VA Tech - the trickle down effect
The tragic events of Monday's VA Tech shooting have left so many of us confused. But it was my husband's comments to me on Tuesday night that left me saddened - mostly because I felt the same way. Matt came home and said "I heard the news - they've identified the shooter and I have to say it stung a little when I heard he was Korean". Though Matt and I are not Korean, our son is. And as parents of a Korean - American we are sensitive to the potential prejudice our son will endure as a minority and Asian-American in our country. This being said - the question beckons - will this change the way people will view "Asians'? Koreans?
I'm trying to not have the news on - as all they are showing is this lost soul strapped with 2 guns, not a sight I wish Ben to see. But when given a chance I'm reading on line. Here is an excerpt of a Newsweek article I came accross.
Braced for Backlash
Korean-Americans fear that hatred toward the Virginia Tech killer will spill over into their community—and fuel negative typecasting.
By Jessica Bennett and Noelle Chun
Newsweek, April 18, 2007 -
The bodies had barely been removed when the racial epithets started pouring in. Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old identified as the killer of 32 on the Virginia Tech campus, may have lived in the state since his elementary school days, but to the bigots in the blogosphere it was his origins in Korea that mattered most. "Koreans are the most hotheaded and macho of East Asians," wrote one unnamed commentator on the Sepia Mutiny blog. "They are also sick and tired of losing their Korean girlfriends to white men with an Asian fetish."
The vitriol of comments like these has shocked America's Korean community, leaving it braced for a backlash and scrambling to control the damage caused by distorted stereotypes. In South Korea—where government officials feared that the incident could further sour relations with Washington—the foreign ministry issued a statement saying that it hoped the tragedy would not provoke "racial prejudice or confrontation." Inside the United States, social-network users set up online forums with names like "Don't Hate Koreans Because of Cho Seung-Hui" and "Cho Seung-Hui Does NOT Represent Asians." ...
My mind says - one incident, one person cannot change the hard work and efforts of two countries. However, those individuals who are already "slightly racist", "slightly prejudice" (note: I really don't believe anyone is slightly prejudice or slightly racist - if you think it - you are it...but that's another blog entry) who only need a little nudge to push them over the edge - received just that - the nudge - to take them into their racial epithets and it saddens me. Let's hope that our feelings of concern never become fully validated and that the Korean-American demographic within our country can come out of this tragedy unscathed.
Posted in:
on
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
at
at
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
