Brad and Dan discuss the various threads connecting the massacre in Atlanta: from the history of anti-Asian racism, to the various dimensions of purity culture, to the cover Christian nationalism provides to acts of violence. They then discuss the Vatican's statement on why the Church can't bless same-sex unions. To Brad and Dan this is an instance of the hurtful "loving the sinner, hating the sin" ideal used in Evangelical spaces. They conclude with a segment on Russian interference in our election, masculinity, and the ease in which many are willing to write off democracy.
Rest in Peace, You Will Not Be Forgotten:
Daoyou Feng
Hyun Jung Grant
Suncha Kim
Paul Andre Michels
Soon C. Park
Xiaojie Tan
Delaina Ashley Yaun
Yong A. Yue
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AXIS MUNDY AXIS MUNDY Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
I'm Brad Onishi, faculty in religion at Skidmore College.
Our show is hosted in partnership with the Kapp Center at UCSB, and I'm here today with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
It's good to see you, Brad.
It's obviously been a pretty rough week, but I'm glad to see you here.
Yeah, it has been a rough week.
As we've noted over the last couple of weeks, March is kind of a hard week or a hard month for Everybody in the kind of higher ed game, students and faculty and everyone else.
Obviously, though, that this week was tough because of what happened in Atlanta.
And so we're going to talk about that.
We're going to talk about various dimensions of the racial dimensions, the purity culture dimensions, the white evangelical dimensions.
We're going to jump into some stuff on the Vatican and not blessing same sex unions, and then talk about Russia and its interference in our elections and Kind of what that means.
So, Dan, let me start with something I wrote on Twitter the other day.
I know some folks have already heard this, but I just thought it might be worth using it as a starting point.
Killing half a dozen Asian women and attributing it to sex addiction, not racism, is Christian nationalism in a nutshell.
Purity culture made me feel bad about my sexual needs, so I eliminated the temptation.
What does race have to do with it?
Right.
This is what ostensibly the perpetrator of this crime Uh, has said and what others have parroted.
My response is that everything, uh, race has everything to do with it.
And so, uh, there is a great, uh, uh, a tweet from Tao Lee Goff, who points out that the figure of the Asian sex worker is the linchpin of racist US immigration law.
The Asian woman and the Asian sex worker is imagined to be lewd and immoral requiring biopolitical containment against degeneracy.
Several people, including Goff, point out that there was the Page Act of 1875, which effectively banned entry of Asian, namely Chinese women, due to lewdness and immorality.
So we have this Act, Dan, in 1875, which basically targets Asian women as people who have lewd and immoral character, and they're so bad that they're not allowed in the country.
This, of course, led to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.
That led to the 1924 Immigration Act.
That led to Japanese internment in 1942 to 1945.
We could talk about American imperialism and colonialism in places like the Philippines and Vietnam.
And Korea.
So I think for us, Dan, the question is, how does this relate to evangelicalism and purity culture?
And so for me, I'll turn this over to you in a second, but I just want to pause on the racial dimension to start with.
And maybe that'll allow us to set up some things you'll have to say about purity and how purity is not just necessarily about sex and sexuality and sexual desire.
It's been a weird week.
I'll just be honest with everybody.
I've gone through moments of rage and intense sadness and intense sorrow, thinking about the lives that were lost and the people.
You know, I think a lot about how being Asian American is often, especially being an Asian American woman or an Asian woman in the United States, but Asians in general are Like many people of color, both often invisible and hyper visible.
Invisible in the sense that people sort of chalk Asian Americans up often to be a model minority who they sort of pat on the back and rub their head and say, you're the safe ones and you're the good example of What a non-white looks like.
And, you know, you're Asian men, you're not very masculine and Asian women, we're going to reduce you to sex objects.
But, you know, we feel fairly good about you being around because you don't threaten us and you make us feel like, you know, we're not only superior, but we can be safe around people of color.
And then there's this hyper visibility that happens at the turn of a hat.
And so during the pandemic, we've seen this over and over that.
As Trump and other leaders have talked about the coronavirus as a Chinese virus or Kung Flu, the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and violence has risen exponentially, and that has landed in undue nature on the elderly and on women.
So I think a lot about how that works in this country, that in one moment, as my colleague Wendy Lee says, you are a pet, and in one moment, you are a threat.
And last night, I thought I was done crying for the day, but I signed on and I read part of an interview with one of the sons of one of the women who was killed.
And so Hyun Jung Grant was somebody who worked at Gold's, one of the spas.
And her son, Randy Park, shared some things about his mom and their life together.
Talked about how she came here as a single mother, was working to create a better life for her and her sons, how she devoted her entire being to raising them.
There's pictures here of them at high school graduation in 2017, smiling for the camera, looking very proud.
Park talked about how there's no other family members that can help them because they're all in South Korea.
So they came here for a better life.
And this is what happened.
He said she'll never get to see my brother and I get married, own homes, graduate college, and see her grandchildren.
Anybody that has had the misfortune to be in a situation like this that could inform me on how to go on, I would appreciate the help.
So I just I hover there, Dan, just because these are not just numbers.
These are people who are no longer with us and who were targeted in an unimaginable crime.
I know as Americans, we are very used to mass shootings now.
They are part of our landscape, but they remain unthinkably tragic.
I spent a lot of time this week thinking about family who are vulnerable, thinking about Being called a Jap as a kid at times and, you know, living in small town America at different points in my life and coming across Asian families who are largely alone in those small towns and wondering how they're doing, going to a Chinese restaurant.
And hoping that the people there are okay, hoping that they have a community that helps them and supports them and protects them.
Thinking about how difficult it is to sort of exist in this liminal state in this country as a kind of in-between people.
All that to say, Dan, neither I nor many people buy the idea.
That none of this was racially motivated or racially tinged.
And I think we'll get into that now.
One of the things that I wrote on Twitter was basically that purity is never limited to sexual purity.
So the shooter was heavily involved in a Baptist church.
And there's now good reporting from The New York Times.
that talks about him this way.
Months before Robert Aaron Long was charged with carrying out a bloody rampage at three massage parlors that horrified the nation and stoked a furious outcry over anti-Asian violence, the 21-year-old suspect, who had grown up in a conservative Baptist church, appeared fixated on guilt and lust.
As investigators on Thursday pieced together whether and how racism and sexism might have motivated Tuesday's attacks, People who knew Mr. Leung offered new details about dangerous collision of sexual loathing and what the former roommate described as religious mania that marked his life in the years before the shooting spree.
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