This Is How Thinking Works

One of my favourite things about Medium’s comment system is that it acts as a time machine. If somebody stumbles across a comment from years ago, and “claps” it, I get a notification that allows me to see what I was talking to people about back then.

Like “Look Back” but for debates.

If you cast your minds back around a year and a half, you’ll remember Robert Long, who carried out a mass shooting in a massage parlour in Atlanta. Six Asian women and a white man and woman were killed, and a Latino man was wounded. 

The press, delighting in all the sweet, sweet ad revenue they could earn by crying “racism,” instantly (and without any evidence) declared it a racially motivated shooting. All but erasing the existence of the non-Asian victims in the process. 

In my article, The Race To Focus On Race, I pointed out that there was absolutely no reason to believe that the shooting was racially motivated, and quite a few reasons to believe that sex addiction, religious fundamentalism, and violence against sex workers were the true motives. 

I pointed out that ascribing racial motivations where they don’t belong rarely works out well. Especially for the racial minorities involved.

And I pointed out that the erasure of the non-Asian victims to fit the narrative was both dishonest and, more importantly, unforgivably disrespectful to the non-Asian victims and their families.

SC appreciated the article, but didn’t feel like waiting around for evidence.

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SC:

Another great perspective and good points made.

Have to say though, I do believe race was a factor in the crime. I’m having a hard time seeing how it wasn’t. I think there’s enough known to say that racial biases were part of the decision making process in the execution of the crime and the mental landscape that got him there. I think it’s important to distinguish that not all biases are about outright hate. Fetishes, for example, are a bias. There are a lot of things about the stereotypical Asian woman that may have led to his biases for them to relieve his sexual angst based on evangelical fundamentalist ideology.

I don’t believe there is enough known yet to definitively say racism was a motivation.

That’s not as incongruous as one might think.

I do believe it was a hate crime based on misogyny and evangelical fundamentalism. Hate crimes can and absolutely do exist outside the realm of racism.

In the media, I’m hearing way too much about how it wasn’t a hate crime if you can’t prove racism and that’s just wrong. It may also be a contributing factor to the focus on race. Who knows? People may be missing the point based on a false definition of hate crime floating about.

~

We don’t know how to talk about race outside polar/binary dynamics. That’s a problem too. We have to be able to parse out nuance and draw appropriate lines and distinctions around these issues. Otherwise, they’ll never stop being issues.

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Steve QJ:

“I’m having a hard time seeing how it wasn’t.”

I'd really like you to be specific about why you think this, you haven't made the case here in a way I can understand.

To my mind, all we know right now is that he went into these businesses (that he'd frequented before) and shot whoever he found inside because he saw them as enabling a problem he wanted to stop.

Yes, we can talk about the fact that he'd chosen these businesses to go to for sex. Maybe that was fetishisation, maybe it was simply attraction (there's a difference), maybe they charged the lowest rates.

But even if we take the most racist adjacent case and assume he had a fetish for Asian women, we're still a long way from saying that he killed them BECAUSE they were Asian. What we know right now is that he killed them because he couldn't stop himself going to massage parlours.

Just to add, we know that he was planning to kill some people related to the porn industry but we don't know anything more than that. What if they had turned out not to be Asian? Would that change your opinion?

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SC:

I’m trying to be as clear as I can; it’s an indication of how hard it is to talk about these things and the fact that our language to do so often lacks necessary nuance.

Again, I don’t think the attack was due to racism or was a hate crime based on racism. The hate crime part attaches to misogyny.

I do think racial bias was an element or factor of the crime so far as we’re talking about legal intent terms like mens rea, or the guilty mind.

How do I get there?

Based on what is known. This guy killed because he blamed sex workers for his sex addiction. His targets were massage parlors he frequented. He supposedly chose massage parlors because they were safer.

Okay. I can accept that. Sounds reasonable.

Now let’s ask some followup questions. Out of all the massage parlors in Atlanta, did he choose ones with mostly Asian women or specific Asian women over others to frequent or are they all Asian enterprises? Prior to the murders, did he frequent massage parlors with non-Asian workers but then chose these specific “Asian" ones at the time of the crime? Why did he think that massage parlors were safer? Because of the stereotypes around Asian women? Why did he choose the massage parlors to hit before the porn industry plan in Florida? It might have been geographically expedient but it wasn’t the most tactically brilliant plan to hit the places he was known first. So was that just stupidity on his part or was this a spree he knew would end in suicide by cop. And he wanted to make sure he got those women before he died?

I could go on. If the answers to any of these questions fall toward “because they were Asian" then thoughts about race are a factor or element of the crime because that’s where his “guilty mind" lay. Make sense?

Crimes like this don’t happen on impulse. They’re thought about over a long time. The thought processes tends to follow patterns of obsessive thought.

I know from having lived in the deep south adjacent to evangelical culture all about the fundamentalism, the misogyny, the subtle racism, and the air of grievance pervasive in the culture. Based on that experience and Long’s own wording about why he had to, which is almost verbatim out of A Man’s Battlebtw, my best guess is this was a hate crime based on misogyny brought about by religious fundamentalism.

I believe that’s a reasonable assessment we can all make.

Looking at the religious fundamentalism, there’s a huge focus on being the ideal woman. What the purpose of and place of a proper wife is. This messaging is ubiquitous in the culture and the reason why young women are groomed for abuse in this culture and young men have no idea that they’re being abusive.

The ideal there is highly aligned with the stereotypical Asian woman. Quiet, submissive, anxious to please, doesn’t fight back, won’t even look you in the eye, small, etc. I’ve heard comparisons for years. There’s a weird reverence for Asian culture as an example of how to be a godly woman. Asian women are fetishized for this reason. It’s not based on attraction but on subservience. When girlfriends and wives find secret porn stashes of the “faithful” one of the things they lament about while they’re crying their eyes out on your shoulder is how much of it is Asian with a chronic refrain being, “how can I compete with that?”. Yeah.

Knowing that, my best guess is that race was an element or factor of the crime because of the entitled thought processes rampant in evangelical culture. Bias doesn’t have to be about hate.

It is an opinion and not fact, but it’s based on lived experience, reason, and objectivity not because I want to beat the racist drum or need that to be the reason. Frankly, in a lot of ways the attention to race pulls focus away from the problems with misogyny and fundamentalist culture which have done a lot of harm, along with the things you said. That’s not good for anyone either.

Still, it doesn’t serve anyone to bury or deny any of it either. Does it matter? Maybe not, but I think it does. I think the nuance matters. I think we need to learn to think these things through reasonably and get away from polar or binary thinking. We need to learn to look at the whole landscape.

Thanks for sticking through to the end. Hope this clarifies my thoughts for you better. And thanks again for a good, thought provoking article.

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Steve QJ:

“If the answers to any of these questions fall toward “because they were Asian" then thoughts about race are a factor or element of the crime because that’s where his “guilty mind" lay. Make sense?”

Yes, this makes perfect sense, but we don't have a shred of evidence to support the idea that the answer is yes at the moment.

You said you're having a hard time seeing how the crime could not be about race, but that conclusion relies on you assuming the answer is yes to a bunch of questions and working backwards.

We don't know the proportion of Asian women working in these businesses, we dont know whether the parlours he frequented happened to be cheaper or whether he chose them because they were far enough from his home that he felt safe that nobody he knew would see him go in, or any one of a thousand other factors.

I'm not denying that this crime was racially motivated. What I'm saying is that there's currently no way to know. Which is why the apparent certainty that it is racially motivated makes no sense.

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SC:

Evidence of legal weight? No. You’re right.

Just a lot of smoke around experience of religious fundamentalism and that quoted comment of Long’s. Which is why it’s my best guess and opinion.

I do understand the difference.

Still, that opinion is not based on race hysteria, so it troubles me to to no end to hear racism being talked about it absolutes by some and casually dismissed as a factor because of lack of evidence by others. Both will do irreparable harm. We need that nuance of thinking and speaking.

We likely won’t ever get evidence of legal weight because we can’t read another person’s mind to know what was going on in there. His owning it is dependent upon willingness to make atonement and being self aware enough to know his own mind.

That’s clearly a problem because people who are self aware enough to do that are also self aware enough to not commit such a crime in the first place.

So there we are.

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Steve QJ:

“Both will do irreparable harm.”

No, neither will do irreparable harm. What on Earth do you mean?? This melodramatic style of talking has become so popular! Nobody knows exactly what's going on right now so a few people are taking their best guess. Nobody is likely to die as a result.

What we hope will happen is that the police will do a thorough investigation, arrive at the correct conclusion, as will the jury, and this scumbag will go to jail for the rest of his life. On this point, if there's any justice in the world, the fact that he murdered eight people will be enough, regardless of their race.

Again, I'm not dismissing race as a factor at all. I spell that out in the article.All I'm saying is that those who are acting like this was obviously a racially motivated crime have no evidence to support that, and insisting on that narrative may well obscure factors that leave other vulnerable groups out of the picture.

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SC:

Harm to national discourse. Nothing melodramatic about that at all. We can’t talk to each other anymore. Like it or not these shootings affect us on a societal level. It’s stops being solely about the crime the minute it hits the airwaves. We have a problem with tribalism.

Again, I agree with you completely about letting the justice process run its course and being patient till then.

But I refuse to be dismissive and pre-determinant about race by saying there’s no evidence when there are still avenues along that line to investigate. Questions that need answering. That’s the flip side of the same damn coin.

The victims, their families, and the community deserves better than hasty conclusions that hijack the narrative by one tribe and gaslighting that stifles and stunts a proper and full accounting by the other.

I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.

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“I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

I realise that SC is trying to disengage here, and “2022 Steve” would probably let it go. But “2021 Steve” wasn’t ready to leave this simple point unresolved.

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Steve QJ:

“But I refuse to be dismissive and pre-determinant about race by saying there’s no evidence when there are still avenues along that line to investigate.”

This is such a bizarre argument. Saying that there's no evidence when there is no evidence is not being dismissive!

Acknowledging that there's currently no evidence is not refusing to investigate those avenues where evidence might be found, or saying that we shouldn't keep looking for new evidence.

The investigation is a week old, and none of us are privy to the details. I honestly have no idea what point you're trying to make here.

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SC:

Don’t you find it bizarre that investigators asked Long why he targeted massage parlors but never followed up with why he thought they were “safe” or any other natural follow up questions? If you ever watch an interview, they get very specific and keep asking questions to keep the suspect talking. Not just about physical elements of an event, but why they made the decisions they did along the way. So it’s likely that they did — maybe not those specific ones, but some kind of follow up. It just wasn’t part of the statement released to the public.

It’s also not uncommon for investigators to leave some things up to the lawyers and psych evaluations, etc to determine.

Exactly what sort of evidence would be enough for you to accept race as a factor anyway? Where do you expect that evidence is going to come from?

My problem with the “no evidence" stance like yours and Joe Duncan and a few others is that it’s biased in it’s own way.

We only know what’s been released to the public. We got just enough to leave us dangling but no where near enough to keep a fair and balanced perspective. Our minds want to fill in the gaps one way or the other. It’s too uncomfortable not to.

So while it’s true that there has been no evidence the crime was motivated by racial hatred released to the public there’s also been no evidence released that racial biases based on hate, fetish, or whatever had nothing whatsoever to do with the crime. We don’t know all the evidence they have or what evidence they’re still gathering/evaluating. We only know what they’ve told us to date.

We also don’t know if they’re not pursuing race aspect for other reasons.

Unless you deal with both sides of that equitably, the “no evidence" argument chooses a tribe and fills in gaps with a particular point of view.

We can grieve for and honor all the dead without dismissing some or forgetting others.

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Steve QJ:

“Unless you deal with both sides of that equitably, the “no evidence" argument chooses a tribe and fills in gaps with a particular point of view.”

There is no "both sides"! Right now, an investigation is underway, which we civilians know very little about, so there are huge limitations on what we can say with confidence.

The adult thing to do in that situation is not to start filling in the gaps in our knowledge with whatever our gut tells us. Especially with such a serious incident. It's to let the information be revealed, as it will be, and draw conclusions based on that.

Of course the investigators asked questions that we're not privy to. It's quite literally a legal requirement that they don't release sensitive information about the case before the trial.

Your argument seems to be that because we don't know what's happening right this instant, we should admit that we don't know, and SIMULTANEOUSLY start blaming racism or whatever other motives we can think of because it's POSSIBLE that there's proof of them that hasn't been released to the public. Can you seriously not see how silly that is?

There's been no evidence released that the whole thing was motivated by an unsatisfactory massage either. But there's been no evidence that it WASN'T motivated by that. Should that be a third "side" in our discussions about the case?? Or should we be grown-ups and make decisions based on evidence, even if that means we wait for a few days.

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SC:

No. My argument is to not say

No evidence = no racism

in an absolute-ish manner without acknowledging that questions need to be answered. Or that none of us have seen any actual evidence in the first place. We only know what’s been released and reported. And subsequently discussed in the public sphere.

To elevate the need for “evidence" over all other considerations without defining what you mean by that. What kind of evidence? Presumably what the police can provide but they’re only looking at it through the lens of crime and prosecution.

Or that lack of tangible physical evidence of racism doesn’t mean no race issues existed. It means there is no evidence of legal weight, but intent lies in the mind. Hard to get proof of legal weight there unless you’re on the set of Criminal Minds or Law & Order.

I’m just saying be careful about not falling into tribalism yourself arguing a specific point about evidence.

We should wait, see how things play out, and keep an open mind. We shouldn’t look for racism where it doesn’t exist. But we also shouldn’t get hung up on legal or investigative types of “evidence” as the sole determinant of whether race was a factor either.

I don’t know what you’ve been reading; most of what I’ve been reading is fairly balanced. People are talking about race and the rise of anti-Asian violence. They’re asking questions about how race may have played into it. They’re good questions. They’re talking about Asian fetish a lot and how that is a form of bias. There’s a lot of concern that race issues are going to be swept under the rug because the public notifications and messaging were somewhat bungled.

I’m not seeing much of where there are demands for a hate charge based on race or such. Or that it was racism but not misogyny. Things like that. Of course, I have limited reading time (as do we all) so I’m choosy about who and what I read from. Such extreme points of view may simply not be in my feed.

What comes out of the media and the pundits is…the media and talking head histrionics and outrage.

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Steve QJ:

“No evidence = no racism”

You're failing to distinguish between what you're afraid is being said and what IS being said.

I have no interest in minimising racism. Obviously. And I feel that way whoever it's directed against. When I say, "there's no evidence of racism at the moment" what I mean is: there's no evidence of racism at the moment.

That means that there might turn out to be evidence of it in future and there might not. And it's incorrect to decide that the attack was racist before we have evidence for or against. I'll make one final attempt to make this clear.

There is, without doubt, a series of anti-Asian American attacks happening in America right now. I'm sure we agree on that. But how do we know?

Well, when the first attack happened we didn't. Some random guy assaults a random old person that happens to be Asian. We can't assume it's racially motivated at that point. In fact, it would be kind of stupid to do so and would risk us misunderstanding the true motive.

But then it happens again, and again, and again. Different attackers, different victims, no apparent motive like theft or revenge or provocation. We start to see a pattern. These victims have nothing in common but their ethnicity. Oh, and there's a pandemic which has upended people's lives which has carelessly been associated with China by the president and then even more carelessly associated with all Asian people.

Some of the attackers specifically mention this when they commit their attacks. Some don't. But in the absence of all other discernible motives, the evidence eventually leads us to believe that the attacks are racially motivated. This becomes our best theory. And though we remain open to new information, we proceed on this basis until something is different. Something like, oh, I don't know, a sex addict who we know has other clearly established motives and has said, a year before he committed the crime, that his interest in the parlours wasn't race related.

Again, this isn't ironclad proof that the crimes weren't, at least in part, racially motivated. I say that explicitly and repeatedly in the article. But saying "let's wait until we have evidence before jumping to conclusions" is not "falling into tribalism".

This is how thinking works. This is the process by which we get things right. It's honestly heartbreaking to me that I'm having to expend any energy explaining this.

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Racism, trans issues, politics, climate change, it feels as if there are a thousand things we’re not thinking about clearly enough right now. Which means we’re not talking about them clearly enough either.

The speed at which the internet moves makes us impatient for answers. Preferably answers that line up nicely with our gut instincts. So if the evidence takes too long or the topic requires too much research or the nuances require too much thought, we retreat to our ideological preferences.

Thinking clearly in the social media age is often simply about having patience. Being willing to take a step back and consider the gaps in our knowledge. Taking a little extra time before allowing our opinions to solidify. Recognising that there’s almost always a difference between what feels true and what is true.

Hopefully, whatever we end up arguing about in 2023, we’ll still be striving to remember this.