Chinese. No, my bad. South Korean.
I was chatting with a professor of Japanese descent about the nightmare at Virginia Tech. She is going to be participating on a panel discussion about the Asian perspective on the events. At first blush that sounded just a bit odd too me. I mean, does anyone really think Asians feel differently than anyone else about a deranged killer slaughtering innocents? That's not what the panel is about, though. It's more about the Asian perspective on the reactions to the killer being Asian. This quote from Margaret Cho is right on the money.
So here is the whole terrible mess of the shootings at Virginia Tech. I look at the shooter [Seung-Hui Cho's] expressionless face on the news and he looks so familiar, like he could be in my family. Just another one of us. But how can he be us when what he has done is so terrible? Here is where I can really envy white people because when white people do something that is inexplicably awful, so brutally and horribly wrong, nobody says "do you think it is because he is white?" There are no headlines calling him the "White shooter." There is no mention of race because there is no thought in anyone's mind that his race had anything to do with his crime. (Cho, 2007)
You gotta wonder how come the media reported Seung-Hui was Chinese before verifying his actual national descent. Wouldn't have anything to do with China being the last remaining communist super-power would it? Wouldn't have anything to do with an assumption that only a communist would be capable of such an atrocity, would it? South Koreans are such nice people.
What my professor wants to know is how is this going to affect the status of "model minority" that has been granted Asian Americans. Does this mean Asians will be now considered hard working, intelligent and possibly deranged?