http://www.denverpost.com/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=1496964
The Denver Post recently published an article on the recent Virginia Tech shooting. The majority of the article simply repeated the same information found on other news wires. What is interesting is that the Denver Post included a photograph of what it calls the "Asian Media" photographing Cho's family home. How the Denver Post knows that these photographers constitute the Asian Media is unclear aside from conclusions based on the photographers' physical appearance. More importantly, what does that have to do with the tragedy anyway?
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What immediately comes to mind when I see the photo and accompanying caption is that the Denver Post is attempting to racialize the incident by publishing photos of over-eager, business-suit-wearing Asian people who may look slightly out-of-place against a backdrop of Virginia suburban homes.
Though completely irrational and irrelevant, the readers of the Post may assume that the photo is relevant simply because it has been published by a media authority. Now that relevance is assumed, readers may quickly and perhaps subconsciously relate the photo to the VA Tech shootings because the shooter was Asian and the subjects of the photo are also Asian (the Post helpfully prints "Asian Media" in the caption in case your subconscious brain was reluctant to make the connection). Et voila--racialization!
I won't even delve into the way this image attempts to invoke the "perpetual foreigner" stereotype. What I will say is that I believe the best way to deal with these subtle forms of discrimination is to fully analyze them before responding, lest we be made to look like the irrational ones.
That being said, I wonder how the Denver Post editors would explain the relevance of this photo to their piece or to the incident at large?
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