In the wake of all the disturbing and tragic news of the last week, I couldn’t help but noticing a couple things that I thought I’d mention here. There’s been a lot of talk in the media about the Korean community bracing for a “backlash” to the terrible events at VT last week. Reading these various articles, I wondered just why in the world it should matter that this sick bastard was Korean. Are people so short-sighted and ignorant that they are going to vent their collective rage at an entire ethnic group because of the actions of one person?
And the more I thought about it, the more the sad truth of it became apparent. I mean, look what happened to the Muslim community (and anyone whose ancestors were from the Middle East) in 2001. People are a bunch of idiots, apparently. I don’t remember the “white backlash” after Columbine, probably because there wasn’t one. The man who killed all those people on Monday was not acting on the part of Koreans everywhere and to imply that the Korean community or some sort of collective consciousness on their part is responsible for this tragedy is absolutely absurd. Yet people continue to do so, and it boggles my mind.
This is one more reason I think that judging, rewarding or punishing based on race or ethnicity, any race or ethnicity, is an absolute crock of crap. We live in a country that is culturally and socially myopic, and brother does it show these days. Perhaps if we stopped pointing fingers and arbitrarily assigning blame we could figure out how to prevent things like this from happening in the future. There’s only one person to blame here, and he’s dead. I have no sympathy for this man, but I do sympathize with the people who have yet to be wronged by his actions because of how he looked.
No related posts.
Amen. A good little speech.