The Absurdity of ‘Racial Realism’

The mass shooter in Atlanta embodied the flawed logic that racial stereotypes reflect fact-based truths

Activists outside Gold Spa following Tuesday night’s shooting, where three women were gunned down, on March 18, 2021, in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo: Megan Varner/Getty Images

Racism introduces absurdism into the human condition. Not only does racism express the absurdity of the racists, it generates absurdity in the victims.

— Chester Himes

Our nation is mourning the recent attacks on the Asian American community. On Tuesday, a man murdered eight people at three Atlanta-area massage parlors. This comes amidst the global pandemic where anti-Asian hate speech and violence are on the rise.

As we watch the coverage of this tragedy, many of us are privy to the absurdity of racism in America. This absurdity was even articulated by the man who carried out the killings. The mass shooter claimed the attack was not racially motivated, even though six of the eight victims were Asian American women. Cherokee County sheriff’s Capt. Jay Baker told reporters that “he apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations as something that allows him to go to these places, and it’s a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.”

Most of us will have a visceral response to that statement. It’s absurd in the conventional sense of the word — an insistence that what we all…