TEASER: 142 - On fighting white supremacy (3.19.2021)

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After a white gunman in Atlanta targeted Asian massage parlors this week, killing eight people, the US is again faced with its ingrained racism and white supremacy. Here in California, where the AAPI community makes up about 15 percent of the state's 40 million people, the response is one of deep grief, but little surprise. We have a long, long history of both anti-Asian racism and misogyny in this country, and this week's devastating shooting is one more point on a large pattern. 

Just this week an elderly Chinese woman in San Francisco had to beat back an attacker. We had Sacramento City Councilmember Mai Vang on the show last week to discuss anti-AAPI animus in Sacramento, and didn't come close to covering every example of it in our region. Mai and other leaders in the AAPI community held a vigil for the victims in Atlanta Wednesday night at city hall.

It's long past time for us to look more deeply at the anti-AAPI sentiment baked into the fabric of this country, and to work to extricate it. That starts, among other places, in US media.

This week marks the third anniversary of the night that Sacramento police officers killed Stephon Clark in his grandmother's backyard. Has there been any justice in his name in the time that's passed? It can be hard to stay optimistic when the district attorney who assassinated Clark's character on national television while relieving the cops who killed him of any responsibility won reelection in 2018. Or when the state's Attorney General, who also refused to charge Clark's killers, is now serving in the federal government as the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Remember the Sacramento mayor who said, the day Clark's life was taken, that he would not question the actions of the cops who killed him? Rumors abound that Governor Gavin Newsom is on the edge of giving him the state's top cop position.

What might we have to look forward to? The Sacramento Bee's editorial board believes we ought to fight for a number of police reform bills. 

But we've got a better idea. It rhymes with schmee-schmund the schmolice. 

Besides, what's the use in taking local media seriously when a TV station will have this guy on to complain about his daughter learning about Black Lives Matter?