Can’t Call the Baby Attacker ‘Asian’

Here’s the dirtbag who poured a thermos of scalding coffee, sorry, allegedly poured a thermos of boiling coffee over a nine-month-old baby boy’s head in a Brisbane park a couple of weeks ago. The baby suffered life-threatening burns to his face, upper body and arms and has undergone multiple skin graft operations in the local Children’s Hospital, but will take years to fully recover. The police say the man is a 33-year-old foreign national who not only fled the scene, but also fled the country. By the time the police identified him on the 1st of September, it was 12 hours too late, as he had already travelled to Sydney and caught an international flight using his own passport. So much for all these CCTV cameras “keeping us safe”.

But that’s not why I’m here today. I’m here to talk about the initial police description of the perpetrator. “He is described as around 30 to 40-years-old, of a proportionate build, with tanned skin.” Tanned skin in Australia? That’s only about 90% of the population. Now obviously, this guy is Asian, East Asian if you want to get specific. So why couldn’t the police, and the media state that? We all kind of know the reason. Political correctness, right? Everyone is too scared that we might upset somebody if we call the Asian baby-attacker Asian. We might offend him.

Just a couple of points I’d like to make. Firstly, describing the perpetrator as Asian is not racist. It’s descriptive. Just as they call people of Caucasian appearance Caucasian. When it comes to a manhunt, you want to be as succinct as possible. None of this beating around the bush. Secondly, saying that the baby-attacker is Asian, is not the same as saying, “All Asian people are baby-attackers”. Obviously. Thirdly, Asian people know they’re Asian. I’ve lived in Japan and China. My wife is Asian. Chinese and Japanese people happily call themselves Asian. It’s not considered offensive. It’s considered factual. Why are Western countries so hung up on not using factual descriptions of people’s ethnicity?

According to the Oxford Dictionary, “Asian: A native of Asia or a person of Asian descent.” Pretty simple. Not racist. Factual.

Look, whether they described him as Asian or not initially, perhaps it wouldn’t of made a difference, but why beat around the bush when it comes to catching an attempted murderer, essentially? When it comes to manhunts, time is of the essence. Who cares if we upset a couple of woke people?

Former Australian Federal Police Detective Superintendent David Craig commented on the handling of the manhunt stating, “When a baby has been injured, we need to call out exactly who we are looking for. These are not racial vilification terms, these are identifying terms. He should have been called out as a man of Asian appearance, just like we do with a person of Caucasian appearance. It didn’t happen quick enough in this case. I think that probably one of the best things that we can do in this situation is actually rely on human intelligence from the community, and we need to get the information out there very rapidly.”

The QPS defended its approach with a spokesperson saying, “We wanted to solicit as much information from the public as possible, and to not create a bias within any generated leads.”

We all know where this is going, don’t we? Ethnicity is off limits, right? What’s next? Gender, right? I can just imagine now in Police HQ the lead investigator coming up with a description of the perpetrator:

“Right team, we’ve finally got a picture of our suspect. I’d describe him as ‘A male person of Asian appearance.’ Thoughts?”
“Sir, we can’t describe him as Asian. That’s racist!”
“Okay, that leaves us with ‘A male person’”.
“But boss, he might not identify as male!”
“Okay then, how about ‘A person of male-appearance’?”
“No, that’s no good! What if he uses they/them pronouns? What if he’s non-binary?”
“Okay, well, that leaves us with ‘A person.’”
“But person contains the word ‘son’. That might be offensive to some people.”
“Okay, how about ‘human’?”
“No, that’s no good! Human contains the word ‘man’. We need to use gender-inclusive language!” “Fine, I’ll use the scientific term, ‘Homo sapien’.”
“That sounds too much like homosexual!”

Seven hours later.

“Be on the look out for one bipedal mammal. Gender unknown. Two arms. Two legs. Possibly likes eating noodles.”
“No boss, that’s a racial stereotype!”

MUSIC
Allégro by Emmit Fenn