A Violence in Asia-America

``Jiverly Voong, an unusual name,'' commented an MSNBC anchor reporting the news. ``Let me spell it for you: J-i-v-e-r-l-y V-o-o-n-g; Jiverly Voong,'' the anchor repeated.

``It is a name as incomprehensible as his act of killing 13 immigrants who were studying for a citizenship test at the American Civic Center, a local civic center that helps immigrants transition into the American culture.''

At 10 a.m. on April 3, Voong, also known as Wong, backed up his borrowed car to block the back door to prevent escape. Clad in a bulletproof vest and armed with two pistols, Wong went on a shooting spree that left 14 people dead, including himself.

On April 7, a 69-year-old Korean man shot four people in a Korean Catholic retreat site in California. Both of these acts echo the massacre at Virginia Tech by Cho Seung-hee, a Korean-American student who killed 32 other students in Blacksburg, Va.

Such violent acts drive us to find an answer to the question of why? What is the motivation for such homicidal violence? As a Korean-American committed to Asian-American issues, Wong's story drove me to search the Internet endlessly to find answers.

What I found was disheartening. As was with the media coverage of the Virginia Tech Massacre, the discussion of the recent shootings has been restricted to only two themes: mental-health and gun-control.

Undoubtedly, these are important social issues. But to look for the reason behind the Binghamton tragedy within one of these two categories is to miss out, yet again, on an opportunity to address the deeper issue beneath the surface: the violence and the failure of assimilation of Asian immigrants into American society.

Our inability to imagine any alternative motive is perhaps because American culture is only trained to see Asians through the lens of the ``perfect minority." Wong and Cho's fundamental refusal to live inside that stereotype has left us with an interpretive paralysis.

Assimilation of Asian immigrants into American culture happens between two stereotypes: ``model minority'' and ``perpetual foreigner.''

The model minority stereotype, a seemingly harmless compliment, is simultaneously a racial refusal ― one that creates a false sense of acceptance and rejection at the same time. Thus the term, ``perpetual foreigner."

These stereotypes prevent society from accepting Asians on their own terms. Instead, they can only be understood through America's distorted cultural representations.

This false translation renders Asians politically silent and socially invisible. The deep wound of silent invisibility now finds articulation in the only way we know how to be heard: violence.

It is a loud existential shout, a final attempt at becoming visible, being heard. These violent words are now being echoed in every nightly news bulletin, major newspapers and the countless feedback loop of the Internet media.

Our search for the shooters' motives should lead us to revisit our habits of cultural assimilation. It is time for us as a nation to explore the consequences of categorizing Asian-Americans as the ``perfect minority'' and see the social, political, racial and religious architecture of Asian-American subjectivity as a clue to the recent violence.

Or else the violent finale of Wong's massacre will again be as incomprehensible and foreign as his name.



http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2009/04/137_43690.html