Americans Don't Discriminate Against Asians Despite Massacre at Virginia Tech

No anti-Asian backlash at Massacre U

By AFP Via Bangkok Post

Blacksburg, Virginia


"I think some Americans may think Asians are not good. But people at [Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University] understand that Cho was mentally ill," said Boonta Chutvirasakul, an undergraduate from Bangkok.Asian students at Virginia Tech university, where Korean-born Cho Seung-Hui shot dead 32, said Monday they felt no rebuke or blame from other students in the wake of the massacre.

"I think some Americans may think Asians are not good. But people at VT understand that Cho was mentally ill," said Boonta Chutvirasakul, a Thai undergraduate from Bangkok.

"There has not been any negative treatment of anyone," said Jing Wang, a computer science student originally from Xian, China who now lives in Sheldon, Connecticut.

"Twenty years ago maybe there would have been something, but not now," he said.

Out of some 26,000 full time undergraduate and graduate students, the state-run university counts some 1,800 Asians and Asian-Americans in its student body.

Many said they got worried when the media reported shortly after the shooting that the killer was Asian, and then one outlet reported incorrectly that the killer was Chinese.

Cho, who was born in South Korea but grew up in the Washington suburb of Centreville, Virginia, is one of a few hundred Koreans at the university - most of whom fled the campus after the shooting out of fear.

Few of his fellow students, including the Korean community, knew anything about the angry loner who earlier this year bought two handguns and on April 16 unleased a rampage killing 27 students and five faculty before committing suicide.

Not only Asians saw cause for concern. One professor who would not be named said last week that he was concerned how many undergraduate students would react to their Asian teaching assistants - graduate students who take on lecturer roles - when classes reopened Monday.

Rafael Jose Gonzales, a US citizen born in the Philippines and a second-year student at the university, said he worried at first that people might react badly against Asians at the rural southwestern Virginia college.

But he said that there was no sign of recriminations across the campus, and rejected the idea that there was anything specifically "Asian" about the tragedy, whatever the identity of the shooter.

"This is a reflection of the hardships that certain people go through. It just happened that he was Korean," he said.

But Asian students have gone out of their way to demonstrate they too felt the loss and that their sympathies were with the families of the dead, which included an Indonesian graduate student.

On Friday the 600-strong association of students from China laid out white sheets on the drillfield near the campus memorial to the dead and invited their members and anyone else to pen their condolences and thoughts on it.

"We feel the need to show our sympathy and our sadness," said Xue Hong, president of the association and a doctorate candidate in economics.

"Some Asian people are worried about their safety. But most people treat this tragedy as individual behavior."

"There is always someone who will see it racial," he added though.

Mental health professionals said in a counseling session days after the massacre that they worried of anger directed at Asian students from people in the greater Blacksburg community without direct links to the university.

That sentiment was reflected by a local Bangkok-born restaurateur, Thanadoul Khunngam.

"I don't want people to think all Asians are bad," he said.


On the surface, this article doesn't really have anything to do with Thailand. But I want to blog about it because it demonstrates a difference in racial attitudes between Thailand and the US.

Let us look at John Mark Karr case. Now here was a sick and twisted individual. Mr. Karr told Thai police last year that he killed Jon Beney Ramsey. For those who don't know, Jon Benet Ramsey was a photogenic little blond girl who was abducted and murdered about ten years ago in the US. It was a major murder mystery that still hasn't been solved. Anyway, Mr, Karr said he was the murderer. The Thai police extradited John Mark Karr back to the US to be indicted for murder, but, as we all found out later, Mr. Karr made a fool of the Thai police, because, in fact, Karr was just pulling a scam to get out of Thailand.

So what was the reaction of the Thai government to Mr. Karr's little escapade? The Thai government changed all their visa policies and went on a hunt against English teachers all over Thailand, punishing all foreigners in the process. So my point is that when one farang does something bad in Thailand, the Thai government punishes all farang. And this standard seem to only apply to farang, because there never seems to be any witch hunts going on against the Chinese or the Japanese when those nationals commit nasty crimes. Trust me when I say that there are many Japanese and Chinese gangs operating in Thailand. Why their criminal behavior is overlooked and unreported on remains a mystery to me.

Yet, on the other side of the Asian spectrum, let us also not forget how Burmese and Cambodians are treated. If a few of them commit crimes while living in Thailand, the whole lot is punished by limiting their mobile phone usage, restricting them to labor camps, and forcing them to live under strict curfews.

Now, in the US, however, when a Korean national opens fire on Americans and foreigners alike at the Virginia Tech campus. Does the US government or the State of Virgina hold Thais and all Asians accountable for what this Korean did? Did the federal and state government change its visa laws and university entrance policies for Thais and other Asians because of what this one Korean did? The answer is no to both questions.

But, in Thailand, whenever a foreigner(normally a farang or Southeast Asian) misbehaves-- breaking the law or making the government lose face-- all foreigners are punished, as if they are all one in the same. And foreigners from neighboring countries are treated like animals if a couple of them misbehave.

Considering that topic of racism that I brought up last week, I thought this was an interesting contrast between the behavior of two governments, especially in their treatment of foreigners.