Anytime a jarring event like this unfolds in any corner of the world, the word “backlash” creeps out of the woodwork to distort things. It’s a horribly distracting work of fiction; the Council on American-Islamic Relations exploit it expertly.
A Reuters story interviewed the Chinese owner of a grocery store near the Blackburg campus — not surprisingly, the words read like those of someone who suffers from PTSD:
“Everyone has always been open and supportive,” said Xiaojin Moore, co-owner of the Oasis World Market grocery store a mile (1.6 km) from campus.
Moore, a native of China, hoped her three small children would not be targeted because of their Asian appearance.
“We just want to be left alone to figure things out, until things calm down,” Moore said.
Left alone? What horse shit. Nothing happened to you. Notice that the headline of the story cries “Asians Fear Backlash after Virginia Tech Shooting” — only to quote a bunch of people who aren’t worried about a “backlash.”
It gets better. There’s the UC-Riverside professor who dances around plainly trumpeting the fact that, as a Korean-American, he’s a victim, too:
I’m sure that, in the weeks ahead, many Korean Americans will feel somehow responsible for this one Korean American student’s action, even though it appears that this was the action of one apparently disturbed young man. This could have been done by anybody who suffers from severe depression or a mental disorder and is not properly treated. And yet, I too somehow feel responsible. Why? As someone of Korean ancestry, I feel a cultural connection and almost a moral responsibility for his actions. Many in the Korean community are already mourning the very idea that a Korean is responsible for these senseless deaths.
As we approach the 15th anniversary of the civil unrest in Los Angeles, the Korean American community here still vividly remembers how the mainstream media portrayed Korean immigrant merchants as gun-toting vigilantes, defending their stores as Los Angeles burned in 1992 — and we are still trying to overcome that stereotype. There are more than 500,000 Koreans in Los Angeles, the largest enclave outside of Asia, and this is the image many Americans have of them.
The Asian American community has long complained about the absence of Asian American faces in popular media. Even the initial media report of the shooter as Chinese reminds me of how Asian Americans all “look alike” to those outside the community.
Sure, a few professors and kids died, but what about the people who are labeled Chinese when they’re Korean or Thai? What about the tribulations of the poor shooter, who will never get to rest in peace among the headlines that call him not just a cowardly killer, but a South Korean cowardly killer?
The author, Edward Taehan Chang, was able to go a whole two paragraphs before ejaculating his nonsensical concern for this ethnicity. Skim the column for any traces of empathy for the real victims — you’ll find not one.
And that’s the real problem.
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You know, not every single article on a tragedy has to be about commiserating with the victims. There are broad social implications whenever events like the VA Tech shootings transpire - how much sympathy does an author have to spend space expressing before he gets to talk about those? And if it were white or black people talking about racial backlash against Asians instead of Asians themselves, would you be so quick to label them insensitive?
Not that the UC Riverside professor in the piece you linked to failed to express sympathy. He rightly described the images of the wounded students as “horrifying.” Nowhere does he leave the impression that he just doesn’t care about the deaths of the students (which he calls “senseless”). He even writes at some length - far from playing the victim! - about feeling a measure of moral responsibility himself for the grisly crime as a fellow ethnic Korean. But he’s also worried about media analysis unintentionally creating an environment that fosters distrust of Cho Cheung-sui’s group just because of Cho Cheung-sui. This is a perfectly legitimate concern. What’s your problem?
Not that the UC Riverside professor in the piece you linked to failed to express sympathy. He rightly described the images of the wounded students as “horrifying.” Nowhere does he leave the impression that he just doesn’t care about the deaths of the students (which he calls “senseless”).
You’re right — the deaths were certainly horrifying — to him.
But he’s also worried about media analysis unintentionally creating an environment that fosters distrust of Cho Cheung-sui’s group just because of Cho Cheung-sui. This is a perfectly legitimate concern.
I disagree. Questions like “What caused him to do this?” are irrelevant and never end up going anywhere productive. If the media (I don’t care if it’s Fox News or Democracy Now) asks such a question of an interviewee, they’re basically demanding an answer to the tune of, “Well, surely our lax gun control laws are the root of this,” or perhaps “Violent video games. Definitely violent video games.”
Who cares?
The killer didn’t kill because he was South Korean or depressed — he killed because he was a self-centered criminal.
Naturally it would be very disappointing for South Koreans, or Asians for that matter, to be “targeted” as a result of the murderer’s ethnicity, but guess what: The people that are going to do these ridiculous things are going to do them whether or not they’ve undergone your Orwellian re-education.
(None of this bears on my post - I didn’t say we should try to understand what made Cho kill thirty-odd people, I said it’s legitimate to worry about the social side-effects of the media’s reporting. But just so I don’t appear insufficiently argumentative:)
Context is irrelevant and unproductive? The VA Tech massacre is certainly a bad example if you want to argue for that. The writing was kind of on the wall. Cho had been ruled “an imminent danger” by a Virginia court and detained in a psychiatric ward (though to be fair, it was “imminent danger to himself”). He had manifested aggressive and antisocial behavior for years. His creative writing was violent. His teachers sent him to the councillor apparently without follow-up. And he was able to legally purchase firearms. These kinds of factors explain how Cho’s rampage was possible. Intelligent reaction and increased sensitivity to them in the future might make a second Virginia Tech less likely. Or maybe not; but they’re at least they’re worth public discussion.
I’m guessing that you don’t like psychologizing Cho Seung-hui because you feel it humanizes his actions. Well, maybe it does, but not in a way inconsistent with him being evil or otherwise fully responsible. It’s only natural to deplore him, but it’s incredibly irresponsible to oversimplify his motives and history.
Yeah, well, maybe there will be fewer of those people if the media is more careful.
Eh, messed up the tags in that one. The big chunk of text was in response to your first paragraph, and the final sentence was in response to your last paragraph.
I’m gonna have to say Mark is right on the money with this one.
“he killed because he was a self-centered criminal.”
I don’t disagree with this. I think the crime is awful–but I have to ask, if speculating as to his motives never leads anywhere productive/useful, do you suppose villainizing and simplifying them does anything better?
Furthermore, do you really think self-centered criminality just emerges from nowhere? as a matter of fate? If it does (and I’m not saying it doesn’t) then how can we find any more fault with him than with someone who was born retarded? Yes, the ’symptoms’ of the person who was born retarded don’t manifest as horrible acts of violence, but the point is that in this model of sponataneous generation all moral responsibility is removed.
Maybe I’m naive to think that by studying the psychology of killers/criminals (i.e. trying to discover the origin of their actions) we can prevent crimes. And just an aside: is it really so horrible to consider that along the way we might accidentally end-up humanizing the actions of our worst criminals?
I’m actually NOT trying to be argumentative here (i.e. I’m not claiming to have the answers to the questions I pose), but your post does bring up a TON of really interesting and difficult moral/philosophical questions that in my opinion bear discussion.
The writing was kind of on the wall. Cho had been ruled “an imminent danger” by a Virginia court and detained in a psychiatric ward (though to be fair, it was “imminent danger to himself”). He had manifested aggressive and antisocial behavior for years. His creative writing was violent. His teachers sent him to the councillor apparently without follow-up. And he was able to legally purchase firearms. These kinds of factors explain how Cho’s rampage was possible.
Not to rain on your psychoanalytical parade, but I suppose it would have been helpful if you (or anyone else with this information) had done something about it. It’s easy to say all this now — but so what? Do the dead come alive? Is the process of grief hastened somehow?
Bruenner thinks it has something to do with the psychology of criminals:
Maybe I’m naive to think that by studying the psychology of killers/criminals (i.e. trying to discover the origin of their actions) we can prevent crimes.
That sure leaves my ears ringing with Minority Report. But this crime wasn’t prevented, despite the murderer sharing more than one characteristic with the Columbine shooters, so I ask again: why the sudden biography? Was it that threshold of 30 victims that had to be passed in order to start taking this seriously, or what? Maybe his symptoms make him a textbook whacko killer; that’s well and good, but why isn’t this stuff taken on only by law enforcement instead of sullying a tragedy in the public spotlight?
It’s only natural to deplore him, but it’s incredibly irresponsible to oversimplify his motives and history.
Lest a killer be responsible for his actions! — no, it wasn’t him, it was his illness. It was the girlfriend dumping him. It was the poetry. It was a bad haircut. It wasn’t his fault, and he was utterly convinced of that: just pull up his suicide note.
To that end, here’s Bruenner again:
If it does (and I’m not saying it doesn’t) then how can we find any more fault with him than with someone who was born retarded?
Because a sane person is always in control of his actions.
Not to rain on your psychoanalytical parade, but I suppose it would have been helpful if you (or anyone else with this information) had done something about it.
What? What kind of response is this? I didn’t take any steps to prevent Cho from killing people because I never knew he existed. Why didn’t other people, like the psychiatrists who studied him or the agency that licensed him a gun permit, take more precautions? That’s a great question - such a great question that my last post was entirely about why we should ask it.
It’s easy to say all this now — but so what? Do the dead come alive? Is the process of grief hastened somehow?
Of course not. The point isn’t to bring back the dead, it’s to prevent people from dying. It’s ironic that you demand commentators to mourn instead of thinking about what might make further tragedies unlikely. (After all, that would require us to come up with more sophisticated explanations than “he was a self-centered criminal.”)
Lest a killer be responsible for his actions! — no, it wasn’t him, it was his illness. It was the girlfriend dumping him. It was the poetry. It was a bad haircut. It wasn’t his fault, and he was utterly convinced of that: just pull up his suicide note.
Now I’m sure you’re not reading me: I said in the very sentence before that that he was evil and responsible for his actions. What is this insistence on this ludicrous “either-he-was-deranged-or-he-wasn’t -responsible” dichotomy for?
Maybe his symptoms make him a textbook whacko killer; that’s well and good, but why isn’t this stuff taken on only by law enforcement instead of sullying a tragedy in the public spotlight?
Because the details of the case, like those of Columbine, bear on policy issues.
Now I’m sure you’re not reading me: I said in the very sentence before that that he was evil and responsible for his actions. What is this insistence on this ludicrous “either-he-was-deranged-or-he-wasn’t -responsible” dichotomy for?
Stupid me - this makes no sense. The dichotomy is “either-he-was-deranged-or-he-was-responsible.”
Now I’m sure you’re not reading me: I said in the very sentence before that that he was evil and responsible for his actions. What is this insistence on this ludicrous “either-he-was-deranged-or-he-wasn’t -responsible” dichotomy for?
I read you loud and clear. I just dislike the public eulogy.
Because the details of the case, like those of Columbine, bear on policy issues.
I may be a cynic, but I don’t think the reason all of this is made public has anything to do with policy.
Let’s see how badly NBC News wants this their “exclusive” footage to be spread around:
In interviews yesterday several competitors questioned some of NBC’s decisions concerning the way it distributed the images, which went out accompanied by a list of rules for how they could be used, including points like: “No Internet use. No archival use. Do not resell,” and “Mandatory credit; NBC News.”
They’re in the news business. It’s no big surprise, and I’m not being original or breaking the mold by criticizing media outlets for being insensitive, but still.
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