Story from the New York Times a while back that makes a serious effort to humanize an Asian sex worker:
Probably paywalled, but it was a great story. Maybe there’s another source out there, I don’t know, try googling the title. I didn’t find the whole story that way, but maybe someone will have better luck.
People are fascinated with killers, particularly serial and spree killers. They want to know what makes them tick. I see memes and jokes about people spending their spare time watching murder documentary shows. There was recently both a well publicized dramatization and also popular documentary about Ted Bundy. Is the purpose of all the murder shows on cable to celebrate the lives of the victim’s? Of course not. People want to see why killers do what they do. Does it humanize them? I don’t know, maybe. Is that a bad thing? Maybe it’s good to realize that evil resides in humans like us and not in a separate sub-species of murderers. What I don’t quite understand is the criticism of the police for accurately reporting what the defendants statements were. Are they supposed to not answer those questions? Hide the truth? Lie about what his statements were? How would that make it better? Reporters will continue to ask the questions because people want to know the why.
This. Murderers are weirdos, and naturally attract curiosity/interest. As you say, we want to know what makes them tick.
Murder victims are, by and large, not nearly as interesting; they’re just ordinary schlubs like the rest of us.
While TV programs that profile murderers in great detail may be very popular, TV programs that profile murder victims never will be.
There are a few different things going on here.
First, reporting what he said is important, but maybe not to report it uncritically. The way this was reported, there was a feel of “Hey, y’all, chill out, there was no racism involved, the mass murderer sez so!” Acknowledging what a hateful killer says doesn’t mean accepting it at face value, especially when it’s ludicrous.
Second, there’s a sense that the “humanizing” reporting is intended to make a white dude more sympathetic than a black dude would be. Noah Trevor in his monologue asked us to imagine a police department reporting on a black man who shot up a white neighborhood in a similar way; would we expect to hear similar language used, about how he was having a bad day?
That’s the third thing. “Having a bad day” is an extraordinarily clueless thing to say about the killer.
The fourth thing is that the dude who used those words is himself showing signs of anti-Asian racism. Maybe we can put the clues together and say that this dude is maybe going past humanizing the murderer and straight into a bit of sympathizing with him. Not entirely, not agreeing with his actions, but the overall picture is that he’s past mere humanizing.
Who’s criticizing the police for “accurately reporting”? The only criticism of police response I’ve seen is from the author of the article that Dangerosa linked to:
Yeah, police officers should not be armchair-psychologizing suspects and linking their behavior to what kind of “day” they were having.
Here’s a pretty good piece from WaPo talking about the different factors that go into a murder like this.
And one more thing: part of that “humanizing” process was to say that it was too early to declare it a hate crime.
To which: hell no. If the guy wasn’t targeting Asians in general, but just Asian women that he perceived (correctly or otherwise) as sex workers, that’s still a hate crime.
I once worked with a guy who was a Class A jerk. One day he made some stupid remarks towards one of our testers, a Korean woman. Anybody seeing this single incident probably would have concluded that he was a racist a-hole but the fact was he was an a-hole to everyone; the tester’s ethnicity had nothing to do with it. (He was fired soon after this incident.)
I think we need to be careful when we assign motivation to atrocities, especially early on. Dixon’s story is the same as so many other women; the men just used whatever demeaning words they could. They could have just as easily called her a “skinny white bitch” (if she had been white).
That said, I’m not sure I can articulate why it might be a problem to over-analyze. It’s certainly a lessor issue than mentally ill men having access to guns so they can murder people.
Heck, if he’s just targeting WOMEN its a hate crime.
Of course, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Plenty of people are assholes to everybody while still being partly motivated by racism in their assholery to certain groups of people.
Such people are assholes and racists instead of being “merely” asshole racists.
People are just so darn complex!
When the killer belongs to the “in group,” we want to understand what makes him tick and we make the effort to find the nuances.
When the killer is an ‘other’…not so much. We don’t care if he watched his brother, mother, or father get shot to death or whatever shit he dealt with as a child; he’s just, a monster, a terrorist, or a thug.
Maybe, but in his case it’s a distinction without a difference. Focusing on his racism would be ignoring all of his other lovely attributes. Maybe that explains my reluctance to label the Atlanta motivation as racist this early; it potentially ignores other causes.
There were two white people shot dead also.
And we are left to assume they were customers? Any details on them other than white people. Are they male?
A very detailed article here about the shootings and what is currently known about the victims.
One of the victims apparently was an Asian-American woman who was a customer at the massage parlor where she was shot (no suggestion of sex work).
True, but by “funny stuff”, I meant sexual overtures.
IME, there are different types of true crime shows. The first are generally TV series that generally depict a single-victim murder per episode, and a LOT of air time goes to the victims, their individual personalities, their relationships, schedules, plans, and background. Humanizing them is precisely the point: it engages viewers. And some of these shows were/are very popular
They’re different from documentaries that purport to get into the minds of killers. When that’s the purpose, it’s not who the victims are but how the killer sees them that’s relevant. Even if there were enough time to provide sufficient details to humanize each of Bundy’s 36 victims, it wouldn’t serve the point, which is that Bundy didn’t humanize them.
I’m having a hard time thinking of remarks that would be assumed to be racist that wouldn’t, in fact, be racist. Can you elaborate?
Because it doesn’t matter one bit if he’san asshole to everyone if he used racist language or similar.
I do not understand the interest in a madman’s motivation. I suppose the police and other specialist have to dive down that nasty rabbit hole, but I prefer not to. Hate is hate. Evil is evil. The rest are simply details of one person own flavor of madness.
We must build a society where we can live together in peace.