Letters to the Editor
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"foreigners" make easy targets
The sad truth of the matter is that Seung-Hui Cho (and thanks Jeff for using the English language word order of his name rather than the Korean version which the mainstream media seems to be delighting in - shades of the obsession with repeating the exact Don Imus slurs on the Rutgers University women's basketball team, perhaps?) was someone who had severe mental and emotional problems.
This and the fact that he had ready access to hand guns one of which was an automatic, probably accounts for 98% of what we might think of as the Virginia Tech tragedy.
While it's human nature to look for meaning in incidents and it's equally part of human nature to be more alarmed by negative events that effect people with whom you feel a common bond, the media coverage of the tragedy seem to highlight questions of race rather than these other issues.
The mainstream media, like the society which it represents, would rather carp on race because this provides a way of externalizing "the problem" onto "those people" and absolves society and those of us who are in positions to do something about it from looking at more difficult shortcomings (the lack of adequate gun control, the failure of public awareness around mental illness and the tolerance of crippling levels of emotional isolation) within the system itself.
The other factor in "Asian Stranger Danger" rhetoric is good old fashioned racism. But I'm not so interested in talking about this since it's been a huge factor in the established internet discussion of this issue already.