Letters to the Editor
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Disappointing Journalism
I have to chime in here with agreement that this is pretty irresponsible journalism. I'm disappointed.
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Stand up to the bigots.
If you are Korean, please do not let your fear of possible bigoted retaliation alter your life. There probably are Neanderthals out there who now, instantly, hate Koreans and perhaps all Asians (the Freedom Fries crowd comes to mind). Don't give in to them. There are many, many more decent people who will side with you against the haters.
We are with you, and against those who would do you harm.
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So, Armagednoutahere
One deeply disturbed Korean/American shoots 32 people and that proves what about Koreans or Asians generally? You and I would agree--it proves nothing. One deeply disturbed idiot of (presumably) European descent posts a screed about Asian people or Muslims or somebody, and it proves what, exactly, about Americans in general? I'm waiting for your answer.
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Remember Vincent Chin & Alia Ansari
What Cho did was beyond description and few things can be said to make it better or make sense of it.
That said, this country has tradition of racial scapegoating and violence from old fashion lynchings in the South and random post 9/11 murders of Middle Easterner to Vincent Chin -- a Chinese American who was killed because the murder thought he was Japanese and blamed him for job lost. This happened twenty years ago in Detroit.
More recently, in Oct 2006, Alia Ansari was randomly killed in Fremont, CA, while walking her 3 year old daughter to get her other children from school. Ansari was wearing a hijab or headscarf and she was shot in the head. The suspect who was arrested admitted hate was a motive.
The thought of a backlash is real. Anyone who doesn't believe this is fooling themselves.
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Better Safe than Sorry
I totally understand why Korean-Americans and other Asians in the area feel the need to leave the scene for a little bit.
To all the commenters who are accusing them of "making something out of nothing", you don't know what you're talking about. Have you ever heard of Vincent Chin? Asians in this country know of some pretty scary history. It's there, below the surface.
I'm actually confident that there will be NO reprisals and no wave of hatred from crazy white people. But some people would rather hedge their bets and keep their heads down for a few days. That's not stupidity or cowardice, it's common sense.
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Salon delivers with another victim de jour
"fleeing the campus"??? *sigh*
Thanks for more out-of-touch, hysterical leftist nonsense which will just make mainstream liberals look like fools to the nation at large.
I love how Salon 'proves' how 'not-racist' they are by having a laser-light focus on race at every turn. This "fleeing the campus" garabage is your lead article on the events at VT and you just happen to have choosen a lead photo with a person of East Asian ethnicity crying.
The only people I see making a big deal about him being Korean, are well...leftist multiculturalists looking for another reason for self-flagellation. Stop using this horrible event for your wider policial motives.
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Koreans are, sad to say, the racist xenophobes
I think Koreans are responding to a non-existent "racist backlash" because if an American had done this in Korea, dozens of American businesses would by now be smoldering piles of ashes and Americans truly would be risking their safety if they appeared in public.
Recall, for instance, the response in Korea to the incident at the Olympics when a Candian judge disqualified a Korean speed skater, allowing the American Apollo Anto Ono to win the gold. It spark violent anti-American demonstrations in Korea that continue to erupt every time Ono enters the country for a sporting event. Even years later, Ono is surrounded by guards for protection every time he goes to Korea. And when an American military vehicle accidentally killed a girl, violent anti-American demonstrations lasted for months.
Koreans assume Americans will respond in the same way. They won't. As one of the white VT students put it when asked about the possibility of a backlash on CNN today, "It hadn't even crossed my mind."
I think it's obvious to everyone (except perhaps Koreans, who are, for historical reasons, among the most xenophobic people on earth) that this crime by a lone madman had nothing to do with race or ethnicity.
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Korean xenophobia
To preempt the charge that I'm racist for calling Koreans xenophobes, check out this by a Korea Times columnist about anti-foreign hatred in Korea....
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:qziYebABKboJ:times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200501/kt2005011618304254190.htm+korean+xenophobia&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
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Upset and grieving people don't think straight
People don't think logically in a time like this. Some Asian students began to worry about reprisal? Not likely but then it wasn't likely that a fellow student would shoot 32 other people in cold blood. While I wish they hadn't felt at risk, I'm hardly going to condemn them for not thinking completely logically...if indeed their concerns were illogical. One thing I've learned is that a lot of racism aimed at minorities is below the radar of the average white middle-class person (i.e. me).
Having said that, I teach at a college not so very far from Tech and a lot of students had friends at Tech. On Monday they were frantically emailing, texting and calling all day; today we were all very somber. At no time did the gunman's ethnicity ever come up in discussion that I know of, and I talked to a lot of students in passing and in class. I think the anxiety felt by some Asian students will be transient. I'm sort of surprised that it was enough to warrant an article. I have a student working with me of Vietnamese descent whose sister is a Tech student (unharmed). I'll have to ask her what she thinks.
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And while it's obvious...
...it bears saying again and again: what we've unleashed on Iraq is at least one or two massacres like this EVERY GOD-DAMN DAY of their lives. All the pain. All the horror. All the sense of "How could this have happened, how could my beautiful child/husband/wife have been taken away from us like this??" All of it. Courtesy of the good old U.S. of A. So what are we crying in our beer about?