Notes about Virgina Tech Shooting

so this is not my own writing, but my good friend did such a good job, I'm going to quote her and just paste it here because this is exactly what I'm thinking about the whole event. So here it goes:

"The Virginia Tech shootings is a tragedy in our American history.

No question about it, the murderer was mentally ill, very disturbed and a violent person.

But one thing that frustrates me is that the American media is at a risk of politicizing the crime by overemphasizing the fact that the murderer was a "South Korean immigrant." This has a divisive effect on society- drawing a line between "them" and "us." In a time and place where we are suppose to be looking at each other for help and support, we are drawing lines and shifting blame. In this case, the ethnicity and nationality of the person should not be the focus of the discussion; rather we should try to look into deeper root causes.

So all this talk that the murderer is "South Korean…" First of all, he's technically a "1.5 generation Korean-American." He's not some new immigrant from South Korea. He was in the States since age 8 and he was 23 when he committed the crime. He's lived in the States for 15 years(He's lived in the States longer than he's lived in Korea!) So his personality/tendencies/attitude reflects more of American society than Korean. He grew up in the States; he's more American than Korean if you ask me. He went through the American education system like the rest of us, he was a student at Virginia Tech, he was majoring in English, and he spoke perfect English as demonstrated in his self-taped NBC videos.

I read on xangas that a lot of Korean-Americans and Koreans are feeling ashamed or apologetic- but again his Korean-American-ness had nothing to do with the crimes that he's committed. There's nothing in our Korean culture that is to blame.

The issue is not that he's Korean or Korean American…fact is, he was (1)mentally ill, (2)no one picked up on the warning signs, (3)the US has loose gun control laws, (4)the school did not alert the students in an appropriate manner…and the list goes on and on.

When Colombine happened, did the media zero in on the fact that they were White Americans? There was no hype of their ethnicity whatsoever.

He was a mad person, he could have been from any ethnicity. Just so happens that he was a Korean-American.

And as Americans, as human beings, we should feel responsible, mourn, and look for ways to prevent this from ever happening again."