Whenever anything really bad happens around Korean people, that is when I would like to hide, go to Hawaii and eat spam sushi until it blows over. I don’t want to comment on it because I don’t want to escalate the situation and I don’t want to implicate myself in it. I don’t want to ‘come out’ as Asian because therein lies a tremendous responsibility that I never volunteered for, that I don’t have any real control over, and that is as mysterious to me as it is to someone who isn’t Asian.
So here is the whole terrible mess of the shootings at Virginia Tech. I look at the shooter’s expressionless face on the news and he looks so familiar, like he could be in my family. Just another one of us. But how can he be us when what he has done is so terrible? Here is where I can really envy white people because when white people do something that is inexplicably awful, so brutally and horribly wrong, nobody says – “do you think it is because he is white?†There are no headlines calling him the “White shooter.” There is no mention of race because there is no thought in anyone’s mind that his race had anything to do with his crime.
So much attention is focused on the Asian-ness of the shooter, how the Korean community is reacting to it, South Korea’s careful condolences and cautiously expressed fear that it will somehow impact the South Korean population at large.
What is lost here is the grief. What is lost is the great, looming sadness that we should all feel over this. We lose our humanity to racism, time and time again.
I extend my deepest sympathies to all those who lost their loved ones, their children, their friends and family, in this unimaginable tragedy. I send them all the love I have in me, and I encourage everyone to do the same.
HI Margaret! *waves*
The first time I saw the shooter, I didn’t actually care he was Korean. I just saw him as a mentally ill human being. In other words, I didn’t make the connection, someone biased might make, between the crime he committed and his heritage. It’s very sad there are people like that out there.
PS: I love the CHO show!!! 😀
I remember when this day hit.
What I noted is people have a hard time distingushing between cultural, racial lines and indivudual ones.
and then if it’s an individual one, what was the motive?
We later discovered he was mentally ill. Why try to make sense out of something that doesn’t make sence to others?
This is a good example of the social stignma around mental illness. I’m wondering if the vast majority of those who are ill get medicated?
It appears family knows, or friends about the behavior. and then we go “it will go away.” there is so much blame and shame around mental illness.
What if someone would have intervened?
His reality doesn’t make sense to us, and mentally ill people don’t have an accuarte grasp of realtiyy.
this is why you take them to the drs. instead of ignoring it. How many situations could have been prevented if we weren’t so scared, in denial or ashamed?