Baizuo definition from Urban Dictionary:
"Baizuo (白左, White Leftists) is a popular Mainland Chinese term coined for a specific subset of Westerners who are despised by most Chinese for their pretentiousness, hypocritical behavior and an overbearing sense of entitlement.
Baizuo are mostly characterized by their heavy use of political correctness and double standards to covertly advance their own material or emotional interests at the expense of others while claiming otherwise from a self-assumed superior moral position."
Dion Lim is a San Francisco Bay Area-based news reporter for the local ABC affiliate KGO-TV. For the past year, Lim has been tirelessly reporting on the appalling hate-driven assaults on Asian residents in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area region. In addition to reporting these incidents for the local news channel, Lim keeps her followers informed through her social media accounts on Instagram and Twitter.
Given the service that Lim is doing by following up with victims and keeping the public informed of criminal charges against suspects, she deserves applause for her hard work and fortitude. Not only are the sheer number of violent assaults targeting Asian victims dizzying to keep up with, they surely take a mental and emotional toll.
It is frankly bizarre, then, that the Washington Post recently published an opinion piece in what is essentially a hit piece on Lim, accusing her of distorting facts surrounding a San Francisco attempted carjacking that took place in March of this year. The author of the piece is someone named Radley Balko – a writer who lives in Tennessee. Upon closer examination, it seems that his only tie to San Francisco is his support for the local District Attorney, Chesa Boudin.
This is an important point because Balko's Washington Post piece is as much an attack on Lim's reporting as its defense of his buddy Boudin. This is not surprising given that Lim has been a tough critic of Boudin over his handling of several of these anti-Asian hate crimes. Not only that, but Lim often points to the failure of Boudin's office to charge known violent felons appropriately, sometimes resulting in fatal consequences.
In a tragic case in San Francisco's SoMa District on New Year's Eve, a repeat offender who was out on parole named Troy McAlister hit and killed two women in a crosswalk driving in a stolen vehicle while high on meth. One of the victims was a young Japanese woman by the name of Hanako Abe. In an interview with Lim, Abe's mother raised questions about why McAlister was even out on the streets in the first place:
"It makes me question why this happened, and I hope that this incident gets revealed and investigated. For example, was it right for the suspect to be released? Was it right for him to be on parole?"
Read the rest of this piece at Adam Mayer.Substack.com.
Adam Mayer is an architect based in California. In addition to his job designing buildings he writes the China Urban Development Blog.
Follow him on Twitter: @AdamNMayer
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