Here's one of the things that bothers me about the coverage of the Atlanta Shooting: it's being portrayed as a direct result of racism against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI), but I'm bothered by that interpretation. I don't have a determined position on this, but I'd like to hear any other perspectives that might clarify the situation. The shooter targeted massage parlors, as part of his own crusade against sex work. The fact that six of the eight people killed were Asian American women isn't a statistical fluke. Massage parlors are frequently fronts for sex work, and the women employed in them are frequently trafficked from Asia to work there. Given the shooter's stated motivation, it seems he was going after sex workers, rather than AAPI people. The fact that these women were Asian didn't have anything to do with why they died, as a first order cause. If the women working there had been African-American, or White, or Latinx, or any other ethnicity, they would have been just as dead. However, the reason they were there and perceived as sex workers (which we don't even know for certain) was because they were AAPI. This is one of those situations that's a lot more complex than most of the reporting wants to address.
What I Believe, Part 2 I've covered the philosophical underpinning, so let's talk application. There's obviously a lot more to Kant's philosophy than what I wrote about in my last post, but I covered the parts that are important to me. There are two big takeaways from all that: first, any rule you live by should be one you wouldn't mind everyone living by (meaning any action you justify taking should be one you would accept someone else doing to you), and second, every person is an end, not just a means. The second part is a little complicated, but essentially, every person deserves to be dealt with as if they had worth in and of themselves and not as objects in your personal universe that only have worth in relation to their value to you. It's a simple idea that can be a little tough to put into simple language. So that's it. That is the basis of how I navigate this crazy world, and how I evaluate another person's words and deeds. Everythin...
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