Growing Disdain and Other Thoughts

I really have a growing disdain for one of my professors. First of all, he is abrasive and stubborn. He often freaks out (in an unpleasant manner) about a student's in-class question before he even fully understands what is being asked. That can be excused, I suppose, since that was what I was really actually expecting from law professors before I came to law school.

However, what really bothered me today was, when discussing the Virginia Tech tragedy, he kept referring to the gunman as the "Korean" killer/shooter. He gave several hypos afterwards, always alluding to the "Korean" kid/boy/killer/shooter/etc. He must have said "Korean" at least 10 times. Had he been white, or even black, he would have been "The VTech shooter," or something along those lines. Instead, he was "the Korean Killer."

This is true of media outlets, too. I suppose that it should come as no surprise that the world is still very race-conscious, but I would expect more from a law professor at a highly respected, liberal law school, as well as from prestigious media outlets, etc. Furthermore, many South Koreans/ Korean-Americans are apologizing and feeling very personally sorry for the shooter's actions, as though they are personally responsible because they share the same ethnicity.

I was surprised, too, when I heard he was Asian. But to cast him as a foreigner, emphasizing his "resident alien" status (even though he was here since 8), to always include the word "Korean" in related headlines, is to make his ethnicity a much much bigger issue than it should be. I understand that it's just one issue of many (gun control and preemptive action are among others), but nevetheless it is not right. We ultimately have a much heavier issue of school shootings in America, and why we have such deranged individuals in our society. How can we prevent such horrible things from happening...

An NPR clip from "All Things Considered" that goes against the grain:
"Weighing Cho's Heritage and Identiy"