answer is yes to some people, because ironically, that is what

01:03:24.460 CRT forces its adherents to believe. I'll explain that in a second. Now, interestingly, Dr. Bradley

01:03:31.240 tweeted this last night. He says, data, violence against Asians 1993 to 2018, according to the Bureau

01:03:40.760 of Justice Statistics, Dr. Anthony Bradley tweets this, table 14 of those committing violence against

01:03:48.080 Asians, 24% are committed by whites, 24% are committed by Asians, 7% by Hispanics, 27.5% by blacks.

01:03:54.900 It's mostly black, and we're still not talking about it. Why? The reason Dr. Bradley is because of the

01:04:02.800 mentality of critical race theory that you say criticizing is akin to being a Jim Crow evangelical.

01:04:10.840 Critical race theory is a secular worldview that sees the world through the lens of race,

01:04:15.840 predominantly primarily as white versus black. Its main assertion is that America is systemically

01:04:21.480 racist against black people, always has been, always will be, until we dismantle all the patterns,

01:04:27.540 all the institutions, all the norms, all the systems that hold white power structures in place

01:04:32.600 through a variety of interventions, getting white people to give up their power, their capital,

01:04:36.600 their influence, their voice, et cetera, and give it to non-white people, specifically to black people.

01:04:41.340 It sees whites as active or complicit in racism, only two options. There is no such thing in critical

01:04:47.060 race theory as being not racist, and all black people it sees in one way or another as victims

01:04:55.840 of white oppression. Therefore, there is no room for black people in this critical race theory

01:05:01.860 worldview to be in any way seen as an oppressor. So you want to know why we don't hear about the

01:05:07.540 dominance of black on Asian crime? Because of the intersectionality CRT worldview that has increasingly

01:05:13.620 affected our media and academia is seeping into the church has been for the past decade that weighs

01:05:20.840 culpability based on race rather than on actual action and responsibility. So that's why you see

01:05:27.080 articles and activists clamoring to explain that even black on Asian crime is the result of white

01:05:31.940 supremacy. When that is your worldview and you have to fit everything inside it, that's the only way to

01:05:37.660 make sense of what's going on. But we know that this rubs up against what we as Christians know to be

01:05:43.480 true, that we are all going to stand individually before God one day and give an account, that we

01:05:49.760 are each of us dead in sin apart from Christ and are bound for the same hell without him in the same

01:05:54.580 heaven with him. Matthew 15, 19 says, for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual

01:06:02.780 immorality, theft, false witness slander. Out of Robert Long's heart, out of Antoine Watson's heart

01:06:10.100 came murder for which they both must give an account before God. And because God loves the image bearers

01:06:17.860 they killed and because God embodies justice, he will show no partiality to one over the other based on

01:06:25.500 skin color. Jesus can forgive them both. Jesus can save them both, reconcile both of them. I pray he

01:06:33.160 does. And that doesn't mean that we can't talk about differences of experiences, different kinds of

01:06:38.860 oppression, different environments, different motives, whatever we can. We should try to understand

01:06:45.660 different types of people and backgrounds in this country. But the idea that some people will have

01:06:51.940 or should have less culpability in eternity or should have less culpability on earth based on

01:06:57.220 the experiences of people who looked like them or based on some intersectionality scale is not

01:07:02.620 justice. Remember, justice, according to God, impartial, direct, truthful, proportional. Exodus 23,

01:07:10.820 1 through 3, you shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with a wicked man to be a

01:07:15.860 malicious witness. You shall not fall in with the many to do evil, nor shall you bear witness in a lawsuit,

01:07:21.240 siding with the many so as to prefer a pervert justice. You shall be partial to a poor man. You

01:07:28.040 shall not be partial to a poor man in a lawsuit. There's Leviticus 19.15. There's Deuteronomy 19.15

01:07:35.640 through 21. There's Acts 10.34 that talks about the evil of partiality. There's James 2.8 through 9

01:07:42.840 that talks about the evil of partiality. We've gone through all of these citations many times on this

01:07:49.820 podcast. We've got Matthew 5.38 through 42 that talks about proportionality and the directness of

01:07:56.960 God's justice. God's justice, according to the Bible, is impartial. It is direct. It is truthful.

01:08:03.300 It is proportional. We will not know God's justice perfectly until we are on the other side of

01:08:09.400 eternity, but we've got to do our best to promote it here. So when we fail to look to God as a guide,

01:08:17.200 we allow our outrage to be swayed by mainstream narratives and media headlines and Twitter

01:08:22.700 trends. We only get upset about certain kinds of murders and crimes in certain contexts that help

01:08:28.240 bolster our biases, but we don't care about other crimes that happen that fall out of those biases

01:08:35.420 or fall out of those narratives. Personally, I think that Robert Long deserves the death penalty,

01:08:41.960 without a doubt. And I know I haven't done an episode yet giving you my biblical reasoning for

01:08:48.540 that. I am actually filming that soon. I'm preparing for that. God cares about the loss

01:08:53.400 of innocent life so much that the only punishment that he gives as fit for murder is the death penalty

01:08:58.740 and far be it from me to pretend I am more just or more merciful than God. If it comes out that Robert

01:09:06.420 Long is a virulent racist, if crimes against Asian people clearly inspired by white supremacy start

01:09:11.800 trending, I will have absolutely no problem talking about that on this podcast. Like I said, I don't

01:09:17.340 care one way or another. I think we have an obligation to call out evil and an obligation also

01:09:22.300 to be as truthful as we can, as we finite human beings can. Let me end with this. As I said at the

01:09:31.780 beginning of last Thursday's episode, which go listen to that just beginning monologue of last

01:09:36.760 Thursday's episode, if you can. I don't like to talk about this stuff. I don't like to talk about

01:09:41.100 race. I don't like pushing back against mainstream narratives surrounding race because it makes

01:09:45.740 people mad, especially coming from me, a white girl. Worse than that, a white girl with conservative

01:09:50.780 views. Immediately, by some, I am either labeled privileged and ignorant at best or racist at worst. I'm

01:09:58.580 disqualified from having this conversation, and yet here I am. Is it because I like stirring the pot?

01:10:04.500 No, it's definitely not that. I actually dread these kinds of episodes. Believe it or not, I really do

01:10:10.060 not desire controversy. I don't want to go viral. I don't want to disagree with prominent voices,

01:10:15.220 especially Christian voices on this. That's not my desire. I don't want to be placed in categories I

01:10:21.000 know are false just because I buck up against the popular commentary in much of the church today

01:10:25.480 surrounding so-called racial and social justice. I want to be able to nod my head as I'm hearing

01:10:31.700 people tell me what a systemically racist country America is to this day, that white supremacy is the

01:10:38.800 cause of all racial disparities and problems we see in our country. I want to be able to agree with

01:10:43.400 the media narrative surrounding terrible incidents like the ones involving George Floyd, like the tragedy

01:10:49.300 we saw in Atlanta last week. Everything would be a whole lot easier if I did. I could conveniently walk

01:10:55.340 that line as I see so many Christian walk between woke and conservative. I could agree

01:11:01.560 with Ibra Max Kendi and Robin DiAngelo when it comes to race and racism while maybe putting a bit of a

01:11:07.600 Christian sounding spin on it, but I could still hold my ground for the most part when it comes to

01:11:12.400 gender and sexuality, save a little nuance for the sake of empathy. I could say being pro-life means

01:11:17.760 being holistically pro-life, which somehow leaves out fighting for the legal right of babies to live in

01:11:23.600 the womb, but includes immigration issues, at least while Trump was president, abolishing the death

01:11:29.080 penalty for murderers and expanding unaccountable welfare programs. Basically, I could ensure that

01:11:34.940 there is very little daylight as as little daylight as possible between my political and moral views

01:11:41.560 and the views of the secular world while still affirming most tenets of Orthodox Christianity.

01:11:47.220 I could take my cues from the mainstream when it comes to politics, when it comes to morality, put my Bible

01:11:59.940 spin on it and keep myself safe, at least for the time being, and you could too. But if you don't, you will be

01:12:06.440 called divisive. You will be accused of not lacking empathy, of not being relational enough. Worse, you might be

01:12:13.080 called a racist, a bigot, a white supremacist, a misogynist, a terrorist. If you criticize, for example,

01:12:20.720 critical race theory, you may be accused of being the cause of murders, which is what we are seeing

01:12:26.320 happen right now among some people who call themselves followers of the Lord. You could be the most

01:12:33.380 charitable, loving, generous, gospel-loving woman in the world. And if you do not fall in line when it comes

01:12:38.960 to what are categorized as social justice issues, especially if you're outspoken about it, you will

01:12:44.400 be flogged. And that hostility that you see is meant to intimidate you, to shame you, to make you realize

01:12:51.680 that it's much safer, there's much less risk, and settling in the comfortable middle, or at least,

01:12:57.200 at the very least, just being quiet about it. When it comes to race, maybe the hottest topic both in and

01:13:04.280 outside of the church right now, you could bow to the pressure that says white people aren't allowed to

01:13:08.800 disagree when it comes to this stuff, or that you as a black person who might disagree with some of

01:13:13.580 this stuff, that you've just internalized white supremacy. You could buy the lie that being loving

01:13:19.240 and empathetic means silently nodding with mainstream, nodding along with mainstream narratives surrounding

01:13:24.240 events that involve a white and non-white person. You could replace lived experience with objective

01:13:29.460 truth, or you could do the uncomfortable and what I believe to be the right thing of digging past the

01:13:36.860 headlines, digging past the emotionalism displayed in social media activism, and to see what's really

01:13:42.460 going on. And to do what I have been saying for months is the most important and impactful thing

01:13:48.580 that you can do right now, which is to live not by lies, as the title of Rod Dreher's book tells us

01:13:57.580 about a Soviet dissident. Don't accept them. Don't tell them. Don't repeat them. Do your best not to

01:14:05.020 believe them. Live not by lies. And I never, ever claim to have any kind of monopoly on the truth.

01:14:11.620 Thank the Lord. I am wrong a lot. I'm wrong plenty. You guys at times disagree with me. You give me

01:14:17.060 corrections. You respectfully and lovingly push back on me. I've issued corrections on this podcast.

01:14:22.120 I've apologized where I overstated or misstated or got a fact wrong. I've given light to some

01:14:27.740 contentions that some of you may have. I have begged you, ordered you to do your own research and come to

01:14:33.700 your own conclusions. I'm just one finite person, a fallible person who needs to be shaped and helped

01:14:39.480 just as much as all of us do. So all I'm trying to do is to come together in all things and to try

01:14:47.280 to see things as much as we can as they are, to view everything that happens through the lens of

01:14:52.600 God's justice and in light of eternity. And I'm so thankful for your support and your help in trying

01:14:59.700 to do that. That's what I tried to do today. I hope it at least sparks some conversation and

01:15:04.460 sparks some thoughts about how the media and how some people, even in the church, react to this kind

01:15:10.820 of stuff and what really is going on beneath the surface and why it's so important for us to be able

01:15:17.340 to look at objective truth, not just biblical moral truth, but also scientific numerical truth as well,

01:15:23.860 to try to live in the realm of reality and to live not by lies as much as we possibly can.

01:15:30.480 All right. I know that was a long episode. Thank you guys so much for listening or watching. I will be back

01:15:35.480 here tomorrow.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - March 22, 2021

Ep 389 ｜ Anti-Asian Crimes & Our Obligation to the Truth

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