Psst, right-wingers! Understanding the Atlanta Massage Parlor Murders is what Critical Race Theory and intersectionality are for

Another young White cisgender man has murdered another group of non-White people, and once again, White brows are furrowing over whether his conduct was racially motivated. Was it a “hate crime,” they ask? How will we ever know? Oh, perhaps we should ask him — because, sure, that’s how you figure it out.

When a man who beats his wife to death is asked why he did it, if he says, “Because she burned my dinner,” do we conclude that it must have been culinary incompetence, and not sex/gender, that motivated that crime? Hardly. Because you don’t have to be (or read) Betty Freidan or Catherine MacKinnon to have some inkling that just maybe some retrogressive ideas about sex and gender roles might have had a little something to do with it. And what’s more, maybe the actual killer is the not the person with the most expertise about the array of forces that led them to commit such horrific acts, and their statements ought not to be taken at face value.

But there is a way to try to understand events like these. Much-maligned on the know-nothing Right (and perhaps even on the know-something Right, albeit for different reasons), Critical Race Theory, especially in its intersectional form, is precisely what is needed…