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?
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
A Call to Record VA Tech Aftermath
I believe that the anti-Asian sentiment that the VA Tech shootings were predicted to create has begun. Today, my sister, an undergrad on the UC Berkeley campus, came home and told me that she had had a terrible day. Walking past the SQUELCH undergraduate student political organization, one of the members remarked, "Vote for me and I'll prostitute myself out like an Asian woman" as my sister walked by. On the bus, some guy stuck his foot out in the aisle to trip her as she tried to exit the bus. When she looked at him, he simply remarked "What?"
Admittedly, incidents like these are hard to define because they're neither clearly defined racially motivated hate crimes nor are they purely circumstantial events devoid of any racial implications. Thinking back, my sister can't recall hearing such comments on her previous excursions across campus, and she definitely doesn't remember the last time she experienced subtle harassments more than once in a day. Of course, when something like the VA Tech shootings occur, we all are a little more on guard, and perhaps one could argue that the sensitivity level may be a bit higher. In other words, is it that anti-Asian incidents have increased since the shooting or do people happen to notice them more?
Regardless of the basis for anti-Asian hate incidents, it's important that we document them, not only to have a record proving or disproving theories about anti-Asian sentiment, but also to watch out for each other and the community (Asians and non-Asians alike). We must create a record and put it out in the open to force acknowledgment of what's really going on in our multicultural society. I encourage people to note incidents of racial discrimination against all races as well.
Please pass this on to people you know and ask them to record incidents that they experienced or observed. Note the date, time, place, who the participants were and what was said.
Admittedly, incidents like these are hard to define because they're neither clearly defined racially motivated hate crimes nor are they purely circumstantial events devoid of any racial implications. Thinking back, my sister can't recall hearing such comments on her previous excursions across campus, and she definitely doesn't remember the last time she experienced subtle harassments more than once in a day. Of course, when something like the VA Tech shootings occur, we all are a little more on guard, and perhaps one could argue that the sensitivity level may be a bit higher. In other words, is it that anti-Asian incidents have increased since the shooting or do people happen to notice them more?
Regardless of the basis for anti-Asian hate incidents, it's important that we document them, not only to have a record proving or disproving theories about anti-Asian sentiment, but also to watch out for each other and the community (Asians and non-Asians alike). We must create a record and put it out in the open to force acknowledgment of what's really going on in our multicultural society. I encourage people to note incidents of racial discrimination against all races as well.
Please pass this on to people you know and ask them to record incidents that they experienced or observed. Note the date, time, place, who the participants were and what was said.
Tamara K. Nopper
April 17, 2007
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@yahoo.com
April 17, 2007
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@yahoo.com
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Responding to the VA Tech Shootings
Yes, the shooter is Asian American--which means that the tragic loss that our nation suffered yesterday will inevitably be followed by losses for the Asian American community. One can only imagine the responses that an act of such unimaginable violence will provoke. Acquaintances of mine, both Asian American and otherwise, have already predicted a host of responses ranging from media-driven stereotyping to actual physical violence against Asian Americans. This blog is being started to address two questions:
1. In your opinion, what effect will the VA Tech Shootings have on the Asian American community?
2. How do you think the Asian American community should respond to any negative fallout--including that which you predicted in your response to question 1?
1. In your opinion, what effect will the VA Tech Shootings have on the Asian American community?
2. How do you think the Asian American community should respond to any negative fallout--including that which you predicted in your response to question 1?
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Welcome & First Post
Welcome! Let's start a discussion about what seems to be a pressing issue for the Asian American community lately. Also, what about inviting guest bloggers such as Victor Hwang, Dale Minami and others to contribute to the site?
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