Yesterday, libertarian political commentator Kmele Foster examined the media’s bizarre — and disturbing — compulsion to racialize acts of violence, as has been the case with the massage parlor shootings:
Imagine a loved one dies in a high profile act of violence. The media narrative surrounding the tragedy begins w/ intense speculation RE racial motives, and this framing persists despite growing evidence that race is likely irrelevant.
How would you feel?
Who benefits from this?— Kmele (@kmele) March 18, 2021
Victims of last nights violence are individuals w/ families who love + will forever miss them. This is paramount.
Good intentions or not, always something a bit unseemly RE the determination to slot HUMANS into the contrived social artifice of racial identity. No exception here.
— Kmele (@kmele) March 18, 2021
Media narratives about swelling anti-asian violence (like narratives about anti black police violence or *white supremacy*) capture imaginations + animate fears.
Less obvious these frameworks enhance our ability to relate to each other in healthy ways — or even grok reality.
— Kmele (@kmele) March 18, 2021
It's not about ignoring some categories of injustice, it's about regarding all injustices more accurately — in their fullness. We can be constructive and grieve together without getting hijacked by partisan shaming, preconceptions, and various other political bullshit.
— Kmele (@kmele) March 18, 2021
But our country is obsessed with race. Meanwhile, the rest of the world laughs at our obsession.
— TC (@TracyCa60638460) March 18, 2021
Worse than obsessed. America is fully possessed by racecraft — and we're desperately in need of an exorcism. Instead, you get a "mostly peaceful" (and almost entirely counter productive) *racial reckoning*
— Kmele (@kmele) March 18, 2021
And instead of taking careful, measured approaches to reporting on violence, the media have largely elected instead to pour gasoline on the fire.
Case in point, CNN:
"In one sense, it's immaterial whether the accused killer in the Atlanta spa shootings admits to a racist motivation. Asian Americans, already traumatized by a rising tide of hate and violence, have been living in fear for months." Analysis by @StCollinson https://t.co/eFQI91yP83
— CNN (@CNN) March 18, 2021
What the suspect in shootings that left eight people dead says is “immaterial”?
In one sense, it’s immaterial whether the accused killer in the Atlanta spa shootings admits to a racist motivation. Asian Americans, already traumatized by a rising tide of hate, violence and rhetoric, have been living in fear for months.
The murders of eight people, including six Asian women, among them four South Koreans, further disoriented and horrified a community already unfairly stigmatized by racial association during a pandemic that originated in China. And they laid bare for the rest of the country the agony of yet another minority group left to question its place in America, at a time of rising attacks and harassment amid cresting White nationalism and domestic extremism.
Many Asian Americans feel exposed by a torrent of dangerous and racially motivated rhetoric by national figures on a cultural crusade. Most prominently that includes ex-President Donald Trump, who presided over four years of rising racial tensions and often used division as a tool of personal power.
uh it's very material…
— Beca Biun (@mystyb) March 18, 2021
CNN really, really needs this to be about Donald Trump and white supremacy. Because apparently the fact that many recent attacks against Asian Americans have been perpetrated by black men is immaterial. The fact that it wasn’t just Asian Americans who were shot to death at the massage parlors is immaterial.
Facts are "immaterial…"
Right up there with "context is irrelevant"Slapdash-Interpretation: If you or someone you love is among the *non-asian* persons shot, killed, or traumatized on account of this violent mayhem — Fall back; this isn't about you. At least not primarily ? https://t.co/J5Lsfdtd9p pic.twitter.com/IgMioyvB18
— Kmele (@kmele) March 18, 2021
It really is nauseating. And infuriating. And it’s all the more nauseating and infuriating coming from an outlet that famously touts itself as committed to putting Facts First.
What happened to “this is an apple”, CNN?
— Stonk Expert Tsukkomi (@ljenkins314) March 18, 2021
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) March 18, 2021
*narratives first
— Paul (@raulproberson) March 18, 2021
Not a news network pic.twitter.com/gcNo2YQzYR
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) March 18, 2021
This is so brazen in its admittance that the facts don't actually matter. And never will.
We cannot reason people out of opinions they never reasoned into, so our discourse is actually doomed to fail from the start.
From: https://t.co/qjEHxooLJz https://t.co/r9SeLvp9fo
— Melissa Chen (@MsMelChen) March 18, 2021
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