March 18,2021- So, we hear, from a law-enforcement professional, with his own set of race-related issues, that the killer of eight people in the Atlanta area was, among other things, having a “bad day”. We hear, from the accused, that it was not a racially-motivated act, but rather an attempt to deal with his own sex addiction.

Three things come to mind here. First, while three of the victims were not of Asian descent, six of them were. The owners of the two spas that were targeted, both of which engaged the accused as a customer, in prior visits, were of Asian descent. The two Caucasian victims were customers, happenstance victims-as was the Guatemalan man, who wasn’t even connected with the spa-he was a passerby, taking care of other business at a neighbouring shop. He is, at this writing, still alive. The primary targets, by all accounts at present, were people of Asian descent.

Second, when is it ever a workable strategy to deal with one’s own afflictions, real or imagined, by killing other people? We have dealt with this, on this blogsite, once before-after the Isla Vista attacks of 2014. Back then, an apologist for the accused killer tried to deflect blame by lashing out at me for defending the right of a woman to freely choose her own romantic partners. In hindsight, I had a fair amount of work to do, in cleaning up my own act-with regard to how I viewed women. That work has been done-yet it remains that my own travails had nothing to do with the actions of a madman. I have never killed, raped, attacked or manhandled anyone, much less regarded them as being responsible for my psychological well-being; end of digression. The accused, in the most recent case, is every bit responsible, in and of himself, for the mess in which he finds himself.

Finally, and this is the most potentially problematic matter- Asian women have long been hyped as being overly congenial, submissive and alluring. They are not any of those, taken as a group-any more than other people who have found themselves so hyped. Perhaps it is a necessary experience for people who stereotype others, to have to go through one painful learning curve after another-but this much is something I have always found true: Regardless of real or imagined characteristics attributed to people of a certain nation or ethnicity, not everyone fits a given mold. In fact, I have never met anyone whose personal qualities were the result of a socially-prescribed mould.

Bobby’s “bad day” was, in sum, a hoist of his own petard. Even IF one were to happen upon people engaged in acts of prostitution or other sexual conduct, it would not fall to him, or her, to act as judge, jury and executioner.