Atlanta massage parlors shootings apparently more “complicated” than a simple “hate crime” against Asians

 

While the mass shooting by a 17-year-old black male in Indianapolis this past January—the second worst mass shooting in the city’s history—did not receive much national attention, likely because it was confined to family members and wasn’t politically “convenient” to talk about, the Atlanta massage parlor shootings this past week had the trappings of a “national” story: a white man on a shooting rampage targeting Asians, an “obvious” hate crime against Asians. The national news media and Asian advocacy groups are decrying the rise in what is being called hate crimes against Asians, although this stems largely from those who believe Donald Trump’s claim that the COVID-19 is a “Chinese” virus, which of course is where it originated, but the blame for the ineptitude in response to it lies squarely in the lap of countries most badly hit by it.

But was it really a “hate crime”? First off, Asians should not be allowed to escape censor concerning the race hate of many of their own, especially against blacks and Hispanics. Take for instance the Asian-American fight to defeat the state of Washington’s Referendum 88 in 2019, which was to approve the state legislature’s initiative I-1000. This referendum would have overturned the anti-affirmative action I-200. Advocates for the Asian community were the most vocal in opposition to the measure; 300 Asian-Americans showed up in Olympia to protest the passing of the initial initiative, claiming it “discriminated” against Asians, principally in regard to admittance to institutions of higher learning. 

This claim is actually quite outrageous and racist if one considers the fact that Asians are over-represented at the University of Washington by at least three times their percent of the population in the state, and other minorities number literally by the handful. But since even before I-200 non-Asian minorities were under-represented at UW, the passage of the referendum was largely symbolic and would have had little effect on the number of Asian students; only racism against those they thought were “inferiors” could explain their opposition. Referendum 88 ended up losing by just over 20,000 votes, which no doubt Asian voters provided the margin for its defeat.

This is of course is no reason to commit acts of violence, since for other minorities race prejudice and discrimination is something they have had to live with seemingly forever, and for Asian racists, their own beliefs is something they must do their own “soul-searching” about. The question in the Atlanta shootings is whether Robert Long, who is charged in the killing of eight people—6 of them Asian—at three massage parlors in the Atlanta area did so because he “hated” Asians.  It is being reported that he had serious psychological issues. He was “deeply religious,” and had difficulty reconciling it with his alleged addiction to sex, which caused him to have “deep bouts” with “depression.” In high school, he was “shy” and never spoke to the girls, and didn’t seem to be “dangerous” to them. According to one individual who knew Long at the Maverick Recovery Center in Roswell to treat his depression, Tyler Bayless, this “addiction” ate away at him and every time he had a “relapse,” he “felt absolutely merciless remorse.”

Bayless claimed that Long prayed “every day” to purge himself of his unholy thoughts and “needs,” and that he never heard Long make racist remarks or denigrate nonwhites. Long apparently had “satisfied” his “addiction” at the three parlors he attacked, and since those providing the services were Asian, this likely accounts for a witness claim that he said he wanted “to kill all Asians”—not because he necessarily hated them for being Asian, but because in his mind the Asian women working in the parlors were to “blame” for his apparent drift away from a “godly” existence.

It was also revealed that all three parlors had “reputations” for providing “services” beyond what was publicly advertised; they were listed as places of “illicit” pleasures on erotic websites. The word “illicit” is just another way of saying they offered services that you could get arrested for. When questioned about this, Atlanta’s mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, feigned ignorance, insisting that the parlors were operating legally. This was before the Associated Press reported that in fact two of the parlors were the target of repeated police raids over the years for offering those “illicit” services; when questioned about this, Bottoms claimed that she was only trying to avoid “stereotyping” Asian women.

In 2019, Seattle police raided 11 massage parlors, “freeing” 26 Chinese women; whether or not these women themselves thought they were being “freed” or not is a matter of opinion—and apparently their own didn’t count. If there is one thing that “liberals” are not liberal about, it is all matters to do with sex—in fact, conservatives seem to be more “liberal” about the subject—because sex, gender and politics are all wrapped-up together in the gender advocate’s spider web. A “vast crime network” and “indentured servitude” is how the New York Times describes studies that tell of women in Asia who willingly enter this job “market” in order to enter the country without the annoyance of waiting for the legal immigration process to play out—particularly if they don’t have those stereotypical “tech” skills. They know full well what they signed up for, and they know that they have to pay off the cost of their “transportation” by doing this “work.”

Since most of them are in the country illegally, these women obviously have great concerns about how much they are paid and how long they have to work it off.  But even the Times report quotes from a study which found that 60 percent of the women in the “trade” who were questioned stated that they were not “coerced” to “perform” in their occupations, and remained in the “business” because they make enough money to both live here and to send home to help family. The other 40 percent questioned claimed that they did feel “coerced” by clients into sex acts, but were apparently told to do what was “expected” to “satisfy” the customer. 

It should be pointed out again that in the cases of the Atlanta parlors, they were in fact “advertised” on the Internet “black market” as havens for “illicit” services, and were located in what locals referred to as a “red light” district. I should also point out that there was a time when two free Seattle publications—the The Seattle Weekly and The Stranger—largely paid the bills with back page advertisements crammed with no-questions-asked sex-related “services” and "entertainment"; weren’t those the “days.”

Thus the Atlanta shootings is far more complicated a business that simply calling it an Asian hate crime—in fact it is probable that the shooter himself would say it wasn’t motivated out of “hate” for Asians simply because they were; he no doubt would claim that the Asians who worked at the parlors who willingly for money fed his “problem” were to “blame” for his actions. If the people who provided the “services” at these parlors were mostly white (and two of the dead were white), we would certainly be talking about this crime in different terms, primarily concerning the danger of working at such businesses, and certainly at an elevated stage above the usual “going postal” incident, since this involved mostly women.

And this incident wasn’t like the El Paso shooting, which was perpetrated by someone motivated to kill Hispanics not because they had done him any personal wrong, but because he was a true racist who hated Hispanics for no other reason but that they were, and believed all the racist stereotypes about them spewed by white nationalists. xenophobes, Trump and various Fox News personalities.