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.