(NAME-MCE) What May Come: Asian Americans and the Virginia Tech Shootings

[Bill Howe]

What May Come: Asian Americans and the Virginia Tech Shootings (from Women
of Color Blog)

Tamara K. Nopper
April 17, 2007 <http://www.aamovement.net/viewpoints/2007/virginiatech.html>

Like many, I was glued to the television news yesterday, keeping updated
about the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech University. I was trying to
deal with my own disgust and sadness, especially since my professional life
as a graduate student and college instructor is tied to universities. And
then the other shoe dropped. I found out from a friend that the news channel
she was watching had reported the shooter as Asian. It has now been
reported, after much confusion, that the shooter is Cho Seung-Hui, a South
Korean immigrant and Virginia Tech student.

As an Asian American woman, I am keenly aware that Asians are about to
become a popular media topic if not the victims of physical backlash. Rarely
have we gotten as much attention in the past ten years, except, perhaps,
during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Since then Asians are seldom seen in the
media except when one of us wins a golfing match, Woody Allen has sex, or
Angelina Jolie adopts a kid.

I am not looking forward to the onslaught of media attention. If history
truly does have clues about what will come, there may be several different
ways we as Asian Americans will be talked about.

One, we will watch white media pundits and perhaps even sociologists explain
what they understand as an "Asian" way of being. They will talk about how
Asian males presumably have fragile "egos" and therefore are culturally
prone to engage in kamikaze style violence. These statements will be
embedded with racist tropes about Japanese military fighters during WWII or
the Viet Cong—the crazy, calculating, and hidden Asian man who will fight to
the death over presumably nothing.

In the process, the white media might actually ask Asian Americans our
perspectives for a change. We will probably be expected to apologize in some
way for the behavior of another Asian—something whites never have to
collectively do when one of theirs engages in (mass) violence, which is
often. And then some of us might succumb to the Orientalist logic of the
media by eagerly promoting Asian Americans as real Americans and therefore
unlike Asians overseas who presumably engage in culturally reprehensible
behavior. In other words, if we get to talk at all, Asian Americans will be
expected to interpret, explain, and distance themselves from other Asians
just to get airtime.

Or perhaps the media will take the color-blind approach instead of a
strictly eugenic one. The media might try to whitewash the situation and
treat Cho as just another alienated middle-class suburban kid. In some ways
this is already happening—hence the constant referrals to the proximity of
the shootings to the 8th anniversary of the Columbine killings. The media
will repeat over and over words from a letter that Cho left behind speaking
of "rich kids," and "deceitful charlatans." They will ask what's going on in
middle-class communities that encourage this type of violence. In the
process they may never talk about the dirty little secret about middle-class
assimilation: for non-whites, it does not always prevent racial alienation,
rage, or depression. This may be surprising given that we are bombarded with
constant images suggesting that racial harmony will exist once we are all
middle-class. But for many of us who have achieved middle-class life, even
if we may not openly admit it, alienation does not stop if you are not
white.

But the white media, being as tricky as it is, may probably talk about Cho
in ways that reflect a combination of both traditional eugenic and
colorblind approaches. They will emphasize Cho's ethnicity and economic
background by wondering what would set off a hard-working, quiet, South
Korean immigrant from a middle-class dry-cleaner-owning family. They will
wonder why Cho would commit such acts of violence, which we expect from
Middle Easterners and Muslims and those crazy Asians from overseas, but not
from hard-working South Korean immigrants. They will promote Cho as "the
model minority" who suddenly, for no reason, went crazy. Whereas eugenic
approaches depicting Asians as crazy kamikazes or Viet Cong mercenaries
emphasize Asian violence, the eugenic aspect of the model minority myth
suggests that there is something about Asian Americans that makes them less
prone to expressions of anger, rage, violence, or criminality. Indeed, we
are not even seen as having legitimate reasons to have anger, let alone
rage, hence the need to figure out what made this "quiet" student "snap."

Given that the model minority myth is a white racist invention that elevates
Asians over minority groups, Cho will be dissected as an anomaly among South
Koreans who "are not prone" to violence—unlike Blacks who are racistly
viewed as inherently violent or South Asians, Middle Easterners and Muslims
who are viewed as potential terrorists. He will be talked about as acting
"out of character" from the other "good South Koreans" who come here and
quietly and dutifully work towards the American dream. Operating behind the
scenes of course is a diplomatic relationship between the US and South Korea
forged through bombs and military zones during the Korean War and expressed
through the new free trade agreement negotiations between the countries.
Indeed, even as South Korean diplomats express concern about racial backlash
against Asians, they are quick to disown Cho in order to maintain the image
of the respectable South Korean.

Whatever happens, Cho will become whoever the white media wants him to be
and for whatever political platform it and legislators want to push. In the
process, Asian Americans will, like other non-whites, be picked apart,
dissected, and theorized by whites. As such, this is no different than any
other day for Asian Americans. Only this time an Asian face will be on every
television screen, internet search engine, and newspaper.

Tamara K. Nopper is an educator, writer, and activist living in
Philadelphia. She can be reached at tnopper at yahoo.com





-- 
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