Ethnicity of Virginia Tech
shooter makes us all deal with "diversity" in a new way...as you can read in the LA Times . Korean-American leaders in LA felt the need to denounce the shootings in Virginia and speak of reconciliation, which just goes to show that Asian-Americans, including Korean-Americans still feel as if we live on the knife's edge of backlash. No white people or more specifically, no white suburbanites apologized for the Columbine shootings. Crazy white people ido not make news like crazy minorities do because there are always so many beautiful, tawdry, heroic white people to distract us. But with so few of my racial confreres in the media spotlight (admittedly there are more today than when I grew up) one psychotic kid can come to stand in for all of us. I myself fell into this kind of thinking when I began speculating about Asian-Americans and mental health...Then I realized, this is ridiculous, think of Oklahoma City -- was there a lot of hand-wringing on the part of rural Americans about undermedicated conspiracy theory addled paranoiacs and their fantasies of destroying the US government?
The bigger question is why some one who had been declared mentally ill was able to buy guns legally. Thirty-two people would still be alive today if Cho had not had access to firearms. That is what is crazy about this whole thing -- American gun laws....
The bigger question is why some one who had been declared mentally ill was able to buy guns legally. Thirty-two people would still be alive today if Cho had not had access to firearms. That is what is crazy about this whole thing -- American gun laws....
Labels: minority life
7 Comments:
Catherine,
I'm glad that you put this 'backlash' sentiment into some perspective. I hope you talk more at length about this. On my campus, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Asian-Americans held forums to talk about the shootings at Virginia Tech. My first thought about the forums were: "Hey, it's not your fault!" Though I'm not Asian (I'm still considered a minority-person), I think that I can understand the deeply felt need to band together in light of the Virginia Tech eruption. This campus has many great Asian-Americans who are wonderful to be around, great to work with, study with, make love to and marry, so there's really no need to 'freak out.'
The day after the shootings, I noticed that the sidewalks on and around campus were curiously empty of Asian people. Right away, I knew 'what was up.' What is it about American culture that breeds a collective angst over the actions of a few? One feels that no matter how honorable or good one holds oneself to be, the truth of how one is truly esteemed in society (the backlash) is just a hair's breath away.
I have to say that despite all my denials of uneasy association with said shooter, I do feel an unspeakable sense of something when I see Cho's gun toting image on the cover of the LA Times.
See how far we've come? Asian-Americans have thrown off their model minority image AT LAST. The complexity we've been asking for is finally here -- we're not all nerdy engineering majors...we're psychotic too!
Yes, on mark. As in the Don Imus showdown, black leaders were asked to decry hip-hop's misogyny and the “culture of urban crime” as if “white” leaders are ever asked to decry “redneck” racism, homophobia, and the like. It’s tough to untangle class from race in a country were racilized difference founds its creation. On my own campus, a Korean colleague tells me she was met with weird stares when she walked into class the day after it was learned that the gunman was a Korean American. Too sensitive? Doesn’t matter, the fact that smart people feel racist energy in situations like this tells me it’s present, even in “select” academic institutions.
Certainly, the "complexity" that was bound to develop is now in view, if not totally 'in vogue.' America seemed to thread the Asian personality into a steel framework, a grid, so to speak, to control as well as to contain. Yet, I see complexity sprouting more as a result of Asians taking back their fully rounded humanity--always there but corraled into America's gridlock of acceptability.
Even the South Korean embassy felt the need to add an anti-backlash statement into its statement of sympathy for the victims.
I yearn for the day when instead of "taking back our humanity" we can talk about taking back the government, or the public sphere from plutocratic domination....how about taking back our health insurance system, taking back mental health providers? Taking back federal funding of higher education.
Taking back our humanity would entail understanding the extent to which neoliberalism has been a daily disaster for millions of middel class and poor, as well as working Americans.
Taking back our humanity would entail an assumption of full responsibility for political solidarity with OTHER minorities.
Former US attorney Caroline Lam, fired by the Bush administration is my heroine of the week -- Chinese-Americans who went up against corruption in SoCal...let's see more of that!
Oh American culture...when will it ever be understood? Well, when you can laugh at its fear driven energy really. Why else would this kind of apologizing take place? And why else would I have seen a Korean woman, in Korea, being interviewed and saying that she is "embarrassed" for him and seemingly for being Korean at this time. Embarrassed? I cannot remember the last time a German French Austrian English individual shot up a crowd of people and I felt embarrassed. Sorry, I guess I don't feel accountable or responsible for the actions of another human being who is rendering their own account. And what is really twisted about this is that she probably felt that unless she say something like this, she would be in danger of a backlash in her own home, country, around peers perhaps, who knows? I find the whole thing enough to go buy a pint. Horrible things happen. Everyone should have been blindfolded when it went down. Then who would we have to look at in a funny way the next day in class? Seems race is the easiest of all scapegoats. I particulary can appreciate the point about white suburbanites not having apologized. As if Koreans should because they are "guests" on "our" soil. Again, buying a pint.
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