Again, I get that. I read and enjoy both of y’alls works.

I hope that you get for the most part I am saying the same thing.

My concern is tribal discourse, the possible mothballing of racial factors in this case and what that will do to the Asian community and society at large, and unclear emphasis on “evidence" as a requirement to talking about race. That and that alone.

These are not melodramatic, bizarre, or invalid concerns. They are equally valid points.

I don’t think either of you are just flat out wrong. I think you’re articles are incomplete.

You ask for evidence and time before determining racism.

Fine. Valid point. Perfectly reasonable.

You say none of the evidence you have seen indicates racism.

But….

You haven’t actually seen any evidence at all. None of us have. You only know what’s been released to the public and what’s been reported. That’s all any of us know.

We know from experience they don’t tell us everything. We know from experience they make choices in investigation and prosecution. I’m not speaking about nefarious conspiracies here, it mostly has to do with resource allocation and protecting the integrity of the case or other investigations that may have been sparked by the case.

So when you say no evidence = no racism you’ve made evidence an ambiguous requirement— chosen a side by doing so— by failing to acknowledge

• “Concrete” evidence may or may not be available. Ever. Particularly when you’re talking about evidence of motive instead of evidence of crime.
• They may not be looking for evidence of racism, especially if they don’t need it to prosecute. In this case, they don’t.
• They’re not necessarily forthcoming with info on all evidence they have to the public.
• Like it or not, racism and racial bias can often only be determined by what’s between the lines. So if you’re looking for something like swastika or mjolnir hammer tattoos, or a confession saying “I hate Asian women" all stamped and documented with an evidence tag, then you’re going to fall short of the big picture. The best we may ever have available in that regard is logical, reasonable, and experiential inference. And that’s not nothing.

That last bullet point doesn’t mean people should be looking for racism out of thin air either. There is a very narrow channel to navigate here and remain truly unbiased. It’s hard, I get it. I’m struggling too.

We just need to be very careful in how we look at it and how we talk about it. We should be mindful of not being tribal about it. Even inadvertently.

That’s my point and where my criticism of these articles lie.