News of the Virginia Tech tragedy is making the rounds. Since I've spent most of my time in this country living and studying in Virginia, I have quite a few VT friends and acquaintances. My heart goes out to them, and the students in Blacksburg who are bravely trying to make sense of things right now.
It is a sign of the times, however, that one of the first reactions I had when I heard about this was to say, "Oh God, please don't let the perpetrator be a Muslim." In today's world, where a group of deranged individuals have hijacked my faith, my knee-jerk response to any tragedy is to pray that we haven't dug a deeper hole for ourselves.
But just as I feel great sadness for young kids with immense potential who were robbed of the chance to live fruitful lives, I also feel sadness for an immigrant community that has so far not felt the scathing eyes of public scrutiny. Preliminary news reports say that the gunman was South Korean, and I can't think of one thing that the Korean community in the US has done that would cause it to walk with shame. Not that the act of a mad gunman should reflect on a group this way, but coming from a pseudo-ostracized community myself, I know how these details rarely matter when the hate crimes start. Besides, South Koreans, like many Asian cultures, are a people where "family" comes before all else. It is quite likely that there is going to be a lot of soul-searching on their part to figure out how one of their own youth could have gone so far astray, and where his family failed him.
I just pray that concrete gun legislation results from this tragedy, and that the usual lobbying interests aren't able to bury any legal recommendations with the shameless impunity that they have become accustomed to.
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Sadly, the Virginia governor has already preempted the gun-control advocates: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/vtech.shooting/index.html
ReplyDeleteWhich is ridiculous of course, since he too is using the incident to put down gun control advocates.
I felt ashamed at thinking along the same lines as you. I had to remind myself that a tragedy is a tragedy is a tragedy.
ReplyDeleteI was actually wondering how much harder it is for VT alumni, who are familiar with the campus and know some of the people there, than for all the rest of us tuning in via the News.