Asian-Americans, and Koreans in particular, are bracing for possible backlash in the wake of the massacre:
“In the wake of 9/11, we saw so many racially charged incidents that I don’t think it’s out of the question to suspect this [prejudice] will happen,” says Aimee Baldillo, a spokeswoman for the Asian American Justice Center, a Washington-based civil-rights group. “The lesson we learned then was that individuals are going to get targeted on the basis of a perceived race or ethnicity with connection to a suspect.” . . .. . . Other Asians in the United States also experienced mixed emotions when it was confirmed that Cho was indeed Korean. Vietnamese-American writer Andrew Lam says he had held his breath waiting to learn the killer’s identity, hoping his community wouldn’t shoulder collective blame for the acts of an individual.
I admit that last thought did cross my mind as the news was unfolding.
Related posts:
- Mental health in the Asian American community
- Virginia Tech: When should patients’ rights be sacrificed?
- Asian-white couples and pregnancy
- The Virginia Tech massacre
- More Virginia Tech and HIPAA
- Virginia Tech: A call for gun control?
- Is it fair to compare American health care with systems in Europe or Canada?
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I was pondering that as well. My sisters are South Korean adoptees, and we’ve had numerous discussions before about how very few Korean-American celebrities and public figures there are in this country. It’s really sad that this sort of thing just made someone the most famous Korean-American around. Hopefully it will pass without further incident.
While there will always be someone who wishes to make noise as part of their public persona (like Al Sharpton or Don Imus) the asians are not likely to suffer any backlash from the general public. It is generally recognized that this group has low crime rates, high literacy, high achievement and strong civic participation. This is achieved by maintaining some cultural differences from the mainstream. These differences, however, are used only for their beneficial effects, not to socially isolate themselves or label mainstream society as bad (like the muslim community in America does).
There won’t be a backlash. The kid was mentally unstable. Him being Asian has nothing to do with it. Too bad VA Tech banned guns on campus. If not, one of the students may have been packing and could have taken the kid out earlier.
I have to admit that I am amazed the killer was NOT a whacked-out caucasian male. Ir is my understanding that violent crime/murder is almost unheard of in Asian countries relative to the U.S.. I have to admit I am a little more concerned about the North Korean situation after this episode. Can you imagine if the dictator of a country with nuclear weapons wigged-out like this?
I am an asian-am and while I am not Korean… my heart was broken when I heard that the guy was Korean. I fear that there may be some idiots out there that will lash out against Koreans. I’ve got some close American-Korean friends and for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on, I’m not bringing this topic up around them if I don’t have to.
Except for one or two wackos as disturbed as this wacko, there will be no backlash against asians in America. Anyone who thinks there will be, does not understand America and American exceptionalism. The shooing had nothing to do with his ethnicity. Look at the acceptance of Mulsims, who are distinguished by a belief system marked with a propenstiy to murder non-Muslims, it isn’t even an ethinicity, and yet life goes on for American Mulsims who continue to gain jobs of high trust despite repeated killings, like the one in Utah recently.
What there may be (I doubt it however) is a some rational circumspection about extending so many rights of American citizenship, such as gun ownership, to non-citizen immigrants. The track record on that hasn’t been so good.
I posted a comment on May’s blog, too (about a nurse)… I was really surprised when she said that she was afraid the killer would be Filipino, but now I’m reading a lot of this.
The 9/11 terrorists acted in the name of a religion, wrongly inviting backlash to that religion.
The VT killer acted only in his own name, not on behalf of Koreans everywhere.
I think it’s a huge difference.
“The VT killer acted only in his own name, not on behalf of Koreans everywhere.”
Not true. He alludes to doing this act for others, his “children” for example; not necessary Koreans.
His “children”? Okay, was he even married? Anyway, I’m sure that orientals won’t get killed within the next few weeks. But I did recently hear that some Korean-owned businesses were vandalized in a couple of big cities. Hopeffully that’s the last backlash that’ll ever happen because of VT.
There has been racial and class resentment against Korean owned businesses in some minority neigborhoods for decades which has sometimes been expressed destructively–why should everything now be attributed to Cho?
Let’s not forget that one of the victims was a Korean-American girl, and another was an Asian male.
The fact that this mentally unstable person happened to be of Korean descent shouldn’t be anything more than a mere footnote in this tragic story.
I think the unwarranted fear of a backlash is *itself* more likely to cause a backlash than anything else.
Advice to Asians who maintain an unjustified focus on some (thus far) non-existent backlash: don’t make it a self-fulfilling prophecy and stop focussing on it!
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