Not Racist to Want to Be Safe

November 1, 2023, Lecture at UC Berkeley

Ying Ma recently delivered a lecture on crime and anti-Asian violence in Oakland, California. Hosted by the Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women, the lecture took place before some 300 undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley).

Ms. Ma shared her story of growing up amid rampant crime in inner-city Oakland, and echoed a call made by the NAACP Oakland branch over the summer for policies that would allow residents to live peacefully and safely.

Ms. Ma applauded the NAACP chapter for forcefully condemning the city’s “intolerable” public safety crisis and failed leadership, including the movement to defund the police. “There is nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing criminal behavior to fester and rob Oakland residents of their basic rights to public safety. It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime. No one should live in fear in our city,” the chapter stated.

In her lecture, Ms. Ma cited statistics of rampant crime in Oakland, denounced the hypocrisy of political leaders who ignore anti-Asian violence when they cannot blame it on white supremacy, and emphasized the need to “fight crime in general, for everybody.”

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Ms. Ma last delivered a lecture to undergraduate students at UC Berkeley in the spring of 2018, when she addressed the controversial issue of immigration.

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