Race and Murder at VA Tech

Rebecca
April 17, 2007

Andrew Lam at New American Media articulates what might have crossed your mind when you found out that the Virginia Tech shooter was Asian in Let It Be Some Other 'Asian.

Media Matters for America discusses right-winger Debbie Schuessel's blog entry mentioned in Lam's article, where she assumed that the shooter was "Paki."

Speculations also targeted a Chinese American student as discussed on Tripmaster Monkey.

And, of course, said Asians fear a backlash. Korean American parents are picking up their kids from school and taking them home.

Others have been quick to mention that another South Korean student was shot, as well as an Indian professor.

The Asian American Journalists Association is calling for the media to "avoid using racial identifiers unless there is a compelling or germane reason. ... The effect of mentioning race can be powerfully harmful."

Cho Seung-Hui is repeatedly described as "thorough" in this New York Times article. Do the adjectives used to describe him have a basis in perceptions of ethnicity? As in the idea that Asians are efficient? I'd have to do more research, but it seems like an interesting line to pursue.

Isn't it funny how when there's a white mass murderer, white people aren't afraid of this same sort of ethnically-related backlash?

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Comments

Comments

anonymous wrote on Tue, 04/17/2007 - 9:08pm
When it's a white shooter, e.g. Timothy McVeigh, they don't identify him as "a white man born in America" and use that history to explain his actions (in fact they initially blamed that on so-called foreigners) but of course Cho's Asian-ness and supposed foreign-ness has been and will be used to explain this.
Han wrote on Fri, 04/27/2007 - 5:22pm
Anonymous is Right: also look up the mass killing about 20years ago in Calfornia, STockton,by a loser named Mr PUrdy; he was a down and out caucasian guy who bought a Chinese civilian semiauto only Ak 47 and deliberately murdered many Vietnamese american children and their relatives in their neighborhood before his own suicide. This led to an uproar mostly over the access to "assault weapons" and led to CA banning many types of military long guns but little was said about the racial hate MR PUrdy exhibited and to killing Asian AMerican children. I have also attended a speech by the brother of MR Ileto, the Filipino AMerican mailman shot to death by a white supremacist MR Furow about 8 years ago; the focus of the media was over the attack at a Jewish center rather than the deliberate murder of MR Ileto while delivering mail and walking around Asian, which is a death penalty in some parts of the USA.His brother was so angry on how the white media ignored the racial aspect of his brother ugly killing but what could he do? I often discuss such issues with other Asian Americans and some engage with noticeable agony and others just pretend that it does not exist! Truth is ugly but it is better to confront it in order to avoid further tragedy.