After the murders at Virginia Tech on Monday, the Korean Foreign Ministry expressed hopes that racial prejudice or confrontation would not be stirred up. Then Virginia governor Tim Kaine said, “I don’t see this as an excuse to exercise prejudice and intolerance.” Others have expressed similar concerns. NPR ran an interview with a Korean-American teenager who complained that she thought people were looking at her differently.
Is this an appropriate thing to be saying, considering how soon it is after the murders and how no backlash has actually started yet? It seems to buy into the notion that Americans are itching to act on their supposed prejudices. We went through this same thing after 9/11 - the way some people were talking, you’d have thought there were armed mobs forcing Arab-Americans off the streets and people blowing up mosques. But aside from a very few isolated incidents, there never was a backlash. (I’m talking about individuals, not the government - not that I think the government has been unfair to Arab-Americans, anyway.)
Personally, I think Korea is projecting its own racism and xenophobia onto the U.S. I think that accounts for the Saudis’ overreaction after 9/11 as well - they pulled every string they could to get Bin Laden’s relatives out. Based on how the Saudis treat non-Muslims, they probably figured we’d go hog wild on Muslims in this country.
Furthermore, the notion of US individuals attacking of innocent members of a group that has contributed some murderers/whatever, well for this foreigner at least, I didn’t know the phenomen existed before that Sikh guy got murdered in NYC and all the subsequent reported attacks on south Asians and Arabs, post 9-11.
The Bin Laden question is bizarre, but I suspect somewhat disconnected to either of the above suppositions.
I would imagine that, on the off chance that something does happen, he’d like to be able point to that statement and say “I tried to prevent it.” Wow, that sounded cynical. Maybe he does think an anti-Korea backlash is a real possibility for some reason, and he genuinely does want to prevent it from happening. I do agree that it’s silly to admonish people about anti-Korea backlash before any backlash has taken place.
Yeah, I think it’s a good plan to, you know, try to head this off at the pass instead of waiting until several South Koreans have been mobbed and beaten. And I do think that would eventually happen, quite frankly.
Unless there has already been a rise in anti-Korean violence, I think it’s a bit premature. Wait at least till after the mourning period.
:dubious: Call me an optimist, but I seriously doubt that. I don’t doubt that there will be some degree of anti-Asian prejudice in some quarters, but mobbed and beaten…? It’s not as though this kid was indicative of any large-scale movements within Korean society. He was hardly even Korean – he was raised in the US, and everyone can hear his perfectly American accent and looks on the videotapes. It may have been worse if he was a recent immigrant and noticeably “foreign,” but I still doubt people would have been “mobbed and beaten.” Frankly, in this incidence I think Koreans will benefit from how remarkably low Asian-American crime rates have traditionally been – the whole “model minority” thing will pay dividends here.
Given the scale of the 9/11 attacks and the huge size of this country, you think that constitutes a significant backlash?? Whatever backlash there was in this country was nowhere near what people predicted, and, I think, not even as big as people are making it out to be in retrospect. (And like the OP, I’m talking about individuals here, not the government reaction, which is a different story.)
Well, contrast our reaction (3 days out now) to this horror with the reaction of the South Korean people after the incident of June 13th, 2002. A convoy of US military vehicles tragically hit and killed two young Korean girls in an accident… the whole country went batshit with real massively documented anti-american hatred, slogans, protests, near riots etc. Now we have an incident where a Korean national intentionally and deliberately murdered 33 Americans… and rightfully so there have been no large scale anti-Korean protests, demonstrations, slogans or calls for deportations. I was listening to the BBC worldservice today and they interviewed a young Korean woman who was at a vigil outside of the American embassy (a very nice gesture, but not necessary as far as I’m concerned) who said flat out that she couldn’t imagine the reaction in Korea if it had been an American who went nuts over there and shot that many people. I think fears of any anti-Korean or anti-Asian backlash in the US are vastly overstated.
I don’t think the incidents can be compared. There was a lot of debate as to whether the soldiers could have prevented running over the girls but didn’t; also, what most of the Koreans were protesting was the handling of the case and the laws that allow American soldiers to be tried in an American court and not a Korean one. The incident was not an isolated one and the backlash that occured should be understood within the context of the history of Korea’s relationship with the US military. (I will admit that some Koreans were extreme in their reactions, but I attended one of the candlelight vigils for the two girls and the protest was against US military policy in Korea, not against Americans in general.)
I will also admit that Koreans are acting paranoid, but already Korean organizations are reporting hate calls, while the media seems to feel the need to stress the fact that Cho was “Korean-born” or a “Korean national.” What does that matter? He was brought up most of his life in American society - I would guess that he identified as Korean American (although I admit this is speculation on my part, since I, like Cho, am a 1.5er, and that’s how I see myself). The news reports say that he didn’t even hang out much with the Korean students. He didn’t hang out with anybody.
I seriously doubt that any overt violence is going to take place against Koreans/Korean Americans because of the VT shootings, but in the discourse that follows there WILL be undertones of racial prejudices (most likely having to do with the “model minority” myth and how Asians are always under so much pressure to excel). It’ll be interesting to see how it develops.
The news I’ve read and heard in Europe often don’t mention Korea, or mention it once.
The ones from the US seem to be using his nationality to say “he wasn’t ours, he wasn’t ours!”
US anti-discrimination laws forbid from discriminating “by national origin”, but not “by nationality.” Many people take this literally. It’s possible that those same people wouldn’t be mentioning Korea at all if Cho was a national and not “just” a permanent resident who’d lived in the US since age 6, but still, for people from countries whose discrimination laws make no distinction between “nationality” and “national origin” and who aren’t familiar with US law, it smells like racism.
(I’m trying to explain that it is not necessarily racism, but it looks like that to many; I’m not calling American or the American media racists, ok? Just trying to explain the point of view of many foreigners)
I don’t think most people think about it enough to take it literally, or any other way. I suspect that even if Cho had taken US citizenship – or even if he had been born here after his parents immigrated – there’d be some interest in his South Korean roots. Maybe partly to shift the blame (“he’s not one of ours!”), but also because people are just interested in the background of a person who would do this type of thing. There was some attention paid to the fact that one of the Columbine killers was an Air Force brat; I don’t think that necessarily indicated an anti-military bias.
(I’m also slightly skeptical that the European media didn’t cover Cho’s nationality as much as the US media. I often like to check out Google News in different languages to find out what the big stories are in other countries, and I happened to be doing this right when they’d discovered who the shooter was and some rudimentary facts about him, including his Korean nationality. In every language that I could make out, “Korea” was as prominently displayed in the headline as in the US edition. But you have more exposure to the European media than I do.)
The backlash was small in terms of individual violence, IMHO, because of the massive and bloodthirsty government backlash. The government’s attacks on Muslim countries aren’t a seperate issue; I consider them at the heart of it. There was a massive backlash; it was just channeled into hatred towards the ME.
I also consider a massive anti-Korean backlash unlikely; since the people in charge aren’t about to go to war with them, them and their toadies won’t try to stir one up.
The demonstraters were displaying their ignorance of their own country’s laws and treaties. The Soldiers were on duty at the time. That meant that they came under the primary jurisdiction of the US military. Depending on the results of the Article 32 investitation, the US could have relinquished jurisdiction. Incidents that happen when the solider is off-duty are handled by the Korean civilian judicial system. Currenty, there are a number of US Soldiers serving time in South Korean prisons. Oh, if the Soldier is a member of the South Korean military–on duty or off-duty–then he is tried by the Korean military.
The incident isn’t isolated but it is a rare one. Compare that to the constant denial of rights–rights under the Korean constituiton–to many of us foreign residents here in South Korea. Some judges have even decreed, “The guarantee of rights in the Constitution of the Republic of Korea does not apply to foreigners.”
Of course, not all Koreans freak out over any of those incidents involving US military. For example, when protestors were trying to make a cause celebre (however it’s spelled) out of a woman who wasn’t paying attention and jaywalked right in front of a military truck and getting killed, the woman’s family railed against the protestors.
In post #14, it seems that I’m implying that a South Korean Soldier may be a member of the US military. That’s not what I meant to convey (although, there is one current case where one individual has deserted from both the US Army and the South Korean army). When South Korean military members get involved with “incidents” during their active service, they’re under the jurisdiction of the South Korean military.
I hope you’re right. With any luck we won’t have to find out. Ina any case, it’s not as if the actions taken by any politicians have been remotely restrictive: they’re just asking for calm and emphasizing the grief involved, not taking anybody into custody for their own good.
I’m not sure I understand this. If the soldiers accidentally ran over the girl, massive protests seem misguided. If they deliberately killed her, the incidents seem comparable. So I genuinely don’t understand what you’re trying to convey.
Come on, Nava. Quit spewing bullshit. Nobody anywhere seriously expects any backlash against Koreans (and the nut was an American… been here since he was 8)
At least go after the gun-culture and the weird constitutional amendment… oy.
As far as nationalism and racism goes, nobody can hold a candle to asia or europe. If South Korea is going nuts over an american dumbass who left their country at 8, it seems they are over-compensating.
*"Immigration records show that Cho was born in South Korea on 18 January 1984 and had moved to the US in 1992, when he was eight.
South Korean media said his family was very poor and lived in a cheap rented basement apartment in the northern Changdong district of the capital Seoul. They decided to emigrate to seek a better life, although they had no acquaintances in the US.*"
Can you explain how you developed this interpretation? I don’t get that sense from U.S. news coverage.
One thing to consider is that the classic stereotype of the mass shooter is the “angry Caucasian male” (in the Washington D.C. snipings profilers confidently characterized the gunman(men) in this fashion, only to be surprised later when they turned out to be black). Since it is unusual for Asian males to be involved in this sort of incident, it’s only natural for the shooter’s background to be commented upon.