When a maniac gets a gun, a maniac does maniacal things. The murderer of Asian women in Atlanta ought to strike terror in everyone of our hearts, for sure. From what we understand, a man buys a 9mm pistol in the morning and kills 8 people by the afternoon. He may have had a sex addiction which was his excuse for murdering what he assumed were sex workers. But in his 40 plus mile trip to kill them, surely he passed dozens of other places he could safely have assumed were suspect. We all know what happened: he sought out and killed Asian women. Why? Because he felt empowered. What was bottled up now could come bubbling to the surface.
But that is not the only thing that should terrify us.
The Sheriff departments spokesman was equally terrifying. A certain Captain Jay Baker was chosen as the spokesman and this, in and of itself, is mystifying. But more on that in a second. First to know, his excuse for the maniac’s rampage was not just absurd and insulting, it was a bone being thrown to all those who feel that their hate towards Asians is somehow justified. His exact quote was, ““He was pretty much fed up and kind of end of his rope and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.” We have all had bad days. We have all been ‘at the end of our rope.’ We all get frustrated and we all get angry. I don’t know of anyone that has killed someone because of it and I certainly don’t know of anyone who is so ‘at the end of their rope’ they buy a gun, drive 40 miles, kills several Asian women and then claims a sex addiction (which, by the way, is real thing). That is not ‘end of the rope’ because people that frustrated and angry can’t think that clearly. They are impulsive and kick walls or play tennis! This was premeditated and calculated. He sought out Asian women to kill because he didn’t really think it was such a big deal.
And this leads us to the Sheriff.
Never chose a spokesperson with a social media history if you don’t want that history to be national news. The spokesperson should not be the story. The story should be the story. So the choice of this particular police captain was truly remarkably shortsighted. As soon as he uttered his ‘this guy had a bad day remark’ we had to find out what on earth would motivate him to say this. It took about 12 seconds to figure it out. You see, this police Captain, promoted by the police department and sworn to protect its citizens is a racist and who seems to advertise that he is a racist and who, at the very least, has judgement unsuited for police work.
According to his Facebook page, he “promoted a T-shirt with racist language about China and the coronavirus last year.” “Place your order while they last,” the March 2020 Facebook post said, along with a smiley face emoji. The Facebook account, belonging to a “Jay Baker,” features numerous photos of Cherokee County sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker going back months, including one in which he is in uniform outside the sheriff’s office. The account was deleted Wednesday night.” No wonder the maniac with the gun thought he could get away with it. He was white, he targeted Asian women, and he sensed that he could shoot them with relative impunity.
The overt racism we have seen over the past couple of years is astounding. The anti-black, anti-Semitic, anti-Arab, anti-Latinx and now anti-Asian discrimination is out in the open. So many of our elected leaders remain silent about it to the degree that we have to ask whether or not they support it. I would submit that, yes, of course they do. Politicians love to talk and they love to talk to get votes. If they thought responding to racism could get them votes, they would do so. The logic also works the other way: if they think not responding to racism gets them votes, they will do so. That is what we are seeing.
These are the prophetic moments. In the life of the prophets their goal was speaking directly. Yes, they were persecuted and vilified…and then they were put into the Tanach (the Bible). Too many self-styled prophets are the antithesis to our classic prophets. They won’t speak truth to power because they are power and to speak out against what is truly happening means they will lose votes. Prophets don’t get elected by the people but, ironically, represent more people than any elected official ever will. Prophets get their words in the Tanach. Politicians’ words are almost always forgotten.
When we see this hatred, our prophetic impulse must kick in. We must denounce it in our workplace, on our social media, to those even in our families whose racial ‘jokes’ belie something which isn’t funny at all.
We are descendants of prophets. Time for every one of us to bear that title proudly.
