The Virginia Tech community, our nation, and many around the world continue to grieve the senseless loss of so many precious lives on Monday morning. May the families and friends of those killed feel the peace and strength of Christ during this impossibly difficult time. And may we all take it as yet another reminder of how fragile this life is, and how much we all need the Lord.
Beyond the immediate story, the Virginia tragedy has inspired many compelling national discussions. For instance, should NBC have aired Cho Seung-Hui’s disturbing video manifesto? The event also is threatening to re-ignite America’s ongoing gun-control debate. It has brought to the fore the important role of social networking sites like MySpace in connecting communities during a crisis and helping people mourn. And it has raised questions about an educational institution’s responsibilities in protecting a campus community from mentally unstable students.
I hesitate to throw my voice into the cacophony of media addressing this horrific event. But I’m tempted to think out loud a bit about one sobering side note in this catastrophe—the role of race and ethnicity. I’m not for a moment suggesting that race played some part in Cho Seung-Hui’s twisted plot or that he had any regard for the cultural backgrounds of any of the people he murdered. In fact, as we begin to learn more about the 32 women and men who were slain, it’s clear that Cho did not discriminate–there were Caucasian Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Jewish Holocaust survivors, French Canadians, people of Middle Eastern descent, and many others. One is reminded how wonderfully multicultural a university campus often is.
What I’m thinking about, however, are the repercussions Cho’s evil act has had for the Asian community in America, particularly our brothers and sisters from South Korea, from which Cho’s family emigrated in the early ’90s. This New York Times story explains how South Koreans take great pride in Koreans who have found success in the U.S. and, thus, why many are stunned and ashamed that the man behind the largest murder spree in U.S. history was Korean. South Koreans are concerned about how it might affect their country’s relations with the United States, not to mention the possibility that it might trigger racial prejudice or violence against Koreans in the U.S.
This piece reports on how apologetic South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has been:
“I and our people cannot contain our feelings of huge shock and grief,” said Roh during a news conference [on Wednesday]. “I pray for the souls of those killed and offer words of comfort from my heart for those injured, the bereaved families and the U.S. people.”
It was apparently the third time he has publicly apologized. This kind of humility from a national leader is quite amazing these days, isn’t it? In fact, the entire nation’s collective sense of remorse suggests a cultural mindset quite different from the one in the U.S.
Then there was this:
A South Korean also launched an online campaign Tuesday to offer condolences to the victims, setting up a Web page where users left more than 8,500 messages by Wednesday.
“I feel distressed to learn that it was a South Korean that threw the world into shock,” said the site’s operator, identified only by the ID Hangukin, which means South Korean. “I pray for the souls of all those killed and let’s say to them that we, as South Koreans, regret” the tragedy.
I suspect many of us who are ethnic minorities in the United States have also had that sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs when we discover that the person behind some violent or malicious act happens to come from our racial group. We all know that unpleasant attitudes can follow. Anyone remember the internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II? Or how about the racial profiling of Muslims and, really, anyone of Middle Eastern descent after Sept. 11, 2001? When it was revealed that the Washington, D.C., snipers of 2002 were African Americans, I said to myself, Indiana Jones-style, Black. Why’d they have to be black?! It made an already tragic episode all the more maddening. I’m sure you can think of moments like these from your own experience.
History has shown that race can put people’s safety and freedom at risk during times of national panic or indignation. But more than that, one simply feels a sense of communal disappointment that one or two crazy individuals could tarnish the image of an entire race of people. Yes, I know this may sound irrational to some, that most reasonable folks outside the racial group in question probably don’t harbor ill will against that group because of the actions of one person. But some folks do. And therein lies the psychological tension that many experience during times like these. Witness this reaction among Koreans in Chicago.
My prayer is that there will not be a backlash against the Korean community—or the Asian community in general—and that our Korean brothers and sisters will feel loved and accepted in this country during these unsettling days.
I posted this comment on my friend Arloa Sutter’s blog (www.arloasutter.blogspot.com) and it generated some interesting responses.
After the initial shock and dismay from the reports of the shooting, a strange thing happened to me as the story unfolded. When it was announced that an Asian was the shooter, I felt a deep sense of disappointment and thought to myself “oh no”. But later when the announcement came out that the shooter was Korean, I felt a sense of relief (I’m Japanese-American).
It turns out I wasn’t the only one having these feelings. Andrew Lam even wrote an article “Let it be some other Asian”. What my experience taught me was that even though I’m a third-generation Japanese-American, I still have this strong connection to my racial/ethnic group to the point that I feel a sense of responsibility for another member’s actions, and that another member’s actions can somehow reflect on my character.
Thank you for this thoughtful commentary. Yesterday as I was reading the paper, which included an apology from a Korean American, I wondered: if the killer had been white, would I feel the need to apologize for his behavior? The short answer is no. The long answer leaves me wondering why minority groups are quick to take responsibility for “their own,” while white people tend to avoid it.
Keith – Thanks for your honest remarks and for prompting me to check Arloa’s blog. She was able to start the conversation on this topic before I got around to it. Thanks also for mentioning Andrew Lam’s insightful article, which can be found here:
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=e3b9c4941f9d849f9358ddb3dbbbe5a3
Llama Momma – Thanks for your comment as well. I think some of the responses over at Arloa’s blog are helpful in answering part of that last question you ask. Reflections from “thaberean” were especially good regarding the African American perspective. You can find that thread here:
http://arloasutter.blogspot.com/2007/04/virginia-tech-student-newspaper.html#links
I’m reading a Young Adult novel right now, called Hattie Big Sky, in which the protagonist’s German friends on their Montana claim are persecuted because of the war in Germany. It is historical fiction, but as you so eloquently point out, it is a modern reality as well. We so easily put take one face of evil and imprint it on a whole group. I wonder if this is simply an instinct of self-protection, or if deeper issues simmer… like whether we have tended a bias that was just waiting for nourishment.
Oops. Not “put take,” just “take one face of evil.” No need for both verbs! (Guess I’m just all caught up in that game of verby pick-up duck I started. Sorry!)
Firstly, I join with everyone in offering my prayers of comfort for the families of the victims and the Va. Tech community.
For the purpose of this blog, as an African-American, I really think the comments of thaberean that were posted hit the nail on the head. Yes, minorities, such as Andrew Lam noted, all feel this incredible burden when someone of our ethnic background commits such a heinous crime. I felt the same way Ed G did with the DC snipers.
Yet Llama Momma raises a very insightful point — would folks of the majority culture ever feel the need to apologize if someone of their ethnic background commited a crime? In my experience, the answer has been a resounding no. And just why is that? As thaberean aptly noted, we minorities carry the incredible burden of our race on our backs — we always have to be at our best, we can never slip up because the majority culture doesn’t expect anything better from us — in short, we always have to PROVE ourselves– this is what I grew up with for sure. It was ingrained in you that you had to be “a credit to your race” and that you could not bring disrespect to your ancestors and all that they strived for. I suspect it is the same in many Asian cultures.
We never want to be seen as tokens , that we didn’t earn our way and this is the incredible angst that is the legacy of racism and slavery that I believe thaberean is getting at. This, in itself, makes reconciliation an even tougher row to hoe simply because of our different perspectives. Most white people can separate themselves from the sins of their fathers, whether it be slavery, racism and discrimination or the heinous crimes of a mass murderer. “What does that have to do with me?”, you will hear them ask.
Until we realize that we live in this shared community called earth and until the majority culture sees the blood on their own hands, even though they personally didn’t hold the knife, the movement for true reconciliation will remain stuck in the mud.
Grace & Peace,
Ed C
ed g — thank you for the link. It’s helpful.
And in response to Ed C’s comment, “Until we realize that we live in this shared community called earth and until the majority culture sees the blood on their own hands, even though they personally didn’t hold the knife, the movement for true reconciliation will remain stuck in the mud.”
In response, another question: should majority culture people take more collective responsibility or should minority people take less collective responsibility? I don’t hold my Korean-American friend responsible for the tragedy in Virginia, and it saddens me that my brothers and sisters who are minorities carry this burden of (felt) responsibility. And with apologies from Korean-Americans everywhere, is this helping or hurting the ministry of reconciliation? Do people expect minority groups to issue these apologies?
Sorry if I sound like I have my head in the sand on this issue. I probably do.
Edward — Thank you for sharing these thoughts and for creating a space to work through this tragedy together.
I resonate with your hesitation to add to the noise surrounding these events. The media blitz has been unbearable at times. I have heard reports of signs around the VT campus telling reporters basically to back off and leave the students alone.
Certainly, all of our hearts go out to the families whose lives have been devastated by the horror that took place. We want to stand together with those who are grieving. And, as followers of Christ, we want somehow to help the hurting to see that God stands with them weeps with them, carries them.
Yet, at the same time, the brokenness of our world was shown not only in Seung Cho’s evil actions but in the fallout from them. As you point out, issues of race, reconciliation, gun control, churches reaching out to the rejected, etc. that have clouded the airwaves and blogosphere.
As a Korean American person, I was surprised, and saddened, to see so many members of different racial/ethnic communities hold their breath until the identity of the shooter was revealed — and then either sigh with relief (“Glad he wasn’t one of us”) or hit their foreheads in shame (“I can’t believe he was a Korean American”). I found myself reacting much the same way.
I do not wish to hijack this tragedy by making it all about race. Unfortunately, the media, perhaps out a desire to understand how this could happen, has put Seung Cho’s racial heritage at the forefront of this discussion. A reporter called me the other day and asked me if Mr. Cho’s racial background and corresponding feelings of isolation and alienation might have contributed to his awful rampage. I felt saddened and a little bit stupid as I tried to explain that, yes, many Asian American youth go through a difficult process of identity formation (just like any other teenager does), and that many feel that they are in two different cultures but do not belong to either one but that this kind of evil cannot be linked to a person’s racial heritage.
This is especially relevant for me as I minister to a group of mostly Korean American teenagers. I know that they have been facing the same kinds of questions.
As Ed C and others have rightly noted, there is a unique burden on various racial/ethnic communities when these kinds of events happen. On top of that, Asian culture tends to emphasize community/family over individuality — so there is almost always a sense of group responsibility for the actions an individual might take. This includes the bad, as we’ve seen, as well as the good (e.g., South Korean people welcoming & celebrating Hines Ward after the Super Bowl).
Question Marks
——————-
“This didn’t have to happen”, Cho Seung-Hui said, after murdering thirty-two people at Virginia Tech University.
And this terrible tragedy of sons, daughters, mothers and fathers didn’t have to happen, if we’d only listened.
But we never listen.
We never listen to those that are different from us- the outcasts, the lonely, the homeless, the ones that are unspoken for. We don’t try to understand. We shun them and put them out of our minds because of our fear that we will become like them.
And these people become more and more lonely and alienated in their isolation.
Words like “creep”, “deranged misfit” and “psycho” devalue this killer’s humanity so we don’t have to face how similar he is to us. Cries of “how could he have been stopped” are uttered by media quick to sensationalize and gain market share, when the words “how could he have been listened to” are never considered.
Because we don’t want to listen.
We don’t want to hear about loneliness and alienation when we’re all so busy with our lives, making money and making friends. And the unpopular, the ones that don’t fit in, the lonely ones are ignored or made fun of because we don’t care to understand anything about them.
This man who clearly needed help, Cho Seung-Hui, devalued himself so much that he called himself “Question Mark”.
There are more “Question Marks” out there. There are millions of them. And if we don’t listen to them, they will follow the same path again and again, because people are not connecting. We are becoming more and more disconnected from each other, creating more and more “Question Marks” every day.
Most “Question Marks” don’t become murderers. Some just kill themselves. Most harm no one and live just as we do, needing antidepressants to appear what we call “normal”. They may be someone you know, someone you love.
This “Question Mark” was once a little boy, who cried, and smiled and loved, He wanted to fit in just like you and I. But that desire to fit in transformed itself into anger towards a society that shunned and ignored him.
How many more times will we shun and ignore the one that doesn’t fit in, the one in the corner, the one that’s different? When all we have to do is listen, before it’s too late.
But we won’t.
Thirty-two human beings who did not know Cho Seung-Hui were murdered.
They were sons, daughters, fathers and mothers, with dreams of futures that will never come and children that will never be born. The thirty-two leave behind people that love them. People that are now scarred for life by this horrible day of death.
To most of us that have not been directly involved, this tragedy will become a memory and fade like all the others that came before.
And the “Question Marks” will appear with more frequency, again and again, because we don’t listen.
We never do.
—————
http://www.x-thc.com
Ed,
You have expressed what has been churning in my heart. In the wake of this tragedy, I have been struck, as an African-American male, about the similar sense of collective shame and guilt that Black Americans, Korean Americans, and South Koreans share when we learn that “one of our own” has committed some dastardly deed. Thanks for this, it strikes the right chords of compassion, empathy, and acceptance to our Korean brothers and sisters in my view.
-Marc
Thanks, always good posts on your blog!
There are so many contributing factors to this incident, and to the psyche of the mentally- and emotionally-disturbed shooter.
The one factor that must be re-examined is the immigrant Asian American context.
It’s good that there’s expressions of apologies and feelings of both collective grief and sorrow, as well as anger for how much shame he’s brought to the Korean people.
But, will this prompt the change in that cultural context to make it easier for those who need mental care to get the psychological help they need, or will traditions rule the day?
Thanks for blogging about this. Helen Lee has some good observations and commentary at her blog, http://momhelen.blogspot.com/ . And I was glad to see the Chicago Tribune’s article today comparing and contrasting Cho’s story with that of one of his victims, Henry Lee, showing another side of the Asian immigrant experience.
Ed,
Thanks for this post, and for all who contributed comments: you’ve served me. I work among international students; one of students did his undergrad at VaTech and his home is Korea. He felt sick initially, and became better as he learned that of his remaining friends and acquaintances at VaTech- Korean or other – all were safe. And, he just felt horrible about the shared ethnic identity he had with the shooter.
I also wanted to affirm the following from your post, by way of a discovery from my daughter:
My daughter told me on September 13, 2001 upon arriving home from middle school, that one of her classmates told the rest of the class about how our military was heading to Afghanistan to “kill those Afghan terrorists!” And, then she had this chilling thought: “Our family came from Afghanistan!” As a father and follower of Jesus, I cannot recall a time in my life in which anger, fear, frustration, and resignation all seemed to pile up at once on my life, and a growing fear for my daughter’s life, indeed for everyone in my family. And, we’re just 3rd-generation, and married out like my dad and others! But, that sense of shared fear and even responsibility that you, Ed, and others wrote about: scary, just scary how it manifests itself across the generations. It was, and is, just maddening.
Ed,
As always, great insights. I also appreciate the breadth and depth of the posts this blog has generated. I met with a dear friend in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago (he is a Black Pastor on a large Chruch staff), and he asked me a paralyzing question:
“What if race doesn’t really exist?”
He went on to explain that based on all of humanity originating in the garden of Eden and being formed in the Imageo Dei, the concept of race was really just as questionable as the big bang theory. It really stuck with my bi-racial self.
So does it matter, ultimately that a South Korean kid went on a multicultural killing spree? Or may we be missing the point altogther?…
-C Brooks. http://www.christopherbennett.blogspot.com
Race has absolutely nothing to do with this tragedy. But that wasn’t the question at hand — the question at hand was how do ethnic minorities, in particular, deal with this sense of collective guilt that is felt when someone of their race commits such a heinous crime.
Because we live in a fallen world, and have had to deal with generations of injustice, it’s not quite as simple to say we are created in the image of God and, thus, race shouldn’t be an issue. That is the ideal — we must grapple with reality. If we really want to look at it further, we all come from the same blood anyway — interersting developments on the Human Genome project speak to this.
But culturally, down through the ages, something has happened to separate us — whether it started at the Tower of Babel or with justification of slavery from Ham’s actions — and this is what we must deal with. All of creation groans to be rightfully reconciled as it was in the Garden of Eden. We’re dealing with sin here — on an individual as well as collective level that has led to the desperation of a mass murderer and the separation of cultures.
So the point is not who did the killing — I don’t think anyone is suggesting that — the point is why do some people feel this collective sense of reponsibility when things like this occur. I would submit that this is really at the heart of our difficulties with true reconciliation. And to answer llama momma’s question as to whether minority cultures should feel less collective guilt or the majority culture more, I don’t know. I think I lean toward all of us feeling collective grief at the depths to which the human race has fallen.
Grace & Peace,
Ed C
Ed, sadly I was reminded of your last sentence this past weekend in Charleston, SC and the need to keep praying this way —
“My prayer is that there will not be a backlash against the Korean community—or the Asian community in general—and that our Korean brothers and sisters will feel loved and accepted in this country during these unsettling days.”
As I walked through the market in downtown Charleston, SC I took a photo of two Asian men selling colorful neckties. Before I shot the photo I asked them if I could do so and they nodded, I shot, and then one of them jokingly said “that will be 5 dollars.” I laughed back and said I left my wallet in the hotel room. Behind me were two men who overheard and one of them walking past said to me “tell them to take back what they did in Virginia!”
I was shocked and angered and was struck with fear that these men would say such a hurtful comment. Sadly because of my fear I didn’t say anything, though after a few minutes and by the time they were gone in the crowd I wished I had.
What would you say?
I have been praying Ed’s prayer more fervantly since then.
[…] Koreans React to the Shooting in Virginia – a New York Times Story and Edward Gilbreath’s commentary on the Reconcilation […]
Ed,
I understand the question, I gues I am struggling with the presupposition of the question. Do you think that all (or even a vast majority) of minorities feel a “sense of clooective guilt” when tragedies occur? I am black (bi-racial) and I live in the hood. If I felt guilt every time a black man was guilty of a tragedy, I would never escape from the shackles of guilt.
I am with you regarding the generations of injustice. I am with you regarding the currently dismal state of race relations in America. I believe in collective sadness, disappointment, and frustration. Collective guilt, I am not sure. Help a brother out…
Sorry for the typos. I am in a hurry!
-CB.
Not saying collective guilt is right or wrong, just a reality. In one sense, it can be a positive because we “self-police” our communites? We look out for one another so that we don’t give credence to the negative sterotypes about us. But, as you note, it can also be negative because it can keep us oppressed. I think guilt may be the wrong word — for me, it’s a deep compassion, anger an hurt because of the conditions that bring about wrong responses.
I, too, wish we could live in a race-less society because I enjoy the interactions I have with different people. But would that be possible if we didn’t have the cultural distinctives that we have now? Our differences should bring a different flavor to the meal but only if they are equally appreciated.
These are just my thoughts– I don’t say I know all the truth or have the answers.
Ed C
P.S. Chris, if I might ask, how does your bi-racial heritage help or hinder you in dealing with these issues?
Wow Ed…big question. This one will probably take a couple of hours and some breakfast to sort out. Check out my current blog – I am actually blogging about that as we speak!
But to give a brief and concise answer: being bi-racial makes EVERYTHING more confusing. Especially in a racialized and polarized society like ours. I rarely feel like I fit in – unless I am in a multiracial/multicultural/miltiethnic environment. Anything “mono” makes me the odd man out. It is painful.