I hate to think what would happen to both you and my son, a high school student in the 80s, in today's environment. So easy after the fact to profile the killer. Quiet, studious, very smart - that's sure scary. I fear for the controls that will be placed on students in the future, rather than dealing with the real problem which is the availability of guns. A student film or script raises the red flag, but a similar movie created by a professional can be a big hit in theaters.

So many people being interviewed talk about the killer being insane. Insanity is a defense to prosecution. What would they be saying if he were alive and in custody? He would not be considered insane, but a menace who knew the difference between right and wrong and proceeded to kill.

Re the "alien" in society, whether s/he be dark skinned or from a foreign country, the American society needs to change. Instead of putting up barriers to immigration or marginalizing blacks,the society must become colorblind and integrated. The integration is not the obligation of the minority person, but rather, the white majority.

It's the guns, stupid. (I don't mean you, the author) I'm an American living in Mexico and here only the outlaws have guns. How about a "strict construction" of the constitution when it comes to the 2nd Amendment? Guns for a militia, not for "protection". Actually, I could do without the militia exception also.

after all, everyone's got to make a living, and who knows how many people they support? but after a simple "Jeff Yang has certainly made a career out of the chip on the shoulder" by "Odradek", Yang immediately jumps in with justification. is it just possible he believes it? if so, he's suffering from Middle Kingdom Psychosis. and nothing marks this so much as racial terminology. in america this is a simple color code, white, black, yellow. yellow was seen as insulting since it also has a connotation of cowardly ("gold" probably would have been ok). so another term had to be found. oriental, meaning "eastern" was used, but objected to since the chinese see themselves as *central*. now that color and direction have been ruled out, what else is left? nationality. but since by sight no one can reliably tell chinese from korean and japanese (and sometimes filipino and vietnamese) this is problematic. furthermore, those nationalities, that is, those other than chinese, take umbrage at being called "chinese looking". there's nothing left but geograhic. here's where the psychosis really comes into play. it's "asian". now "asia" proper goes all the way from haifa to haiphong. half the world. but the Middle Kingdom swallows them up. all others are just that - "others". modified. tributaries. south asia. south-east asia. asia minor. middle east (asia). every people has a defining contribution that all mankind embraces. the mosaic code. democracy. alphabet. numbers. steel. common law. steam. science. but what is the world wide contribution of the Middle Kingdom? yes, it's NOODLES!

Jeff Yang forecasts new Asian and Asian American consumer trends

Part of the reason South Koreans may express fears of reprisals is because of what could have transpired had the situation been reversed and an American student went on a rampage at a South Korean campus, noted Breen.

For example, when two girls were killed in a traffic accident involving a U.S. military vehicle in 2002, South Korea was gripped with anti-American fervor whipped up by mass protests. The mood was fanned by politicians seeking a boost in that year's presidential vote that brought Roh to power with a promise not to ''kowtow'' to the U.S.

Since Monday's shootings, however, there have been no signs of any reprisals against Koreans in the United States.

''It will be very instructive to Koreans to watch the reaction of Americans,'' Breen, a Briton, said of the response to the shooting rampage. ''They know it's more gracious than their own reaction would be.''

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Virginia-Tech-SKorea.html

I read Jeff Yang's article with considerable interest because not only am I Asian-American* myself but I grew up within minutes of the University of Iowa campus. I was a high school sophomore when Gang Lu went on his rampage. Iowa City is somewhat of a multicultural oasis in the state and in my experience there was definitely openness towards exchange students. My parents hosted frequent dinner parties with Korean, Chinese, Indian and Filipino graduate students, particularly around holidays when they knew that feelings of isolation could be acute. So I don't recall ever considering Gang Lu's race in attempting to understand his act and motive. Perhaps it is because we simply weren't accustomed to such violence in our community, and it was that which required the explanation, that I recall the issue of access to guns was at the fore.

Later I attended Vanderbilt University for my undergraduate degree in psychology and I can relate exactly to what Professor Dickerson describes because the environment stood in contrast to the one from which I had come. Vanderbilt's engineering school had an exchange program with the government of Malaysia, with probably a few hundred students. As Asian and muslim (before 9/11 so it wasn't then what it might be today), studying exclusively in top engineering disciplines, they were a very isolated group on campus to say the least. I recall my colleagues in the engineering school making what we in psychology would refer to as "modern racist" comments -- making fun of the hijabs the women wore, their language, their hygiene, their outsider status. But there was also envy of perceived intellectual superiority, the "smart but quiet" meme. And that, to me, is an equally modern racist attitude. It doesn't seem like it at first because "smart" and "quiet" are not ignoble traits, but it is because it assigns attributes to a group as a whole based on race.

Which is why I should explain the * next to Asian-American in the first sentence: I do not actually identify with this term. I consider them to simply describe the conditions of my birth; they say nothing more about my likely qualities, personality, skills, acts or motives as they do any other person tagged with this or any label.

And what it obscures is the common thread that Cho, Lo, Lu, Harris and Klebold, Jeff Weise, and McVeigh too, you name them, were all angry, delusional young men, suffering perceived injustice, with access to weaponry with which to act upon their violent fantasies.

Unfortunately the psychological complexity of these cases seems to preclude such thing as "profile checklist", so when the mind is less agile or under stress we reach for these labels to help us make sense of the unbelievable. It is understandable, perhaps even inevitable. So it is important to recognize it for what is, and I appreciate Jeff Yang initiating a discussion.