Debunking the 'Ethnic Angle' to Mass Murders like Binghampton and Virginia Tech

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Debunking the 'Ethnic Angle' to Mass Murders like Binghampton and Virginia Tech

By Andrew Lam, New America Media. Posted April 9, 2009.

Enough about Asia's "shame-based" culture, it is the gun culture in America that is most conspicuous.



Whenever a minority commits a heinous crime, it seems to beckon us in the media to search beyond an individual motive for a cultural one. We saw it in the case of Cho Sung-hui of Virginia tech, and now, in the latest case involving Jiverly Linh Phat Wong -- (or Voong). He blocked the back exit of a civic community center in Binghamton, N.Y., where immigrants had gathered to learn English and shot 13 people to death before killing himself.

It is a habit of "finding the ethnic angle" that is endemic in the work of American journalists in an age of cultural diversity, and in order to sound credible, we often ask so-called experts to give their insights.

Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University and an expert on mass murderers, offered his take. "He was going to take his life, but first he was going to get even," Levin said the day after the Binghamton incident. "He was going to get sweet revenge against the other immigrants who had looked down upon him, among whom he had lost face. To him, that was an extremely important thing."

The keywords here are "revenge" and "lose face." Those are the popular terms we in the media like to throw around when we think of the inscrutable Asians. To use them well is to impress the Early Show, whose anchors were easily impressed.

But revenge sounds a bit like a "martial arts movie" motive that hasn't panned out. Shame is part of the equation, surely, but it doesn't explain enough. Every day around the world, millions of Asians "lose face," as it were. But they don't turn into lunatics and kill innocent people. Besides, the extreme outcome of shame in East Asia, most pronounced in Japan and increasingly in South Korea, is suicide, not genocide. Shame is not always a bad thing. In Confucian-bound societies, shame motivates students and workers to improve their lot, and to keep society bound to a fixed moral standard. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/immigration/135751/debunking_the_%27ethnic_angle%27_to_mass_murders_like_binghampton_and_virginia_tech/

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Of course, it's our gun culture. Excellent connection of lack of communication skills and guns.