Blacksburg, violence, and America

Published by <a href="http://davesmidlife.com/author/admin/">Dave </a> April 25th, 2007

I have been on the sidelines of quite a number of handgun deaths in my life. Thank God, I haven&#39;t really been in the crossfire, nor has any member of my family. But gun violence has come close enough to me to be very unsettling.

In the late 1980s, when I was a graduate student in German at Vanderbilt, a German exchange student, <a href="http://www.vanderbilt.edu/isss/weser_award.html">Thomas Weser</a>, was gunned down in a parking lot on campus in the very early morning hours. The murder seemed to be a robbery gone wrong. It became a murder because the mugger had a handgun.

On Christmas Eve 1991, I was living in the Belmont Heights section of Nashville, a cozy suburban neighborhood near several university campuses. My kids were very young. We got along well with our neighbors. There were families all around us.

Diagonally across the street from us lived two brothers. They got into an argument in the middle of the night after much alcohol had been drunk. One brother fetched a loaded handgun and killed the other. Without the loaded handgun in the house, this argument would probably have remained a drunken fistfight, maybe a stabbing.

In February of 1997, our family accompanied my wife on a weekend trip to New York City. My wife had to attend an arts conference, and I was left to explore the city with the kids. On Sunday afternoon we wanted to go to the observation deck of the Empire State Building, but we weren&#39;t sure whether we should wait until Mom got finished with her afternoon meeting. We decided that I would go ahead and take the kids up to the top while Barbara was in her session.

After we returned home to Northern Virginia, we learned that <a href="http://www.cnn.com/US/9702/24/empire.shooting/index.html">a man had opened fire</a> with a handgun on the Empire State Building&#39;s observation deck later that afternoon. Seven people were shot; one was killed, in addition to the gunman, who committed suicide. If we had waited for Barbara, we might well have been there to experience the shooting firsthand. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/US/9702/24/empire.shoot/">Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani blamed weak gun laws</a> for the rampage.

America&#39;s latest adventure in easily available firearms is, of course, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre">massacre at Virginia Tech</a>. As I have <a href="http://davesmidlife.com/2007/04/18/blacksburg/">mentioned</a>, my wife and daughter, who had visited Blacksburg the day before, missed this one by about 18 hours.

The world press paid close attention to this shooting for a long time. It was front-page news in just about all the newspapers of the world for four or five days. As I write this, nine days after the attack, major papers in <a href="http://www.sueddeutsche.de">Germany</a>, <a href="http://derstandard.at/?id=2854321">Austria</a>, <a href="http://www.lemonde.fr/web/recherche_breve/1,13-0,37-986031,0.html">France</a>, and other countries are still reporting the aftermath.

The one thing the world press has emphasized, without exception, is their absolute bafflement at the U.S. gun laws-or lack thereof. We are the laughingstock of the world in this department. People from civilized countries around the world look at the apparent American fascination with guns and cluck in disapproving astonishment. The unifying theme is something like this: how can a great country such as the U.S., the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, continue to allow this to happen?

After all these years and decades, I cannot come up with an answer. The National Rifle Association seems to have our congressional legislators in a deathgrip. One mass murder happens after another, all carried out with handguns or assault rifles, and yet nothing changes.

The morning after the Virginia Tech shootings, I heard Washington Post sports reporter <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Feinstein">John Feinstein</a> on <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/wtwpradio/index.html">WTWP</a>. I wish I could find a transcript of his remarks. Essentially what he said was this: when gun owners and gun fans complain about the inconvenience or unfairness of having to register these deadly weapons, he is sick of hearing about it. Since 9/11 we have been subject to a series of ever more humiliating and inconvenient searches of our persons and property at airports. Nobody really complains, because that&#39;s just the way the world is.

Well, the world is also selling deadly handguns on the Internet to psychotic young men, who then commit mass murder. Couldn&#39;t we endure just a little inconvenience to combat such madness?

I am very angry now at our American stupidity. I am angry at the weak will of the majority of Americans who want stronger gun controls, yet who will not raise hell with their congressmen or senators about it. I am embarrassed to have to try to explain to my European friends and colleagues why Americans are still allowed to buy and carry handguns.

The <a href="http://www.gocomics.com/patoliphant/2007/04/19/">cartoonist Pat Oliphant</a> has captured my sense of befuddlement and rage.

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Original Source: <a href="http://davesmidlife.com/2007/04/25/blacksburg-violence-and-america/">http://davesmidlife.com/2007/04/25/blacksburg-violence-and-america/</a>

This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License</a>.

Dave Shepherd

2007-06-08

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5

eng

Asian Identity of Virginia Tech Gunman

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

By now, I&#8217;m sure everybody has heard of the tragedy that took place yesterday, Monday April 16, at Virginia Tech University. Words cannot adequately convey the profound shock and sadness that I feel about this unthinkable human catastrophe. As an educator, a parent -- as a human being -- I am struggling to come to grips with the enormity of what happened but at the least, I want to convey my deepest, most sincere condolences to everyone affected by these killings.

You may have also heard that gunman has been <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070417/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting" target="_blank">officially identified</a> as an Asian American -- <strong>Seung-Hui Cho</strong>, a 23 year old senior English major at Virginia Tech who originally immigrated from South Korea in 1992.

The Associated Press article cited above notes that he was referred to school counselors after his instructors found his creative writing rather disturbing. The <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070417vtech-shootings,1,176236.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed" target="_blank">Chicago Tribune</a> also reports that he apparently left a rambling suicide note that railed against &#8220;&#8216;rich kids,&#8217; &#8216;debauchery&#8217; and &#8216;deceitful charlatans&#8217; on campus&#8221; and that he had committed several strange and violent acts in recent weeks.

As a sociologist and Asian American Studies scholar, I will try to to put some sociological context into this horrific tragedy and several initial reactions come to mind:

If the gunman were White, his racial identity would go virtually unnoticed and unmentioned. However, because he was a person of color, much will probably be made of his racial identity. Specifically, because he was Asian American, much of the nation&#8217;s attention will be turned to examining what kinds of cultural characteristics may have influenced his behavior.

Also, inevitably, there will be some extreme reactions from xenophobes and people with anti-immigrant positions, perhaps along the lines of &#8220;This is what happens when we let in all kinds of immigrants, so we need to shut down our borders&#8221; or &#8220;We let in these damn foreigners and give them a chance at a better life and this is how they return the favor?&#8221; In addition, those who have anti-Asian sentiments are likely to say something like &#8220;Well, this just proves that Asians are so weird, foreign, and inscrutable --we just can&#8217;t trust them.&#8221;

Unfortunately these sorts of opinions are a classic example of confounding individual traits with group traits. In other words, yes, this one particular immigrant was responsible for this tragedy, but that does not mean that all immigrants or all Asian Americans are ticking psychopathic timebombs just waiting to go on a murderous rampage.

More likely, I think typical reactions will be along the lines of &#8220;Wow, I always thought Asian Americans were so quiet and passive&#8221; or &#8220;As an Asian, he must have been under a tremendous amount of pressure to do well in school.&#8221; Admittedly, these types of responses are a little harder to respond to because there are some kernels of truth to these particular sentiments.

For example, some Asian Americans do tend to be quiet and unassuming, although that is changing and also, much of these perceptions are based on biased media portrayals and cultural stereotypes. Nonetheless, the perception -- whether it&#8217;s true or not -- of Asians being quiet does exist. Similarly, it is also true that many Asian Americans, particular students, do experience a lot of pressure to succeed. In fact, I&#8217;ve written about <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2006/10/asian-americans-and-college-admissions/">such examples</a> before and <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2006/09/asian-american-students-still-deal-with-violence/">other barriers</a> many Asian American students regularly face.

To this mix, we can also add other examples in which various <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2006/05/rash-of-family-violence-among-asians/">social pressures</a> or <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2005/09/hmong-hunter-trial-to-start/">contentious incidents</a> have pushed Asian Americans over the edge, causing them to snap and commit murder. <strong>But does that mean that Asians are more prone to psychotic episodes</strong> that result in them killing those around them?

My answer is, absolutely not. If anything, I believe the opposite is true -- that despite having to frequently deal with various incidents of prejudice, hostility, and <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/racism.shtml">outright racism</a>, the vast majority of Asian Americans react with dignity, courage, and perseverance. Perhaps too many still keep their emotions buried inside them and need to share their frustrations more openly in order to move beyond them, but as a group, I think that in the face of persistent examples of inequality and injustice, we do not react more violently than any other group.

Did the Virginia Tech gunman&#8217;s reasons include having to deal with racism as an Asian American? At this point, I don&#8217;t know. But if that turns out to be the case, my reaction would be the same as it was in the case of Chai Soua Vang, the Hmong American convicted of killing six White hunters in Wisconsin after a hostile encounter that allegedly contained anti-Asian profanities.

That is, many of us Asian Americans face racism as well, but we don&#8217;t go on murderous shooting rampages. In other words, my point is that ultimately, what Seung-Hui Cho did at Virginia Tech was an example of someone who was clearly <strong>emotionally unstable</strong> and that he just snapped for whatever reasons known only to him.

I would not be a sociologist if I did not also point to the culture of violent masculinity that frames mass shootings like this. My UMass Amherst colleague Sut Jhully has produced several acclaimed documentaries that detail this phenomenon, most notably the video <a href="http://www.mediaed.org/videos/MediaGenderAndDiversity/ToughGuise" target="_blank"><em>Tough Guise</em></a>. For now, I will leave it up to him and others who have greater expertise in this particular sociological context to contribute their analysis.

In the end, this entire episode is an opportunity to remind Asian Americans and anyone else out there who are facing emotional issues or challenging situations that there are resources out there for them to access in order to more constructively deal with those pressures before they get out of hand. Suffering in silence doesn&#8217;t help anyone.

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Original Source: C.N. Le / CNLe.net
<a href="http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/asian-identity-of-virginia-tech-gunman/">http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/asian-identity-of-virginia-tech-gunman/</a>

C.N. Le

2007-06-06

Brent Jesiek

C.N. Le (le@soc.umass.edu)

eng

Immigrant Status of VA Tech Gunman: Does it Matter?

Thursday, April 19th, 2007

Following up on my <a href="http://www.asian-nation.org/headlines/2007/04/asian-identity-of-virginia-tech-gunman/">last post</a> about Seung Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech gunman, the evidence that&#8217;s coming out seems to suggest that among other things, he felt ridiculed for his social class background (at least in comparison to the &#8216;rich&#8217; kids that he railed against in his suicide note and video) and for being quiet -- but apparently not specifically for being Asian.

In other words, it does not seem that he was lashing out in reaction to incidents of racial prejudice or discrimination. I personally feel somewhat relieved to know that prejudice can now be removed from the equation. Why is that comforting to know? Because to me, it means that Asians and Koreans on the one hand, will not have to engage in the &#8220;<strong>blame game</strong>&#8221; with non-Asians on the other (specifically those who would have been the perpetrators of prejudice against him).

Nonetheless, a different aspect to the media&#8217;s coverage of his situation has gotten my attention and that of many others. Specifically, a lot of analysts, commentators, and observers have brought up the fact that he originally immigrated to the U.S. from Korea. One example of this is to refer to him in the traditional Asian way of using the surname first -- Cho Seung-Hui, instead of the American version-- Seung-Hui Cho.

Does his immigrant status make a difference in trying to understand what he did?

For many Asian Americans, the answer is no. First of all, even though he was originally from South Korea, he immigrated at a relatively early age -- 8. According to sociologists and demographers, that makes him part of the &#8220;1.5 generation&#8221; -- in between the first generation (that would be his parents) and the second generation (those born in the U.S.).

The distinction of being 1.5 generation also includes being raised and socialized primarily as an American. In other words, most of his formative schooling took place in the U.S. and by all accounts, he was perfectly fluent in English. In fact, he was so Americanized that he majored in English, rather than majors normally associated with Asian immigrants such as engineering, math, the &#8216;hard&#8217; sciences, etc.

So why is it that so many people commented and even focused so intently on the fact that he originally immigrated from South Korea?

I think the answer is that they were consciously or unconsciously trying to <strong>culturally distance themselves</strong> from him. In other words, by emphasizing that he was an immigrant, they were basically saying &#8220;He was a foreigner, an outsider -- he wasn&#8217;t one of us, he wasn&#8217;t a &#8216;real&#8217; American. &#8216;Real&#8217; Americans would never have done something like this.&#8221;

That is, even though he was basically socialized as an American, much of America refuses to accept that he was in fact an American. And with underlying sentiments like that, they only function to reinforce notions of Korean Americans and Asian Americans as <strong>perpetual foreigners</strong>. In other words and unfortunately, many Asian Americans still need to overcome the perception that they are not &#8220;real&#8221; Americans.

This particular stereotype exists even though many Asian American families have been in the U.S. several generations, even though we tend to be the most educated racial group in the U.S., even though we are the group most likely to have high-skilled jobs, and even though on the family level, we have the highest income of all racial groups.

Of course, there are specific ethnic differences in this generalization, but the point is that in virtually all other respects of what it means to be an &#8220;American,&#8221; we meet or exceed those standards. But for various reasons, most of which have to do with our skin color and distinct physical appearance to be perfectly blunt, we&#8217;re more likely to be seen as foreigners.

That is exactly what is going on in this instance, with the American media&#8217;s focus on Cho&#8217;s immigrant status. In trying to distance &#8216;real&#8217; Americans from him, American society is only reinforcing the notion that Asian Americans are not &#8216;real&#8217; Americans. In the end, even though we may grieve and cry just like the rest of American society, we still have to pay a price for what he did.

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Original Source: C.N. Le / CNLe.net
<a href="http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/immigrant-status-of-va-tech-gunman-does-it-matter">http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/immigrant-status-of-va-tech-gunman-does-it-matter</a>

C.N. Le

2007-06-06

Brent Jesiek

C.N. Le (le@soc.umass.edu)

eng

Korean Reaction to VA Tech Shootings: Guilt vs. Solidarity

Sunday, April 22nd, 2007

At the risk of overanalyzing the events surrounding the shootings at Virginia Tech last week, I would like to offer one last set of observations. In my previous posts, I&#39;ve acknowledged that certainly, there are many complicated emotions and reactions to these tragic events. This also applies to Koreans and Korean Americans, for whom this event stirs up additional feelings that include <b>guilt, shame, and embarrassment</b> based on the fact that the gunman was Korean American.

As one article from <a href="http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=2d3b885a913020630dd2537a0eeaf9ed">New American Media</a> describes, many Koreans felt that Cho&#39;s murderous rampage tarnished the image of Koreans and Korean Americans and that it would lead to a backlash against them. Korean government officials have also issued repeated apologies, perhaps fearing that an association with Cho would interfere with their diplomatic and/or economic relations with Americans.

In talking about this particular issue with my Korean American colleagues, many of them observe that for whatever reasons, many Asian Americans in general, but Koreans in particular, are very quick to personalize and internalize the high-profile public failures of anyone identified as Korean or Korean American, and to therefore feel a deep and profound sense of humiliation and guilt about such events. The implication is that somehow, the entire Korean/Korean American community is "responsible" or "at fault" in some way for Cho&#39;s actions.

In contrast, many Koreans/Korean Americans, particularly younger or more "Americanized" members, feel that while they obviously share in the shock, grief, and sorrow regarding the tragic events at Virginia Tech, their community should not have to feel that they are somehow responsible for what Cho did just because he was Korean American, in the same way that Whites as a collective group were not responsible for the shooting massacre at Columbine High School eight years ago, nor any of the other high-profile school shootings in recent American history.

I happen to agree with that sentiment, but I think it&#39;s a more complicated issue than that.

The question that comes to mind for me is, where do we as Asian Americans draw the line between <b>shared guilt versus group solidarity</b>? In other words, in most other respects, many Asian Americans including myself have consistently tried to encourage a sense of pan-Asian American unity and solidarity. This effort is based on the notion that in emphasizing our commonalities and uniting as a collective group, Asian Americans can speak with a louder and more powerful collective voice in American society, rather than as isolated individuals or ethnicities.

But with that in mind, is it then a contradiction to disassociate ourselves from Seung-Hui Cho in this case, and basically say that he wasn&#39;t "one of us" and to reject any insinuation that his ethnicity had anything to do with his actions (which would also imply that some Asian American may share some of his feelings of alienation, etc.)?

Ultimately, I don&#39;t think that it has to be an either-or proposition. That is, we can still say that ultimately Cho&#39;s actions should be understood as the <b>aberrant behavior of an extremely troubled individual</b>, while at the same time saying that his mental illness could have been made worse by <u><b>feeling like an outsider and ridiculed for being different</b></u> -- sentiments that inevitably do exist among many Asian Americans.

Thankfully, even though many Asian Americans may have similar feelings of alienation, they do not react by going on a murderous rampage. Nonetheless, we as Asian Americans should recognize and advocate that (1) we be treated with respect and tolerance -- especially those who might be otherwise seen as outcasts, (2) members of our community who are emotionally troubled be actively encouraged to seek help, and (3) mental health services should be readily available and culturally-competent.

These efforts would go a long way in preventing not just tragic incidents like this, but also in reducing the difficulties many Asian American face in the complicated process of finding our identity within the complicated American racial landscape.

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Original Source: C.N. Le / CNLe.net
<a href="http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/korean-reaction-to-va-tech-shootings-guilt-vs-solidarity/">http://www.cnle.net/2007/04/korean-reaction-to-va-tech-shootings-guilt-vs-solidarity/</a>

C.N. Le

2007-06-06

Brent Jesiek

C.N. Le (le@soc.umass.edu)

eng

Broken heart&#39;s here at Virginia Tech

Apr 18th, 2007 by <a href="http://ryanlanham.wordpress.com/author/ryanlanham/">Ryan Lanham</a>

This day, two days after the shootings at Virginia Tech, is a day of broken hearts. The eyes of those who love the place realize it is now defined...like Kent State, like Columbine, as a tragic event, particularly for most people outside the immediate community.

That set of moments will always be...a where were you when...time. It is now the historical event of tours and commentators fifty years hence. The shooter has ensured his fame as a parting shot of narcissism.

My boss and mentor has given over 30 years to the campus from a time when it was a sleepy state school that charged $18 a credit hour, or something like that, to helping it grow into a research institution of international note. It breaks my heart to see the heartbreak in his eyes. His love of the place helps me help him in his work; his disappointment and sadness magnify my own. In some ways to see his disappointment is almost the worst of it for me. I was in his office, locked in behind two doors but near enough to open windows to hear gun shots, as the whole crisis unfolded. He was, as usual, fatherly and wise. I could not help but wonder if his leadership at the moment of crisis might have made a difference.

But so far as I can tell there are no lessons in any of this. The whole thing appears startlingly random. Gun ownership is falling rather rapidly in the United States and it would be utterly impossible to achieve any legislative gain on the issue in the face of those who are its advocates and protectors.

The student was a loner who had troubling fantasies, but that would only put him amongst maybe 15% of his peers (at least). I heard today at a press conference that 7-30% of the student body is seen for counselling in the course of a year. Mental health is a real issue, and this fellow wasn&#39;t even really in the system like 10s of thousands of other college students.

The university probably didn&#39;t act perfectly, but who would have? And second guessing such a singular event seems work I am uninterested in...it was a windy, colder Monday morning at this huge institution with thousands of drivers and issues in play. Mishandled? Well, in such an environment everything is probably mishandled in one way or another. I can&#39;t see great error from what I have heard. The flow of better information seems to be the best and consistent lesson learned from most crises I have been involved with (including this one). Could there have been some sort of electronic locking system or metal doors on each classroom? Should we have had a texting system? Who can say?

The press has been omnipresent but mostly respectful, I&#39;d judge. Only some of them seem to be the ghoulish dirty laundry sorts. Still, mourning is difficult in their presence. Consequently, the environment is more surreal than mournful so far. The husk of the Norris building sits nearby to where I write this. Police come and go wiping the sweat from their heads. They too seem distressed at the magnitude of the crime scene. The one Virginia Tech police officer I spoke briefly to...in order to thank him...had a sort of look as if he were ashamed not more could be done. I don&#39;t think I was misreading him...something combining shame and fatigue ran over his face. To my mind there is no need for shame...far from it. I know of no one who expected more from these folks. They did not resolve the crisis, but they acted and responded doing their best. That alone took great courage especially after two security/police deaths in this small town within the year.

The young son of the Blacksburg Rescue Squad chief came briefly to my house to play with my children yesterday. The woman watching him said his parents "needed a break." I know the father fairly well and went camping with him once. He&#39;s a tough and internalized guy. I have thought about his cleaning up those bodies several times. How do you absorb that? I find my mind drifting to questions of who will have to clean up the floors and the walls. Will janitors face that? How long will blood drops be found here or there...under a desk. It seems to me you have to sort of start afresh with it. Empty it. Maybe even close the building. Why do I think about those things? I also cannot help but think of other disaster sites. There was a movie on HBO not long ago on the Tsunami in Thailand that touched on these unspeakable topics. It was engaging because those human issues...not the usual press garbage, was addressed.
Many families are about on campus. I&#39;m not sure how people are staying here. The hotels must be packed. There must be tens of thousands of people who aren&#39;t from here milling around. The camera crews and reporters alone must be into the thousands.

Less than $1,000 worth of guns and bullets. A few chains and locks. And maybe 3 hours of insanity. Not only many lives changed or destroyed, but a place defined and branded. The only sense is one of heartbreak.

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Original Source: <a href="http://ryanlanham.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/broken-heart/">http://ryanlanham.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/broken-heart/</a>

Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported</a>.

Ryan Lanham

2007-06-03

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

eng

Dispassionate Reporting

Monday, April 16, 2007

Thirty-one... now 32 killed at Virginia Tech. Initial "breaking news" headlines emailed and forwarded to my BlackBerry from the <i>New York Times</i>, then the <i>Washington Post</i> and finally the <i>Sacramento Bee</i> reported the number dead at 20 or 21. I received these reports while sitting in a classroom at Sacramento State University - peeking at the screen of my personal digital assistant, surreptitiously answering its silent vibrations. Now, more than two hours later, I finally have occasion to open my laptop to read the full story and it&#39;s worse than I imagined.

It could have gone either way. Initial reports in instances such as this are often inaccurate. When news like this breaks, details are often sketchy; new and updated information is constantly becoming available. I was hoping that the initial reports were wrong - that the death count was too high. As we now know, it went the other way. There are many questions yet to be answered, but the resounding senselessness of it all couldn&#39;t possibly be more pronounced.

Although I haven&#39;t yet reported on a tragedy of this magnitude, I have covered other breaking news and experienced the singleness of purpose that getting the information to print as quickly as possible represents. While in the midst of the event, whether it&#39;s a fire, an accident or a shooting, getting the information out is the reporter&#39;s only job. The gravity of the event, at least for me, doesn&#39;t come into play until after I&#39;ve had a chance to decompress - after the deadlines have been met. While reporting, I simply don&#39;t have time to make any judgments about what it all means, only to report on what it is.

In this instance, I am a news consumer like most everyone else hearing about this calamity today. I am shocked, disgusted, dismayed... and distracted. If I were assigned to this story, all of those emotions would have to be put on hold - it&#39;s all about getting the story out. Like nurses, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and many other professions where a level dispassionate decorum is essential, reporters must be able to disassociate themselves from their story or risk becoming part of it. There is no time to think.

The irony of where I was when I received this terrible news is not lost on me. It could happen anywhere. It <i>did</i> happen anywhere - this time at Virginia Tech. No one is immune to this kind of idiotic violence and there is no defense. Sure the debate regarding gun control and a hundred other acts of second-guessing will shortly ensue, but at the end of the day, we can&#39;t shield ourselves from every nut-case in the great big world. Unfortunately, this sort of insanity will likely be repeated again somewhere, someday. And there will be reporters there to cover it. The moral? Perhaps there is none. Perhaps it&#39;s as simple as appreciating each day like it could be your last. For at least 31 at Virginia Tech, it was.

Posted by Mr. Althouse at 1:04 PM

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Original Source: <a href="http://25yearplan.blogspot.com/2007/04/dispassionate-reporting.html">http://25yearplan.blogspot.com/2007/04/dispassionate-reporting.html</a>

Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5</a>.

Michael Althouse

2007-06-02

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5

eng

What's "Korean" got to do with it?

<a href="http://www.printculture.com/index.php?memberid=101">by J Lee</a> | April 19, 2007

When I was growing up in the 80s, it often seemed that the world was holding its breath, keeping its fingers crossed to prevent some sort of nuclear disaster. The apocalypse that I imagined then had to do with the world going up in a mushroom cloud, because of polarization along national and political lines. But this next generation&#39;s experiences (as E Wesp pointed out in <a href="http://printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1363#1551">his comment</a>) have been punctuated by violence of a different type, enacted by one or a few individuals and relatively low technology.

I want to pick up a few threads of conversation, starting with the <a href="http://printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1363#1551">comment by ms</a> which addresses the idea of narrative and also points out that we have started this conversation with race. In our discussion and in many of the blog comments I have been reading on this side of the world, the use of the label "Korean" has been hotly debated, some arguing that the shooter&#39;s ethnicity may offer clues to his motivations, others charging that to invoke the term is racist. I am curious about how this label "Korean" gets deployed and what meaning it has. In other words, does it matter that he was Korean? What are the conditions under which someone&#39;s ethnicity becomes "visible" and how it gets worked into the stories we tell about why something happened, about who is responsible, and about our emotional relationships to the subject?

In a basic way, the label "Korean" subverts the popular stereotype of the angry white middle class male shooter. It provides a potentially different kind of explanatory factor, complicating questions about Cho&#39;s mental health, his upbringing, ideas about the expression of masculine anger, etc.

What I find interesting from our own discussion as well as <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-me-minorities19apr19,0,2127441.story?coll=la-home-headlines">other articles</a> is how minorities have reacted. Personally, I heard "Korean," "parents own a dry-cleaning business," "sister at Princeton," and "Centreville, VA" and unconsciously began constructing my own narrative of Cho&#39;s life, filling in the blanks with my own experiences growing up not far from Centreville (in a similar kind of suburb) and the experiences of friends. Parents sacrifice themselves for their children&#39;s education, teaching their kids to value educational success above all other types and in doing so lower their own status in their children&#39;s eyes. Cultural divides open between the generations. The children don&#39;t quite fit into mainstream American life but have lost touch with and respect for their parents&#39; culture. The alienation I imagine him to have felt confirms and strengthens my sense of my own alienation and my distance from what I see as the cultural center (however imaginary that notion of a cultural center may be). And on and on... In trying to understand his actions I construct for him an entirely fictitious reality which makes me feel (as he has become an extension of myself, my brothers, my sons, etc.) empathetic, invested, responsible, and guilty about the whole thing.

I think there&#39;s a certain extent to which these incidents become cautionary tales to support our individual and cultural fears: video games inducing violence, fears about repressed male emotion, xenophobia, education without moral center, etc. We all explain the world in the terms we understand, I suppose.

But, for the more difficult task... how does the label of "Korean" function on a cultural level, particularly here in Korea? This is a hard question to address, and I am a little hesitant to try to answer it, to (by virtue of having my little soapbox and being in Korea) seem like I have the answers. But, as E Hayot says (sorry to quote you here, E) "pontificating wildly about stuff you barely understand is what the internet is all about!" So here goes, my attempt to create context for you all out there. Kids, don&#39;t try this at home.

Why the ownership of this man as Korean by those here in Korea? Why not the urge to dismiss him as Americanized, or as a deranged individual, why the urge to place him within the boundaries of the label "Korean"? I&#39;ll throw out three contexts here.

Context 1: Koreans abroad (read: anyone with Korean blood), on the international stage, function in the popular imagination here in Korea in a way that Americans may find surprising. The average American probably doesn&#39;t know who Park Chan-ho, <a href="http://theyangpa.wordpress.com/2006/04/03/half-of-hines-ward-receives-prestigious-award/">Hines Ward</a>, Hwang Woo Suk, or Ban Ki-moon are, but they are important figures in the public imagination here, evidence of Korea&#39;s place in the global order, for better or for worse. I was in the bookstore a few months ago, shortly after Ban Ki-moon was named the new UN Secretary General, and there was already a biography of him written for children, using his life as an inspirational example of what kids could achieve. Where does this mentality come from? From a genre of history writing in which Korea is the passive victim of stronger foreign powers (China, Japan, the U.S.)? From some Park Chung-hee era idea of self-reliance? From some notion of the purity and homogeneity of Korean culture and language? From media which constantly rate Korea&#39;s performance in any number of arenas to other world powers? From the strength of the notion of blood? From a sense of social responsibility?

Context 2: The educational system here is under a lot of fire for various reasons which I won&#39;t go into. Many parents feel they have no option but to send their kids abroad, often alone or with only one parent. There has been a lot of discussion recently on the various pressures these families and kids have to face at a young age. Cho came to the U.S. in elementary school, with both his parents. Any speculation about the pressures on him as a foreigner, on difficulties adapting to life in the U.S., and about the potential reasons for his mental breakdown and feelings of alienation are going to flow towards the grooves already cut by the larger social worry about educational pressures and the education diaspora.

Context 3: I think the fear of reprisals against Koreans and Korean-Americans in the U.S. has to be read against the incidents of U.S. military personnel violence against Koreans in Korea. Every time a U.S. soldier is involved in an act of violence (rape, murder) there are protests and reprisals here (not widespread, from my experience, but I don&#39;t live near the army base). When an English teacher is caught using drugs or sexually assaulting a student, it is big news here, followed by calls for more regulation of foreign teachers. I think there&#39;s a kind of logic that is created by the way these cases have been treated here that would shape the expectation of what will happen to Koreans in the U.S. Thus Koreans may imagine, consciously or subconsciously, that Americans will similarly judge/ demand/protest against Koreans as Koreans do against Americans, if not in action then in belief and idea.

When it comes down to it, we have to accept that something about Cho was an aberration, an anomaly; we have to talk about his mental health. Mental health itself is, I think, inseparable from environment and personal history, but the fact is that very few people ever do something this horrendous. But an act like this, like the boogeyman in the closet, has a way of heightening and illuminating our fears and discomforts. And, to go back to the question ms asked: What kind of story will we make him a part of? And how does the label "Korean" play into that story?

--

Original Source: <a href="http://www.printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1365">http://www.printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1365</a>

Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0</a>.

J Lee

2007-05-26

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0

eng

Gut Reactions

<a href="http://www.printculture.com/index.php?memberid=4">by S L Kim</a> | April 17, 2007

<b>1. Race Shame</b>

As soon as I saw the shooter&#39;s name--Cho Seung-Hui--in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/17virginia.html?hp">NYT</a> this morning, I knew he was Korean. Crap. Ever since I got home last night after teaching, and my husband told me about the deadly shooting spree at Virginia Tech, I&#39;d been wondering, like everyone else, about the gunman. Knowing he was a "young Asian man" made me maybe slightly more curious than I normally might have been, and finding out his name made my heart sink a little more. He&#39;s being described in the NYT as a "South Korean who was a resident alien in the United States," a 23-year-old senior English major.

At first I imagined one of those Korean students who are sent to the US by themselves, as high school or college students, by families eager for them to get an American education at whatever cost. These students, with varying levels of English-speaking skills, are sent all over, to far-flung corners of the US. But it turns out that this "resident alien" came to the states with his family in 1992, when he was 7 or 8 years old. Wouldn&#39;t that make him, culturally speaking, an American? It&#39;s not so much that I&#39;m afraid of outbreaks of violence against Koreans or Asians in general, but I worry about the generalizations and pop psychology pablum that will reinforce ugly stereotypes and perpetuate tacit forms of racism in the name of "understanding what happened." You know, looking for things in his culture or his upbringing that might have contributed, all the while the implicit message is: watch out for the quiet Asian guys, because they might just go crazy.

<b>2. Media Rhetoric</b>

Already, the shooter is described as a "loner," already the profiles emerge about these killers on a rampage. The photos of him are now circulating, and he&#39;s described as expressionless. Apparently, <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070417vtech-shootings,1,176236.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed">he left a note</a> with a list of grievances and he wrote disturbing stories in his creative writing class. It seems too easy to map the symptoms of pathology onto the stereotypical features of racial and ethnic identity. For a while last night, no one wanted to say whether the shooter was a student at VT, but it seemed pretty apparent to me that whoever did it was affiliated with the school in some significant way. But there&#39;s a strong impulse to distance ourselves from the killer among us, to imagine that it might have been random, unpredictable, even as we try to fit him into a knowable pattern. A student interviewed said he can&#39;t believe he used to say hi to such a "monster." Meanwhile, as we slowly learn more about the victims, the media can&#39;t help but paint the stark contrast between the happy, accomplished, and well-integrated students on one side and the angry loner who hated them on the other.

I don&#39;t think I can stand to watch the TV coverage of this event.

<b>3. Stupid Politics</b>

According to <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2164337/?nav=fix">Slate</a> and other sources, the blogs on the left and right are abuzz about what could have been different in the gun laws to have prevented or at least curtailed the violence. There are people who actually believe that the answer to preventing this kind of gun violence is for more people to be able to carry concealed weapons. Fight force with equal force, they say. If law-abiding citizens were able to arm themselves, the idea goes, they&#39;d be able to step in and play the hero. I just don&#39;t buy it. I wouldn&#39;t want to be on a campus where I know some of those around me are packing heat.

<b>4. Campus Life</b>

I worry about what this event will do to the climate and conditions of university life. I worry that this will be used as an excuse by the state, the right, the short-sighted, self-interested politicians to meddle in university life in the name of "security." We know how well that&#39;s going on the national level.

<b>5. Across the Ocean</b>

I wonder how this event is being portrayed and talked about in the Korean media. Any thoughts, J Lee?

--

Original Source: <a href="http://www.printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1363">http://www.printculture.com/index.php?itemid=1363</a>

Licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0</a>.

S L Kim

2007-05-26

Brent Jesiek

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0

eng

Gun-control debate rages on

The following is a short piece by myself, published in the Irish Sunday Business Post.
~NiK

-------------------

<a href="http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2007/04/22/story22922.asp">http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2007/04/22/story22922.asp</a>

Gun-control debate rages on
22 April 2007
By Nicholas Kiersey

Six days have passed since the horrific events at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, during which 32 people were shot dead by a lone gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, before he killed himself.

It is hardly enough time for students and staff to begin to reflect upon the scale of the event and how it is already provoking what will probably turn out to be a major round in the US gun-control debate.

Of course, the human dimension to the story is being played out this weekend in the homes of the families and friends of the victims. Memorials are taking place around the state. Funerals are being arranged for tomorrow or Tuesday, depending on how soon the police release the bodies.

The university administration wants students back at school for resumption of classes tomorrow. Professors and teaching assistants are being briefed in the coming days. The regular curriculum will be suspended for tomorrow&#39;s classes, in favour of discussions on the events from a variety of perspectives.

Elsewhere, the nation&#39;s media are already turning to eager &#39;talking heads&#39; and pundits for their commentary on the killer, his psychological state and how campuses might better prepare themselves to ward off similar attacks. Conspicuous by its absence in this dialogue, however, is a meaningful engagement by US politicians with the question of gun control.

On the left and right alike, US politicians have long considered the issue of gun control to be very tricky. Analysts have attributed John Kerry&#39;s defeat in the 2000 election to his stance on the banning of assault weapons.

The news networks are affording the pro-gun movement ample space to express its views. The views of Susanna Hupp, herself a survivor of a shoot-out in a Texas cafe in 1991, are not atypical.

As she put it in a debate on CBS last week, the most heinous of all mass killings in the US, like those at Columbine and Virginia Tech, have all taken place in &#39;gun-free zones&#39;, places where even basic side arms are banned.

Such views are popular in America and are not uncommon even among students and alumni of Virginia Tech. As one friend of mine, a former tech student currently deployed in Iraq with a private security firm, said a couple of days ago: &#39;&#39;If one of the victims had been carrying [a gun] and had reacted properly, a lot of lives could had been saved."

Others at Virginia Tech are perplexed by such opinions. The idea that weapons-bearing students might somehow have averted last week&#39;s massacre seems to ignore the likely complexities that such a situation would produce.

How, for example, would students in separate classrooms have been able to distinguish friend from foe? Would such a scenario not make the job of law enforcement officers extremely difficult?

President George W Bush last week asserted his support for the second amendment, the instrument of the US constitution that grants the right to bear arms to all citizens.

The day before his speech at the Virginia Tech memorial convocation, his press secretary, Dana Perino, said: &#39;&#39;The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed."

However, the second amendment was written when the US nation was still insecure about foreign invasion. Its sole instrumental purpose was to ensure citizens were equipped to form a militia in the absence of a standing army.

Meanwhile, news is breaking about the sheer quantity of ammunition expended by the Virginia Tech killer. Among the inventory he carried on the day were hollow-point shells and ammunition clips capable of holding up to 30 bullets.

Protagonists on both sides of the gun debate in the US tend to stereotype their opponents, yet the pro-gun movement seems incapable of articulating a balanced view on the sorts of weapons required by the average citizen.

The fact remains high-powered guns are too easy to get in Virginia. Second-hand weapons may be purchased with no background check, and there are no state restrictions on the sale of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons, such as the AK47.

As we learned last week, a Virginia judicial officer certified in 2005 that Cho presented &#39;&#39;an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness&#39;&#39;.

As such, Cho probably fell within the category of &#39;&#39;adjudicated as a mental incompetent&#39;&#39; used in the Federal Gun Control Act of 1968. However, none of this showed up in his background checks on the day he purchased his weapons.

My gun-advocate friends often argue it would be impossible to fully regulate the ownership of guns. Better then to let everyone carry a weapon so that they might defend themselves and thereby create a deterrent.

Yet they ignore the experience of many Europeans, such as myself, who have grown up in countries where gun ownership is regulated quite successfully.

This weekend, most Virginia Tech students will be envious of the sort of peace and security that such regulation can provide.

Nicholas Kiersey, who is from Blessington, Co Wicklow, is a PhD student at Virginia Tech

Nicholas Kiersey

2007-04-29

Nicholas Kiersey

eng

TechSportsBlog.com reaction to tragedy

The following article was originally published at HokieHaven.com: <a href="http://virginiatech.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=664661">http://virginiatech.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=664661</a>

It is also available at TechSportBlog.com:
<a href="http://www.techsportsblog.com/2007/04/17/virginia-tech-tragedy/">http://www.techsportsblog.com/2007/04/17/virginia-tech-tragedy/</a>

--

It&#39;s been awhile since my last blog post. Nearly a month, in fact. As a fan, I put a lot of time and energy rooting for my Virginia Hokies on the football field, then on the basketball court, and I needed a break. To get things going again, I was planning on a blog post title "The Off-Season" about how Hokie fans spend their time during the spring and summer before football starts anew in the fall.

Instead of writing about our fans and our football team, I am instead attempting to write about the tragedy that occurred yesterday on the campus of Virginia Tech. This is just a mere attempt, because it is very difficult to find the words to describe the feelings I have experienced since I learned of the magnitude of yesterday&#39;s events.

When I learned of the first shooting, and only one person was reported to have died, my initial thought was that some one got mad at his girlfriend. I was surprised, because shootings just don&#39;t happen in Blacksburg, but I wasn&#39;t shocked, because domestic violence happens all too often.

When the death toll went from 1 to over 20, I am not exactly sure what I felt. I was shocked, but I was also numb. During the early and mid-afternoon hours, it was a very surreal experience watching the story unfold on the internet. It was unfathomable to think that Virginia Tech would be the site of the deadliest shooting in U.S. history.

I went home from work at about 4pm, and I turned on the television. When I saw the images and heard the sounds of yesterday&#39;s events, it started to sink in. One image in particular hit home - it was a picture showing shocked students standing behind the glass doors of one of the entrances of McBryde Hall. I used to work for the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, and my office was on the first floor of McBryde. I used to walk in and out of those doors on a daily basis. It was disheartening to see students watching the tragedy unfold from behind those very same doors.

Last night, my thoughts began to drift back to my days at Virginia Tech, both as a student and as a staff member. There was never a time where I felt unsafe walking around campus or around town. There was never a time where I felt unsafe inside a classroom. For today&#39;s students, they will not feel safe anywhere they go for a long time. I simply cannot imagine what it is like to be a student, faculty, or staff at Virginia Tech right now, let alone to be one of the wounded or one who knows a victim.

College campuses are special places. I like to think that the campus of Virginia Tech is extra special, but everyone feels that way about their alma mater. When I walked around Virginia Tech and Blacksburg during football or basketball weekends, I was reminded of so many good times I experienced during my time there, and I felt a disconnect from the strife of the "real world". There is a youthful innocence that pervades college campuses. It touches everyone there, from the 17 and 18 year old freshmen, to the 60 year old professors who only know life in academia.

Yesterday, that innocence was ripped from the hearts of every Hokie, and it was stolen away from anyone who has spent more than a minute on a college campus.

Since the hours that innocence was taken from us, the Hokie Nation has experienced disbelief, deep sadness, and anger. Many of us are still in shock, and it has started to sink in for others. For too many Hokies, a friend or loved one has fallen.

However, in every cloud there is a silver lining. We have seen an overwhelming outpouring of support from members and fans of other universities and colleges. I have been deeply moved by the well wishes I have seen on our Rivals.com HokieHaven board, TechSideline.com&#39;s Lounge board, as well as TheSabre.com&#39;s The Corner board. I am sure there are many other internet message boards that have similar threads voicing support for the Virginia Tech community.

On behalf of Virginia Tech and the Hokie Nation, I&#39;d like to say "thank you" for keeping our community in your thoughts and prayers. It is comforting to see the kinder and gentler side of the human spirit after such a horrific event.

Vincent Rivellino

2007-04-29

Vincent Rivellino

eng