By Erik Dolson
Racism is despicable when overt, dangerous when covert, has harmed or harms a majority of ethnic groups not Northern European, and can be found anywhere and everywhere. Racism is a blight in America.
None of which really excuses a recent story in The Washington Post.
The article concerned a recent arrest in New York City. A woman was arrested following an obscene and racist rant at a nail salon in Manhattan. It should be noted that nail salons, like massage parlors, have a higher number of Asian employees than the country at large.
But the woman, 50-year-old Sharon Williams, continued her rant outside and happened to spew her hatred at an Asian American man who is a NYPD cop. She was arrested and charged with harassment and aggravated harassment, with both labeled as hate crimes.
So far, so good.
The story did not mention that Sharon Williams was Black, though it was accompanied by a photo taken from a TV screen of a CBS local news outlet that showed Williams in the custody of two police officers, one Black and one White. Hard to say how that photo added to the story, but let’s move on.
Perhaps The Post did not feel the race of the perpetrator was significant, though other Post stories reference the long history of racial animosity between Black and Asian groups throughout the country. Many theories have been advanced for this, but we’re not going into that here.
This post is about liberal journalism. I’ll focus my concern on paragraph six:
“The incident, which was first reported by WLNY, is the latest in a surge of attacks on Asian Americans throughout the country and comes weeks after shootings at three spas in the Atlanta area killed eight, including six Asian women. New York has seen a stark rise as well, with at least 35 anti-Asian hate-crime reports already this year, the New York Times reported, as opposed to the 28 all last year.”
There are four issues, starting with calling William’s despicable behavior an “attack.” Without a modifier, such as “verbal attack,” reporter Jaclyn Peiser elevates the incident beyond the already significant charges of “harassment as a hate crime” that were filed.
Secondly, Peiser doubles down by linking the verbal abuse to eight murders in Georgia and to two violent crimes against Asians in New York, one “last month” and one “last week,” as all part of a “surge” in hate crimes against Asians.
Wait: The shooter in Georgia faces eight counts of murder. While they may be brought later, so far no hate crime charges have been levied nor racism alleged. The shooter may have been driven by pathological misogyny, religious fanaticism, or other non-justifying motives besides racism.
Despite the spin, do we know if the William’s incident is really part of a recent “surge,” or another example of long simmering racial animosity between Blacks and Asians? Where’s the evidence?
Finally, and this is nitpicking perhaps, but Peiser refers to an increase in anti-Asian crime as reported by The New York Times. Quoting The Times is not original research and is echo-chamber reporting between the nation’s two largest liberal news publications.
I’ve had discussions with my friend “The Editor” who thinks this kind of reporting represents an “agenda” on the part of liberal media. My own belief, for the moment, is that it’s the result of sloppiness in the newsroom, when editors fail their reporters by not demanding more rigorous reporting.
I’m forced to invoke OWL’s Rule of Scale: We make a mistake when we assign individual motives to a group, and another mistake when we use group data to assign motives to individuals. Groups and individuals are different organisms and there are different dynamics involved.
Which is NOT to say that there isn’t “group” racism. Of course there is, and it too has led to murder, torture, atrocities and crimes against humanity. But effective solutions for this social scourge depend on accurately identifying cause and effect.