Remember when there were racial bias attacks against anyone looking Arab or Muslim in the days following the 9/11 attacks? I and many other Asian-Americans are concerned that racists will try to get as much mileage out of this horrible tragedy and use it as an excuse to attack and hurt people of Asian descent in retaliation for the shootings at Virginia Tech.
On Saturday, September 15, 2001, a helicopter mechanic named Frank Roque, who worked at the Williams Gateway Airport in Mesa, Arizona fixing helicopters, went on a drunken rampage when for no reason he shot and killed Balbir Singh Sodhi, an Indian Sikh gas station attendant in Mesa. Roque killed Singh because he wore a turban, making him think he must be a Muslim. That was one highly publicized incident out of many that occurred as a result of backlash from 9/11.
On November 21, 2004, a Hmong immigrant from Laos named Chai Soua Vang got into an armed confrontation with white hunters after accidentally trespassing on their private property in the woods in northern Wisconsin. What immediately followed depends on who you want to believe, but in the end, Vang opened fire and six hunters were killed and two were wounded. The shooting was the result of festering racial tensions between white hunters and Asian hunters. When Mr. Vang was called to the stand to give his reasons for shooting the hunters, he said they "deserved it" because they called him racist names when they confronted him for trespassing. At the conclusion of the trial, Vang was convicted of six counts of 1st-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder. He was sentenced to six consecutive life terms plus 70 years. The Asian community was concerned that there would be backlash from this. Just several months ago, an Asian hunter was found shot to death in the Wisconsin woods and a white hunter was arrested in the killing.
Now, we have Cho Seung-Hui, a mentally disturbed South Korean immigrant who has lived in the U.S. since 1992 who went on a rampage on the campus at Virginia Tech killing 32 people and wounding countless others. Immediately, the Asian-American community expressed concern that some would react badly to this tragedy and blame it on all Asians. Already, on an AOL message board, an AOL subscriber who uses the handle "BryaLou9"
posted a comment under the subject heading "Are Whites still Comfortable with Asians now?" The comment read:
We know that of all the Minorities in America, Asians are the ones whites are most comfortable with. Does this change your opinion of Asians?
Already, words like "chinks", "gooks" and "slant eyes" are becoming commonplace on the AOL message boards.
Are my white next-door neighbors going to start looking at me funny now? The MSM, especially Fox News, isn't helping race relations by posting his mug several times and highlighting that he's South Korean.