What now, can be said about the massacre that occurred this past Monday at Virginia Tech? I read an article on the New York Times about how Korean-Americans are immensely uneasy as the news of the massacre trickled out and revealed a psychotic Korean-American who was responsible for such brutality. Indeed, they should be uneasy. The American public hasn’t been known to be very kind to the colored races in general, whatever their range of colors may be. I am not surprised that bigoted white Americans will take this opportunity to let their long repressed racism rise untempered to the surface and explode in the form of expletives uttered at the Korean race, or hate mail, or property damage, or even physical violence. That’s how an emotional, unrational world operates, an eye for an eye and these people would feel properly justified to give voice to their inner bigot.
What’s more so, I am to some extent uneasy myself, wondering if strangers on the streets will take me for a Korean and randomly beat me up for an event that truly has nothing to do with me OR my race. But this isn’t an issue of race and it never should be. It’s an issue of mental illness, social isolation, deeply simmering anger and dysfunctionality. I also read in the papers about how the family is supposed to be a very nice family, helps neighbors shovel snow, etc. That’s all well and nice, but I can’t help but think, they really could have done more on their end to prevent what happened on Monday. But as someone very angrily and cogently pointed out, (see jason’s blog), it’s not exactly useful at this point to play the blame game.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those who were gunned down this Monday. I can only imagine how dark the world seems right now to those that are in mourning. I saw one picture of a grandmother gazing with forlorness at the picture of her beautiful grand-daughter, only 18 years old and now dead. As for the family of the killer, I don’t even want to imagine what they must feel now, having raised and contributed to the society their monster of a son. Yes truly, this is a tragedy that appears to lack the least bit of redemptive value.
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