Two articles by way of Angry Asian Man, a possible incident of anti-Asian violence at Auburn University. It's being investigated as a retaliatory attack after the shooting massacre at Virginia Tech. And an essay written by a high school student that had violent themes was reported to the police for investigation. The identity of the kid? He's Asian, and a straight A student.
Reposting from SFGate.com. It's a great article addressing this problem of the shooter's racial and national identity, and it's impact on political discourses and analysis.
Virginia Tech Massacre
Shooter Debate: Speculation Mars Discussion Online
by Vanessa Hua
Initial media reports described Cho Seung-Hui -- whose shooting rampage Monday at Virginia Tech left 33 dead, including himself -- as a resident alien, an Asian and a South Korean.
On Tuesday, racially tinged speculation, based on the 23-year-old Cho's heritage and immigrant status, flew around the Internet, even though he spent two-thirds of his life in the United States.
"Yet another reason for the U.S. to further restrict immigration to this country," a user going by the name of Christabella posted on a blog at SFGate.com, The Chronicle's Web site. "Had they not allowed Cho to waltz into the nation on a student visa, those 33 people would still be alive."
Cho, the underlying argument went, was a foreigner.
That kind of thinking has alarmed Asian American leaders. Overemphasis in news coverage of his immigrant status, and stereotyping in general, could influence perceptions of all Asian Americans -- not only Koreans -- especially in areas with little connection to Asians and Asian Americans, said Eric Mar, a San Francisco school board member who is Chinese American.
The Asian American Journalists Association, headquartered in San Francisco, questioned stories and online comments posted Tuesday morning that highlighted Cho's race and immigration status because that emphasis suggested those factors played a role in the shootings.
In fact, Cho was like many school shooters -- about three-quarters of whom have been white boys and young men, according to a 2000 report from the U.S. Secret Service. Cho appeared to feel marginalized and angry, according to criminologists and psychologists such as Louis B. Schlesinger, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Born in South Korea, Cho, 23, immigrated as a child to the United States in 1992. He was raised in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, the son of a couple who worked at a dry-cleaning business. He was sullen and depressed, an English major whose twisted fiction concerned faculty and a fan of bloody shooting games, according to media reports.
"A useful way to think about this is, 'How connected might an individual feel to a community and a society?' " said Daniel Webster, co-director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University. "Sometimes the barriers might be racial, sometimes it might be language. Sometimes it might be their own mental health that prevents them from forming bonds."
The public is attempting to make sense of the tragedy by categorizing Cho and his motivations, said James Garbarino, a professor at Loyola University in Chicago, and author of "Lost Boys: Why Our Boys Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them."
People have "an impulse to distance themselves" from the campus killer, Garbarino said. "The more someone is like one of us, the harder it is to sleep."
Some of the people posting to blogs and chat rooms online Tuesday blamed Cho's actions on his "foreign" status. Others dismissed such arguments as preposterous and asserted that the massacre resulted from easy access to guns, violence in the media or the popularity of violent video games. Still others theorized he was a member of al Qaeda, carrying out a terrorist attack. He was an English-as-a-second-language student depressed about finals, according to another theory.
Indeed, commentators' theories may say more about them than about the gunman.
"It's a psychological protective technique," said Franklin Zimring, a criminologist at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. "This is about gun control, or immigration, or not allowing guns on campus. People are painting the picture."
Reposted from Salon.com. "It's Like When 9/11 Happened"
With the Virginia Tech shooter's identity revealed, some Koreans, fearing a backlash, are fleeing the campus.
by Joe Eaton
Apr. 17, 2007 | As Virginia Tech students grieve the worst shooting in American history, which left 33 dead on this state university campus in southwestern Virginia, some Korean students and their parents are fearing a backlash.
Police announced this morning that Cho Seung-hui was the suspect in the shooting deaths of 32 students and staff members in two Virginia Tech buildings. Cho apparently killed himself with a gunshot to the head. Cho, 23, was a permanent U.S. resident who was born in South Korea and moved to the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington in 1992.
At about 1 p.m. Monday in front of Harper Hall, the residence hall where Cho lived on the second floor, Young-je Ko, 21, and his girlfriend Hyun-jung Kim, 19, sat in a black Mustang preparing to leave campus. Ko, a senior accounting major, said he and other South Korean students are afraid to stay on campus. Ko said many of their friends in a Korean Christian group were also planning to leave Blacksburg for Northern Virginia.
"It's like when 9/11 happened," Ko said. "Arab people are victims even though they didn't do anything wrong. It's just the same to me." Ko said Korean students have been e-mailing and calling each other since the release of Cho's name this morning. He said he wanted to attend today's convocation at 2 p.m., where President Bush was scheduled to speak, but friends warned him against it. "People said don't attend because it could be a bad situation," he said.
Ko, who emigrated from South Korea in 2001, and Kim, who emigrated in 2002, were heading home to Annandale, Va., near Washington, where their parents live. "My parents were so worried," Kim said. "When I left my dorm, I felt like the white kids were staring at me."
Jae Kun Lee, a Korean national, also decided to leave. His parents had called him from South Korea, where the shooting is being covered extensively by the media, and expressed concern for his safety.
"Sooner or later it's going to impact us directly or indirectly," said Lee. "If someone lost a loved one, of course, they are upset. Some bad things might happened just because I am Korean."
Lee was heading to a friend's house in Northern Virginia. "It's good to stay away and wait."
Racist screeds have cropped up quickly among right-wing commentators and on the Internet, including the idea that Korean males are excessively prone to violent jealous rages.
In Christiansburg, Va., less than 10 miles from Blacksburg, Mi-hwan Park said her daughter Veronica would be attending the convocation. Veronica is a member of the campus Korean Society. Her mother said she raised her children to think of themselves as individuals more than part of a nationality. She hopes others see the crime as the act of an individual, but she is worried. "This is an individual thing, not a nation thing," she said.
Michael Ko and Mindy Koo, both 20-year-old Americans of Chinese descent, said other Asian-Americans they knew were afraid to be seen in public. "For me," said Ko, from Richmond, Va., "I just don't feel like I'm scared."
Mindy Koo said her parents called and asked her to leave Blacksburg and return to her home in Northern Virginia because they feared for her safety. She declined. "I feel that would be worse if all the Asian-Americans fled campus. We can't leave Virginia Tech in this time of grieving."
But Koo said she did wonder whether people were watching her this morning as she ate breakfast in a school dining hall. And Michael Ko said some of his friends had left Blacksburg.
Andy Wong is a 19-year-old freshman who lived on the same floor as Cho and never met the shooter, who has been characterized as a loner. Wong does not think there will be an anti-Asian backlash on campus. "It's not going to be taken as a race thing," he said. "People understand this is a special case."
Amy Ballard, a 19-year-old white sophomore at Virginia Tech, said that among her friends, the issue of the shooter's race and nationality hasn't really come up. "It's interesting that he was an international student, but I feel it isn't really relevant at all to anything."
Representatives of the South Korean government sent condolences after Cho's national origin was revealed. South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun said he was "indescribably shocked once again by the fact that the tragic shooting incident at Virginia Tech on April 16 was caused by a South Korean permanent resident.
"We convey deep condolences to the victims and their bereaved families and the [American] people," said Cho Byung-Jae, head of the North American affairs bureau of South Korea's foreign ministry. But he also mentioned that the government was taking "safety measures" for Koreans in the United States. He was apparently referring to the possibility of reprisal attacks against ethnic Koreans in the U.S. He said he hoped the shootings would not "stir up racial prejudice or confrontation."
Before Hyun-jung Kim and Young-je Ko drove out of the parking lot at Harris Hall, Ko questioned whether things might be worse in Annandale, a Northern Virginia city with a large Korean community. Still, he said he felt safer with family. "We are all Hokie [Virginia Tech students] here, but we don't know what will happen."
My friend over at Poplicks made this observation that he picked up over at Angry Asian Man. The shooter was Seung-Hui Cho, a senior majoring in English from South Korea. From the numerous reports, he is a legal resident of the US and his family resides in Centerville, VA. Now here's where it gets a bit dodgy ... He's 23 years old, but documents indicate he was living in the US since 1992. That's 15 years ago. That means he's been socialized as an "American kid" since he would've been 8 years old at the time he arrived to the US. So why are news agencies still calling him, seemingly at great lengths, a "legal immigrant" or a "resident alien?" Technically, he's "Asian American" or in Asian American Studies terms, he fits the classic 1.5 generation: foreign born, but raised in the US. There's very little to suggest that he's "foreign" in the recent immigrant sense of the term. He's just as American as the next kid. So what gives???
I woke up this morning and did my usual thing of coffee, breakfast, and news when I found out that there was a shooting on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. The details are unclear with a lot of rumors but there are fatalities and it is the worst shooting on a college in US history.
This is truly awful.
UPDATE (5:45pm EST): Holy shit. When I woke up this morning, the death toll was presumed to be less than 20. When I came back from work, the number is pushed to 33. I'm also hearing unconfirmed reports that the shooter was an Asian American male, and that some of the shootings were inside an engineering classroom. There's even a report about how there was a 2 hour gap between the first and second shootings. There's so many questions and I don't think the answers will be forthcoming on this horrific tragedy.
UPDATE (6:00pm EST): Out of all the links about this tragedy, this one caught my eye from SFGate.com which has a list of blogs from the students themselves as they talk about what happened. It's incredibly difficult to read. Also, I just heard that the news are now calling it the deadliest shooting in US history leaving out any reference to college. Finally, and not surprisingly, the rhetoric about NRA, gun control, violent video games, and everything else that needs to be censored and removed in popular culture is being discussed in full force. It's kind of pointless to even link it all since it's quite ubiquitous in the news and blogosphere.
I just wonder if we even get a moment to mourn anymore?
UPDATE (6:44pm EST): Is it me, or is MSNBC the only station identifying the gunman as "Asian American" and everyone else as either "American male" or "unknown"? I keep switching channels from one station to another and I read "Asian American" on the news ticker on MSNBC.
UPDATE (10:12pm EST): So now I'm hear the gunmen was a Chinese national ... ? Virginia Tech is in Blacksburg, VA. That's roughly 2 hours southwest from where I live in Arlington, VA.
