R.I.P. Seung-Hui Cho

A Korean-American guy went crazy and shot up 32 people so I guess I have to comment. Even though I'm living in London now, I still identify myself first and foremost as a Korean-American. And the fact that the shooter was one of us just really makes this whole incident hit close to home.

1. The media is calling him Seung-Hui Cho, but that's not a Korean name. From what I've read, it appears his name is actually Seung-Ho...that was the name on his dorm room door. I don't know how the media came up with Seung-Hui. It sounds Chinese.

2. I find it sad that they keep referring to him as the "man from South Korea" or "the Korean." The guy immigrated here when he was 8-years-old, goddammit. The media is trying to make him a foreigner so they can make this an Us Against Them issue. He grew up a 20-hour flight away from Korea. What society should we blame for the kind of person he grew up to become? The place where he spent the first 8 years of his life or the place where he spent the next 15 that led up to him running around an American campus shooting innocent students?

3. The first thing I thought when I read it was a Korean-American shooter, was oh fuck, they're going to start rounding us up now. And that's not the thing that scares me most, but the fact that I thought like that scares me more. That's what America's become. A place where if someone you aren't related to but is of your race or type commits a mass murder, you are somehow implicated as well. I read Korean-Americans at VT are withdrawing from school right now because they fear for the racial tension.

From the New York Times:

Asian-American students at Virginia Tech reacted to news about the gunman’s identity with shock and some anxiety about a possible backlash.

“My parents are actually worried about retaliation against Asians,” said Lyu Boaz, a third-year accounting student who was born in South Korea and became an American citizen a year ago. “After 9/11, a lot of Arabs were attacked for that reason.”

Mr. Boaz, a resident adviser at Pritchard Hall, said many Korean-American students left campus immediately. Parents of other Korean-American students were preparing to pick up their children this afternoon and take them home.

Why does the race of the shooter matter so much here? After Columbine, everyone didn't make a huge issue about the fact that the shooters were white.

4. Once again, we see how fear has become the dominant state of America. We now add the list of people we are afraid of...Arabs, Muslims, terrorists, guys who wear trench coats, and now, Asian nerds who don't socialize. It's really sad. Don't fall into it. Really, this situation has very little to do with his race. He was a disturbed, depressed, isolated young man with anti-social tendencies medicated by the U.S. pyschiatric system. It could have happened to anyone. You can't be afraid of a certain group of people, because if history as taught us anything, fear does not protect us. So while you're sitting there staring at the Muslim guy and the Korean nerd, the unremarkable person sitting behind you is probably just as likely to be dangerous. So unless you want to be scared of everything, just give up and realize fear and precaution really don't do much good.