Category Archives: crime

The Importance of the Asian Himbo

Posted on May 30, 2022 by | 1 comment

I haven’t explicitly blogged about the Asian-American experience in three years, last touching on the topic back in 2019 when I interviewed Bachelor contestant Revian Chang about her experience on the reality dating show. With May being Asian Heritage Month up here in Canada and Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month south of the border, I thought it would be appropriate to return to a subject I’ve explored so often since this blog’s inception. What I didn’t expect was the immense weight that would accompany my decision.

Thinking over the interim in which this site lay dormant I’m reminded of the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, a horrific incident that struck me so deeply that it wasn’t until an old coworker asked me how I was feeling that I realized I was angry. I think back on a time where it felt like with every passing day was a new story about yet another hate crime being enacted against Asian people, violence born out of xenophobia that studies have shown flourished with the former POTUS’s tweets about the global pandemic.

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Even now, during the month when we as Asian people living in North America should be keeping our heads high, acknowledging our past hardships and present triumphs, we’re reminded only four days in that distrust of Asian Americans has been steadily growing over the past year. 33% of Americans believe that Asian Americans are “more loyal to their country of origin than to the United States.” Countries that many have never even stepped foot in.

The increased difficulty surrounding my existence is directly tied into the dehumanization of my race. The man who shot and killed eight people (six of them being Asian women) was able to do so because he viewed them as temptations before he was able to consider them people. Opposite that mindset, the model minority stereotype that surrounds Asian Americans might seem positive, but it still reduces individuals down to qualities they might not even embody. It’s why a range of representation is so crucial, and the reason the Asian himbo is so important. Continue reading →

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Posted in America, Asia, crime, film, gender, internet, media, race, relationships, sex, television

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Polygraphs and Monotheism: More Complex Than Expected

Posted on March 12, 2017 by | Leave a comment

I am a Christian.

That’s more or less exactly how I began a blog post way back in 2013, when I attempted to combat a very prevalent and largely Christian argument against gay marriage. While it’s rarely ever stated as explicitly I also like to think that this fact isn’t something I’ve obscured or tried to keep secret.

On that note, the topic of Christianity also isn’t anything new here at Culture War Reporters. While the majority of these posts have focused on art that willingly bears that descriptor, my co-writers have also delved a little deeper into that belief system and morality. While the former may seem more at home given what we typically cover, a review of our About page readily sums up why the latter is just as appropriate as anything else.

In it we touch on culture wars as a “a conflict between societies with different ideas, philosophies, beliefs, and behaviours,” as well as how we are both individually and collectively wrestling with them. It’s the concept of two vastly differing perspectives that solidified whether or not I should do a brief write-up on my recent experience with a polygraph test. Continue reading →

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Posted in Christianity, crime, language, morality, religion

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We’re All In Danger: An Open Letter to Minority Republicans

Posted on February 27, 2017 by | 1 comment

These are the facts:

Last Wednesday, Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani – two Indian-born engineers living and working in the US – stepped into Austin’s Bar & Grill in Olathe, Kansas. As they had done so many times before, they ordered drinks and unwound after a long day of work. On this particular evening however, Kuchibhotla and Madasani were approached by another patron, Adam Purinton, who began to shout racial slurs at the two men and demanded to know “Which country are you from? Are you here illegally?”, before shouting “Get out of my country!”

Purinton was thrown out of the bar, only to return with a gun, opening fire on Kuchibhotla and Madasani. Kuchibhotla was killed and Madasani was injured, along with twenty-four year old patron Ian Grillot, who attempted to subdue Purinton. Purinton fled on foot, and was next seen five hours later at an Applebees across the state line. Purinton claimed openly to having killed “two Middle-Eastern men.” Purinton was promptly arrested and extradited from Missouri back to Kansas, where he has been charged with first-degree murder, bail set at two-million dollars.

Once again, these are the facts.

What follows is the tricky part.

How do I write about this – any of this – without devolving into incoherent rage? After all these tragedies over all these years, have we gotten any closer to make sense of the senseless?

Perhaps I could write about how Indians and Sikhs have repeatedly been the targets of hatred intended for Arabs and Muslims. How ever since 9/11, an entire group of people who have done nothing – nothing – to harm the US have been harassed, belittled, and even murdered.

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And the 2012 massacre in Oak Creek, WI is just one of many examples

Continue reading →

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Posted in Asia, crime, government, Islam, morality, news, politics, race, religion

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Re: “Black Lives Matter and White Privilege”

Posted on October 22, 2016 by | 3 comments

I need to state upfront that this post is not an all-encompassing response to the Black Lives Matter movement [which I will be shortening to “BLM”] and the concept of White privilege. The title instead refers to a blog post titled “Black Lives Matter and White Privilege”. Written by Ghanaian-Canadian Samuel Sey and appearing on his site Slow to Write, the article delved into his opinions on both topics.

Regular readers of the blog will know that I don’t often respond to other blog posts in this manner; the last time I did so was back in 2014, to the article “Meet The Poster Child For ‘White Privilege’ – Then Have Your Mind Blown”. I wasn’t able to read it without addressing, and outright dismantling, many of the arguments presented, and having read Sey’s post I found myself in a similar position.

It should be mentioned that Sey and I have vastly more in common with one another than I do with Tal Fortgang, the writer of the aforementioned article. He is a fellow Canadian, POC, and Christian, actually attending a church in Toronto [although he lives just outside it]. Sey and I also, and I believe I can say this with confidence, care about the wellbeing of the Black community in North America. With all of those similarities in place it made it that much more difficult to read his post and find myself disagreeing with so many key points. Continue reading →

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Posted in crime, family, interview, race, writing

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Don’t Call the Shooter “Crazy”: Toxic Masculinity, Mental Illness Stigma, and the Red-Herring’s of Mass Shootings

Posted on September 1, 2016 by | 2 comments

Our country has a serious gun epidemic.

We’re all aware of it, and it seems that almost weekly now we’re presented with yet another account of a mass shooter wreaking havoc among innocent civilians. We talk about gun control. We talk about mental illness. We talk about religious extremism. But we always seem to skirt around the underlying issue. By doing so we often cause harm to more innocent lives.

There’re so many “red herring” distractions to mass shootings, but the real issue lies much deeper in our society. Through our language, the media, our laws, and our acceptance of gendered norms, we manage to allow these massacres to continue and instead place undue pressure on mental illness. Sufferers of mental illness are often the target, although statistics show they are rarely violent people. The issue lies elsewhere: within toxic masculinity and the need to seek control.

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Another Mass Shooting, Always One Group to Blame

Mental illness is commonly brought up after a mass shooting. News anchors will emphasize the importance of mental illness awareness, and will suggest laws to evaluate the mental stability of gun owners. It’s an easy target to paint: those that kill others must be crazy.

The word “crazy” is used so loosely in our society, but it’s with this type of language that we perpetuate the stigma around mental illness. Entertainment and television were large perpetrators of spreading harmful stereotypes for a long time, but that is slowly changing in fictional media. News-centered media is still behind the times, however.

It’s taken us a long time to get where we are today in mental illness treatment and care. According to Bradley University’s research about 18% of the American population admits to suffering from some sort of mental illness. Of those 43.6 million people, only 6.7 million sought and received treatment for their varying ailments. Those who did seek treatment found that it was extremely beneficial, but still only a fraction of those suffering seek out the help they need.

Language and negative connotation are one of the main reasons people avoid seeking help. Despite that fact that only 3-5% of violent acts are committed by sufferers of mental illness, the issue is always brought up around cases of murder and shootings. The mental health of the shooter is put into question, and the media is quick to jump on the blame train; to distance themselves from the “crazy” or “unstable” population.

“We aren’t responsible for this, because we’re not insane.” Continue reading →

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Posted in crime, Guest Post, health, news, race

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If We Whined About Other Groups The Same Way We Whine About Black Lives Matter

Posted on August 1, 2016 by | 2 comments

v2my2blSince the movement’s inception in the wake of the murder of Trayvon Martin, the Black Lives Matter campaign has taken its share of criticism. As the number of unarmed black men killed by the police has mounted over the past years, so have the responses from- and towards- the movement. So much so that they’ve become cliche at this point. Still not so cliche that we won’t try to respond to ’em, however.

Let’s imagine, if you will, a world where white folks are also the victims of police brutality. Where white folks have been arbitrarily discriminated against on the basis of their ethnic, national, and religious background. Where exploitation and oppression have left enormous swathes of white folks in abject poverty.

Imagining that world should be pretty easy, because it’s the one we live in now. But let’s say that a movement existed to argue that maybe- just maybe- random violence inflicted by the state on white citizens isn’t something that should just be suffered silently. I’m betting we would still have people who sound like this:

I’m white and I hate white lives matter.

And because I’m white I can say that and it somehow feels more justified. Like “well, he’s white– so you know he’s got more authority to speak on what is and isn’t acceptable behavior for other white people.” Like with clothes.

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We all know that sagging your pants is an offense that should allow cops and scared white folks who embarrass self-respecting gun-owners  vigilantes to kill you on sight, so what about these guys?

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I mean, this guy’s wearing a wife beater, a gold chain, and he’s got slicked back hair. You know who else wears clothes like that? That’s right- the mafia.

I mean, I assume so.

Truth be told, I’m not a criminologist and I can’t really claim to know what all criminals wear, but I’m going to assume it looks like this because having to think for extended periods of time makes brain go hurt-hurt. But I see someone who fits the image that the media has created for me and I just go “well if TV says a thug looks like this, then this guy must be a gangster. When has TV ever lied?” Continue reading →

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Posted in America, bizarreness, Canada, crime, feminism, gender, government, history, morality, news, politics, race

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