The Critique: Harris’s self-evident truth https://t.co/KaHp07WVAZ
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 23, 2021
The always insightful Robin Givhan, at the Washington Post:
… Harris was traveling with the president last week for what had been billed as a victory lap to mark the passage of the American Rescue Plan and to thank Georgia and its two Democratic senators, who had played such a determinative role in getting it passed. Harris and President Biden were also there to highlight the glories of science during a stop at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They did all of those things, but at the heart of their day trip was their intention to speak to the killings, just days before, of eight people — six of whom were Asian women.
Harris’s words were blunt and unembellished, as they so often were when she was a senator interrogating a witness. She didn’t mention thoughts and prayers, because as much as the vice president might sit and ponder the pain of those who lost loved ones and aim to lift these survivors up to God, the government is not church, and it will not be there to hold anyone’s hand in the lonely quiet of extended mourning. Thoughts and prayers have been given and received — year after year after year — and nothing much has changed.
Instead, when Harris stepped to the lectern at Emory University, she did so with a tone that sounded often angry, sometimes sad and occasionally exasperated. She laid out what happened in Atlanta and the surrounding community with clear-eyed specificity.
“Whatever the killer’s motive, these facts are clear: Six out of the eight people killed on Tuesday night were of Asian descent. Seven were women. The shootings took place in businesses owned by Asian Americans,” Harris said. “The shootings took place as violent hate crimes and discrimination against Asian Americans has risen dramatically over the last year and more.”…
“Racism is real in America, and it has always been,” Harris said. “Xenophobia is real in America and always has been. Sexism, too.”
This is the America that so often goes undiscussed in mixed company. It’s the America that people of color see and lament — often with wry, self-protective humor — to others who look like them. It’s the America that women know intimately, the one about which they educate and warn their daughters. It’s the America of recent immigrants whose hardship and halting English may belie their tenacity, intelligence and courage — traits for which they are hailed by their loved ones even as they are barely visible to others…
Betty
How refreshing!
Elizabelle
Hello there, Anne Laurie. Missed you. Happy Spring!!
Lyrebird
Thanks for putting this on the front page AL!
If anyone needs to cry more, google the interview with young Mr. Park, son of one of the women who was killed.
TaMara (HFG)
This is an excellent post. I listened to that speech live and then went back and listened again, because it was so on-point.
rikyrah
The domestic terrorist killed a bunch of Asian Aunties and Grandmas.
Looking at the victims, I could see my Elders.
wenchacha
Good on our VP! Why mince words at this point.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Yeah and the media jumped on the perpetrator’s framing of them being sex workers/prostitutes.
Shana
Love love love Robin Givhan. Her writing on fashion and style was terrific, talking about the social and societal implications of what we wear (see her flaying of Dick Cheney and his parka at the memorial service for WWII dead in Europe) but she’s even better on the “politics” beat. She’s also been given a prime spot in the Post, page 2, so it looks like the Powers That Be over there recognize how good she is.
Spanky
The WaPo is telling me the Atlanta shootings are “A test for the Biden administration”. No, I’m not linking.
tokyokie
And, of course, like most bigoted assholes, the shooter is unable to distinguish ethnic Koreans from ethnic Chinese. Or, for that matter, ethnic Japanese, ethnic Vietnamese, or ethnic Filipinos. Because all East Asians look the same to those who don’t attempt to understand their cultural backgrounds.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
This was a point emphasized by film critic David Chen and his wife on the “Culturally Relevant” podcast. The anguish felt by Asian Americans because they are unable to protect their beloved Elders.
Other crimes have seen strangers assaulting or beating elderly Asian Americans.
Elizabelle
@Shana:
Robin Givhan and Jennifer Rubin and Alexandra Petri. Three fabulous reasons for subscribing to the WaPost, without ever getting to David Farenthold and the other reporting stars.
Have to catch up on my reading, but Givhan’s previous column, illustrated with a photo of the odious Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Just let them keep talking.
FWIW, several of the Post’s Republican whisperer columnists are also horrified, horrified by Ron Johnson. They’re shocked! Headlines:
Michael Gerson: Ron Johnson isn’t a Republican outlier
Kathleen Parker: Ron Johnson is a racist
Another Scott
Kamala is a truth teller. Good, good.
In other news, AZ seems to be run by incompetents who have no idea how important credibility is.
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
citizen dave
Another appreciation for front paging this–I would have missed it. I get enough information, and sometimes just don’t want to delve more into things because it’s all so sad. But I am very glad that Joe and Kamala are on the job. Both tell the truth and don’t sugar coat.
Raoul Paste
At this rate, the flags of America will be permanently at half mast
The blunt talk of Harris is spot on
Miss Bianca
@Another Scott: When I saw “AZ” I thought you meant “the incredible incompetents running Arizona”.
Another Scott
@Miss Bianca: As soon as I posted it, I realized it might cause confusion, but I was thinking more along the lines of Amazon (A-to-Z). Hehe.
Sorry!
Cheers,
Scott.
Gravenstone
@Another Scott: Initially thought you meant Arizona…
But yeah, my first thought when I read that story earlier was “what the fuck is wrong with these people?”. If it’s the business suite making these decisions, they’re destroying their employer. If it’s the scientists, then they’re destroying both their employer and their own professional and ethical reputations.
Another Scott
If the SCOTUS gets in the way of sensible changes to gun laws, then the SCOTUS must be expanded. The nonsense they introduced in DC v Heller needs to be reversed and the “well regulated” part of the 2nd Amendment must be returned to the interpretation.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact. The right to life and liberty certainly means the right not to be shot-up by some deranged lunatic with weapons of war.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Is AZ Arizona or AstraZeneca
edit: asked and answered, I see.
Elizabelle
@Another Scott: I agree. Expand SCOTUS.
Death to the filibuster. Don’t worry so much about what the next Republican president will do. We can’t afford another one. It’s all blustering, anyway. To cover up lies.
WaterGirl
I just moved the publication time on Anne Laurie’s Excellent Read post – her post and the mistermix post have the same publication time, so I moved “Excellent Read” to 10:40 instead of 10:38. So if you refresh the BFD post, the fly-out should take you to MM post, and that one should take you to Anne Laurie’s post.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl:
Thanks for doing this, and for the explainer. I was confused (not that there’s anything unusual about that…)
Uncle Cosmo
A couple decades ago I was a consultant to a (relatively small) vaccine maker that was poised to sell a boatload of doses for a big payday. The problem was their vaccine lots were routinely failing potency assays, and I was brought in to help figure out what was wrong – not with the vaccine lots themselves, which the scientists were confident were good, but with the assays.
I told them I was a statistician with no background in life sciences, but I put together a list of everything I could think of that could possibly be the problem, and had them (the experts) remove (or add) items. Once this was done I spent two years looking into the items on the revised list, with no success.
About a year after I turned that task over to another consulting operation and returned to our main office, I got a call from one of our people still working there: The very first thing the new consultants checked out was something I’d put on my initial list but the customer had rejected as impossible. Which turned out to be the problem with the potency assay. They’d scratched it off the list because it implied their in-house procedures might not be up to snuff. They were right about the vaccine itself – their production lots eventually tested just fine. But we could have found the cause two years earlier – except they that could not accept that their in-house procedures might have been to blame. That blind spot (or arrogance, take your pick) cost them two years’ worth of sales.
laura
@Shana: I really enjoy Robin Givhan’s writing – and using fashion as the lens for politics. John Robert’s jelly beans and dick Cheney’s hunting jacket at a state funeral are most memorable. I’m hoping she writes about Deb Haaland with more nuance and brio that the ftfnyt did last week.
trollhattan
When will we be rid of this human thumb?
Step 1. Run it into the ground
Step 2. Privatize
Step 3. Loot the pension fund
The first seems on plan.
Subsole
@Brachiator: Funny how the folks who style themselves modern vikings and heirs to Rome (square THAT noise…) keep going after people older than they…
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: It’s insane how badly they’ve managed their trials. Worst of all, it’s making even rah-rah-science types like me awful suspicious.
cmorenc
The underlying motives in the AMP (Asian Massage Parlor) shootings in Atlanta are likely more the result of the perp’s identification of Asian women with sexuality and his pathological sexual hangups, and less due to generalized hatred of Asians, which of course makes the result no less deadly for Asians who happen to be involved one way or another with that line of work. It’s racial in that unlike some past serial murderers who tended to prey on prostitutes / escorts largely irrespective of race, this perp focused exclusively on Asian Massage Parlors. But a substantial part of the underlying motive was likely the perp’s identification of Asian women with sexuality and how his couple of previous visits with AMPS had possibly stoked his own pathological frustrations and self-loathing, which he projected onto them in lethally violent fashion.
The more general anti-Asian sentiment stoked by the former guy and RW media’s repetition of calling COVID the “China Virus” may have helped embolden the perp, but my bet is that his sexual hangups coupled with identifying Asian women with sexuality was the more important element in this particular case.
sdhays
@Uncle Cosmo: Wow. That’s stunning, albeit entirely believable story.
Subsole
@trollhattan: DeJoy needs to be fed raw sewage until he expires.
Major Major Major Major
@cmorenc: This is also my take, for whatever that’s worth.
JaneE
Please let this be a sign that finally some real talk will lead to real change. Addicts of all kinds know that in order to fix your problem you have to recognize that it is a problem, and then you have to really want to change. Racism, sexism, xenophobia, bigotry and even just plain meanness have been American and human addictions for centuries. I just wish the cure could be found as quickly as the Covid-19 vaccine.
Gex
deleted. why bother. people going to refuse to understand intersectionality and the fact that if you are in the intersection between two roads you are not ever, in fact, only standing on one road or the other.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gex: Not everyone will. I read the comment you deleted that thought you were making a good point.
WaterGirl
@Gex: Nice to see your nym here. I am not sure what this is in response to.
I am sorry I missed whatever it was that you originally wrote.
Old School
@WaterGirl:
Gex pointed out that objectifying Asian women doesn’t eliminate hate as a possibility. (I’m paraphrasing.)
I thought it was a good point.
cain
@trollhattan:
It can’t be soon enough – if we have to pass a low calling for a one time removal – then we should do it. Also remove the Republican reps on that board that hired him.
dmsilev
@trollhattan: Biden has nominated 3 replacements for slots on the Board of Governors; once they’ve been confirmed, there should be enough votes to fire him.
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major: The Post got hold of the actual letter that the safety board sent to AZ:
Somehow, I suspect that the FDA review meeting in a few weeks might not be quite so smooth sailing as the ones for the other 3 vaccines.
Major Major Major Major
@dmsilev: It’s especially baffling since ~70% would be totally fine to get an EUA.
gwangung
@Gex: As the old timers say, racist love still stems from racism.
That kind of fetishization still dehumanizes.
JaneE
@tokyokie: I can’t distinguish any continent’s people by nationality either. I do better with Europeans, barely, because I can recognize some of the major language families. If this last year has shown anything, it is that most Americans don’t need to know more than vaguely Asian appearance to lash out at someone.
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major: No kidding. And the blowback from this stunt is going to be far worse for the company’s reputation than just going with the slightly lower figure from the outset. I mean, they have to know that the FDA review process, which includes a third-party re-analysis of the raw data, would reveal this difference? Right?
Benw
@Elizabelle:
Agreed. “We’re going to do these horrible things to you if you make us mad!” is just telling us they’re going to do those things anyway.
JaneE
@Another Scott: AZ did a lousy job on their trials. Aside from that, why do we let each manufacturer decide what criteria are used to determine how well their product works? All the efficacy numbers we have are apples to oranges half the time. Vaccine A has a 90% rate in trials in country X, because they used criteria #1, but 77% rate in trials in country Y, because they require criteria #7. What constitutes being counted as a case is different from vaccine to vaccine and country to country and trial to trial. At least death is death in all of them. Even what is necessary to get you admitted to the hospital varies with time and place.
Uncle Cosmo
@trollhattan: Now that you mention it, Point 3 seems to be the main goal: With pension obligations prepaid for however many years, USPS has got to be a tempting target for any vulture capitalist looking to make a few quick gigabucks. (Screwing over postal workers is a side benefit.)
So how do we get rid of Louse DeJerk?
Major Major Major Major
@dmsilev: didn’t they screw up one of their other trials too??
dmsilev
@JaneE: The FDA tried to impose some degree of standardization on the COVID vaccine tests. That was one of the reasons that AZ’s original trial in the fall didn’t lead to them submitting a use application back then: that trial didn’t meet the standards that the FDA set and they had to start a new one.
Doesn’t speak well for the competence level of the company. They’re not some new-fledged fly-by-night firm. The requirements were spelled out, and 3 (so far) other companies were able to follow them.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@tokyokie: Years ago my mother became very interested in Japanese culture and visited Japan in the summer of 1960. I grew up in a house with a lot of Japanese art (kakemonos, etc.). Anyway, I remember her telling me when she couldn’t tell if a person was ethnic Japanese or Chinese, they always turned out to be Korean. (I hope this story doesn’t sound racist).
dmsilev
@Major Major Major Major: Yes. Most notably, one of their sub-groups accidentally got half a dose on the first round and a full dose on the second. They also screwed up the design of the trial, enrolling far fewer 65+ people than what the FDA wanted.
Major Major Major Major
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): I’m great at figuring out somebody’s ancestry as long as you give me their name, lol
pluky
@JaneE: One of the advantages of growing up an Army brat; I can usually distinguish most East and South East Asian ethnicities at a glance. Bottom line, no they don’t all look alike!
Brachiator
@cmorenc:
Do we know whether these were places that he went to, or did he choose these places over over massage parlors?
Could be, but right now we don’t know much about the motivations. He also just seemed intent on shooting whoever was in the building. How many people total were shot? The news seems to want to focus on the fatalities.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Major Major Major Major: You would think so :-) but I am a living refutation of that theory. Maybe it is simpler in other countries, but like so many Americans, I’m a mixture (i.e. a mutt). I have an Irish name because my paternal grandfather was Irish, but I have much more Scots ancestry and actually look more German (sigh). My father was 1/2 Irish and 1/2 German. Sadly, because my mother was a beautiful woman, both her kids looked like their fathers. I also have some Czech on my mother’s side
ETA: I’d always identified with the Irish ancestry and ignored the German, then Ancestry DNA testing showed me that actually, I had much more Scots blood (from my maternal grandmother) than anything else. The Czech was my maternal grandfather.
Kent
@Old School: racism and misogyny have never been mutually exclusive.
Ruckus
@Subsole:
Won’t work fast enough.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
I find that if one doesn’t have a negative point of view about any one’s heritage, skin color, religion and/or sex, that pretty much gives one an open path to determine if their personality is worth a damn so you have a better chance of liking/hating them for a not unreasonable reason.
Captain C
@Another Scott:
I initially read that as Arizona, which also works.
Major Major Major Major
@Ruckus: it also gives you an open path to wonder to yourself about their ancestry without feeling like a weirdo!
Ruckus
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
I say I’m Scotch/Irish/Sicilian because that’s the story I was told most often. But I was also told that not to long in the past one of the woman in the bloodline was purebred Blackfoot. So, like most of us I call myself a mutt. Because it’s far more likely that there are a lot more bits and pieces in there than most can imagine.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
Nice!
Keeping it to one’s self usually is better.
J R in WV
@Uncle Cosmo:
Cosmo, any idea whether this bone-headed decision was made by management, or by actual scientists ??
NASA managed to lose two Shuttles by managers ignoring the advice of the engineers regarding (a) low temperature damage to o-rings sealing the solid rocket boosters and (b) ice buildup on liquid hydrogen tanks to the extent that ice falling onto the Shuttle damaged the heat-resistant tiles leading to the break up of the Shuttle on re-entry.
Sounds like your company had a client company with the same problem — management ignoring scientists.
bluefoot
@trollhattan: It’s thinks like this that make me wish there were a group like the Leverage team in real life….
I know people who haven’t received necessary prescriptions on time since the come via mail. Many insurance plans strongly push receiving prescriptions by mail and will restrict what you can get in person at a pharmacy.
Killing the Postal Service is insane. But that’s Republican “governance.”
Ruckus
@bluefoot:
Is what’s known as malfeasance.