(Akiit.com) It’s really a bad day when:
- A gunman kills eight people and the law enforcement spokesman expresses empathy for him while saying nothing about the victims.
- A U.S. Senator says that the “jovial” rioters who stormed the Capitol love this county and would never break the law.
- Twelve members of Congress refuse to back a Resolution honoring the Capitol Police who saved their lives because it mentioned “insurrection.”
Murder in Georgia
Eight people were murdered in a rampage by a young white gunman at three different Asian owned businesses in Georgia. Six of the eight people killed were Asian women. First, I continue to be amazed at how white perpetrators of mass killings are taken alive (Dylann Roof) while unarmed black people are killed by police. But that’s for another day. In this instance, the hesitance to call this senseless act of violence a hate crime is very confusing to me.
In his confession to the police, the gunman blamed his killing spree on his sex addiction. And he singled out Asian owned massage parlors to carry out his crimes. The scene of the second shooting was twenty-seven miles from the first. Were there no white owned massage parlors in between? He was only addicted to sex with Asian women?
Then the sheriff who interviewed him after his capture said, “He was having a really bad day and this is what he did.” What? He was having a bad day. What about the victims who merely went to work that day and didn’t make it home? There was no similar expression of sympathy for their needless deaths.
But if they were Black Lives Matter…
Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said he wasn’t threatened at all by the hordes who stormed the Capitol seeking to overturn the election because he knew they loved their country, respected law enforcement and would never break a single law. But if the people descending on the Capitol had been BLM or Antifa, he “might have been a little concerned.”
That gives you insight into his thinking: there’s nothing white people can do that’s wrong, and anything black people do, even peacefully protesting the killing of unarmed people, can’t be right. And that seems to carry over to police as well as several off-duty and retired officers were just as engaged in the assault, and violence against their fellow officers, as the rest of the mob. Blue lives didn’t matter.
What insurrection?
As Congress was about to award the Congressional Gold Medal, its highest honor, to the entire Capitol Hill Police Force for their valor in defending members against the marauding mob, twelve Congress people rose to object. They were displeased that the resolution to honor their guardians used the word “insurrection” to describe what happened that day.
Some of those who objected (Marjorie Taylor Green) are known to have associates who participated in the mayhem, and others are suspected to have given tours of the building, or information regarding the whereabouts of certain members while the riot was in progress. Following Senator Johnson’s thinking, they saw absolutely nothing wrong with the events on January 6 or the people who carried them out.
Words matter
It is stunning the disregard, or outright contempt, people in official capacities hold for people of color; fellow citizens of the United States of America. No wonder “ordinary” people also feel no sympathy or empathy when they see people of color being verbally abused, physically attacked or even killed.
Words matter. Thoughts are manifest as words and words as actions. Hateful speech – we don’t know what people think until they open their mouths – inevitably leads to hateful acts: violence. And as President Biden said while visiting AAPI leaders in Atlanta, “Silence is complicity.”
What comes next…
Let this be our “Fred Hampton moment.” Brother Hampton was about uniting oppressed people of all ethnicities in common cause. He taught that the enemy wasn’t all white people, but white supremacist ideology. Remember, people like Clarence Thomas, Candace Owens and Daniel Cameron are as complicit in upholding the status quo as any members of the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers.
The late Congressman John Lewis exhorted us from his deathbed to speak-up and speak-out whenever we see injustice. Because an injustice against any of us is an injustice against all of us. It’s not only Asian Americans who have to combat hate, like it’s not just African Americans who have to fight racism. It’s going to take all of us, together, if we ever wish to bring about “a more perfect union.”
Columnist; Harry Sewell