Just hours after 21-year-old Robert Long drove across Atlanta, stopping at Asian-owned spas and systematically killing the women of Asian descent in them (along with two white victims, a man and a woman), Capt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee Sheriff’s Office gave a press conference Wednesday, during which you might have thought he was Long’s defense attorney.
“He understood the gravity of it,” Baker said, describing the mass killer’s feelings. “He was pretty much fed up, kind of at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did.”
Baker’s comments was a staunch reminder of police treating Eric Rudolph to a nice Burger King meal after he gunned done four Black parishioners in a church.
Regardless of how it seems like America is making progress on racism, there is always something to remind the world that the great United States is almost still as racist as apartheid South Africa.
It’s almost a cliche, at this point, to say that it’s impossible to imagine any police officer in this country giving a similarly empathetic description of a non-white man suspected of mass murder. Black men, women and children, have been beaten, pepper-sprayed, choked, shot with ketamine and with multiple bullets while experiencing mental health episodes, walking home from convenience stores and for holding everything from sandwiches to cellphones.
Racism in America is as American apple pie and baseball.
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