Multiple outlets have reported a story regarding a woman who approached two different Asian-American people in public and verbally accosted them with a profanity-laced racist tirade.
The woman has been identified as Lena Hernandez, age 56.
The first incident involved a jogger whose offense was using a stairs to stretch. The video makes it clear Hernandez wasn't objecting because the jogger was interfering with HER exercise regimen. The video shows a portly woman who came out of nowhere and began ranting at the young jogger. My initial reaction in watching and listening to the diatribe was "that woman is mentally ill."
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/california-woman-filmed-threatening-a-young-filipino-american-woman-exercising-in-a-park_n_5ee3e879c5b65d77bafbd2f0The Twitter post of the second incident later the same day in the same area confirmed that assumption. She gets out of her car to verbally accost an Asian man who parked his car in the spot next to her -- too close to her car according to her.
As the videos were distributed on the Internet, reports of similar public incidents involving the same woman came out of the woodwork from across the community, including a report from October of 2019 in which Hernandez physically assaulted an Asian woman who had intervened when Hernandez was unleashing a racist rant against a woman working as a janitor cleaning a public bathroom.
Several things occur to me watching these two videos.
Americans have produced a toxic climate in which people of color are hunted down by red-necked, racist troglodytes from pickup trucks - EXACTLY like wild animals on the Serengeti - for merely jogging through a residential neighborhood.
Police forces have TRAINED violence-first techniques to cops resulting in officers calmly choking handcuffed, already subdued suspects for SEVEN MINUTES in broad daylight knowing that cameras are rolling like they are downing their morning donut and coffee. Because they think they can. Communities are paying MILLIONS in damage awards to victims while RETAINING these offices who often have records for abusive arrests longer than the arrest records of those they are apprehending.
The two citizens involved in these videos showed REMARKABLE calm and constraint. Imagine your state of mind if some WHITE woman pops up out of NOWHERE, walks up to you -- a person of color -- carrying a bag -- you don't know if she's armed -- and begins unleashing a racist rant against you. In that moment, you don't know if she's going to stop with only hideous words exchanged, or if she's going to pull out a gun and kill you. In this climate American has unleashed on itself, one would think the same bogus concept that allowed George Zimmerman to perversely claim HE felt his life was in danger after CHOOSING to assault someone else who fought back would apply to these citizens, justifying a pre-emptive assault against Hernandez, even if she was just a crazy lady, not a "real threat."
Let's focus on the racist / crazy lady.
Is she just a racist? Or is she just a crazy lady? It's an interesting thought exercise to consider how far apart those two points are and how a distinction could be made. I tend to think that someone who is racist demonstrates a consistent level of intellectual processing across different domains of thought and decision making and, through those processes, somehow CHOOSES to come to racist attitudes and alter their behavior and choices accordingly.
When you see someone that seems truly crazy who also engages in racist behavior, the motivation that seems to inevitably drive the racist behavior is fear. From a biological standpoint, the layer of our consciousness that seems to have the most leverage over the millennia of our existence (or is it just 6000 years? I forget...) would be fear and the fight or flight response. No matter how crazy you are, any behaviors rooted in fear are likely to continue getting expressed, albeit in less coherent ways as mental illness progresses.
Now put your way-back hats on to 1980 and the beginning of the Reagan Administration. In 1980 prior to the November election, Congress enacted and President Carter signed into law the Mental Health Services Act which continued providing grants to local mental health institutions. By 1981, budget strategies promoted by Republicans and President Reagan completely repealed the 1980 law and established a pattern of "deinstitutionalizing" mental health patients at the state level as well. For FORTY YEARS, the United States has provided virtually ZERO focus on mental health while healthcare costs for treatments in private settings have skyrocketed and income disparity shifted more wealth to the 0.1 percent away from the economic center. How many mentally ill can afford extended mental healthcare? How many people who HAVE a family member with mental illness can afford to provide ongoing treatment for that family member?
Now fast forward to 2015. In a nation with definite pockets of racist / apocalyptic militias scattered across the country but an even large population of mentally ill people living on the social and economic fringe without proper healthcare, medication and supervision, an ignorant, racist, dream candidate floats down an escalator to a podium and announces a run for President. For the next 12-16 months, that candidate gets virtually unlimited free air time as he spouts ideas often indistinguishable from those held by these militants and mentally ill "phantom patients."
Now back to the present. After five years of this un-virtuous feedback cycle operating in clear view every day and ideas circulating perpetually between racists and the mentally ill, the level of open racism and craziness has reached unimaginable levels. Some in the country are trying to draw these ideas out into the open thinking sunlight is the ultimate disinfectant. Others are desperately trying to stuff the bad genie back into the bottle in a futile attempt to preserve a status quo that benefits a narrow few.
America has problems with both racism and mental health because many of our educational, judicial, social and civic institutions are failing to provide proper services for those in need. Bad schools fail to teach history to avoid mistakes in the past. Bad politicians run on get-tough-on-crime platforms and allow abusive cops to terrorize minorities. Bad courts acquit racist vigilantes under bizarre "castle doctrine" laws and acquit bad cops under flawed "qualified immunity" laws. Resources for investigating and curtailing racist, militant militias are cut at federal and state levels while prison funding skyrockets for drug crimes. The only real debate at this point is the extent to which these institutions have strayed from some prior working condition or were DESIGNED specifically to produce the current results.
Think of the outcomes of the American experiment like an air conditioned house on a 100 degree summer day. The segregation of 100 degree air outside and 74 degree air inside isn't accidental. The laws of physics make it IMPOSSIBLE for it to be 100 degrees outside and 74 degrees inside without WORK being done to maintain such a disparity in energy / entropy levels. Something has to pluck the heat out of the inside and push it to the outside. Someone had to DEVISE that process and someone had to INVEST in resources to IMPLEMENT that process and someone has to MAINTAIN that process. For those inside enjoying the disparity, the machinery involved in producing that comfort can be hidden out of sight or earshot in the basement or outside but the machinery MUST be present to achieve that outcome.
America didn't get to the levels of economic, social and judicial imbalance being seen today by accident. In some cases, the country has CHOSEN to dismantle machinery and controls previously implemented to correct these faults. In other cases, the country has chosen to CONTINUE IGNORING machinery dating back 100, 150 or even 244 years that has been humming along the entire time, funneling benefits to the few and keeping the rest outside.
WTH
