Hey everyone, welcome to court side, a discussion of legal issues.

And today I want to talk about something I've been thinking about all week, as I know many of you have, the recent rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans, and specifically what happened in Atlanta.

And I want to explore with you a bit about what hate crimes are and how

the law deals with them and what you and I can do to make this country a bit better. I'm not going to

pretend this subject is anything but personal. This is the only court side in 75 episodes in which

I'm not going to tell jokes.

I don't have any to tell about this subject.

I'm sure someone like John Oliver could pull it off.

I'm no John Oliver.

So I'm just going to tell you just, you know, how I'm feeling and what the law is.

And, you know, many of us have been in tears all week as we watched descriptions of what happened.

And as an Asian man who grew up in Chicago, you know, it brings back a lot of very painful

memories for me, things that were said, things that were done to my parents, to their friends, to our community.

And it pains me to no end. I remember so vividly when these things were happening, I said to

myself, you know, I'm seven, I'm 10, I'm 15, but the world's going to get better. This is a blip.

You know, I didn't know this vocabulary then, but, you know, I felt in my heart that the arc of progress was going to bend toward justice.

And in general, it's gotten better.

But then over the last several years, we've had a constitutional monster in the Oval Office, someone who prayed

on our fears and exploited these racist and sometimes sexist attitudes, you know, and called it,

you know, stupid things like China virus or Wuhan flu nonsense. None of this is a crime, what he said. I mean,

it's a crime against humanity, but it's not formally a violation of the criminal law. But he bears

a lot of moral responsibility for the situation we're in now. But the law is going to deal with it.

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