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 Battle btw, 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.