UIUC Asian American Studies Professors Respond to News Inquiry re: Virginia Tech

A couple Asian American Studies professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign were approached and asked to comment on the V Tech tragedy. Here is their response:

Nancy Abelmann and I (Sumie Okazaki) have been approached by a reporter from a national news organization asking us to comment on the Virginia Tech tragedy, specifically regarding the relevance of the killer's ethnicity. This is the response we sent back.

Statement:
Thank you for your inquiry. We feel very strongly that any attempt to situate this particular killer in the context of psychological or sociological aspects of the Korean immigration and/or South Korean culture is counter-productive. To entertain questions about the general attitude of Korean Americans toward mental health treatment, violence, or guns – for instance – is to be complicit with the notion that somehow there was something Korean or Korean American about the unspeakably cruel acts of an individual killer. This country has long witnessed the negative impact of the American tendency to explain individual pathology in cultural and racial terms.


However, the reaction to this tragedy of some Korean American individuals and groups warrants scholarly consideration. We limit our comments to the widely reported expressions of fear of retaliation against Korean Americans and to feelings of ethnic responsibility for the heinous acts of a fellow Korean American. Because there is a long history in the United States of retaliatory violence against ethnic groups in the aftermath of incidents, Korean Americans understandably fear retaliation; they have been named before in public discussion of racially motivated violence—for example during the Los Angeles Riots. Expressions of ethnic responsibility, as exemplified by formal apologies from Korean Americans, perhaps speak to both anxieties about Korean American acceptance in the United States and to this community’s continued struggles as immigrants.

It is important to note that many Korean Americans are intimately connected to South Korea through both personal ties and through South Korean news and other media. It is possible that South Korean national anxiety about the potential impact of this incident on U.S.-Korea relations or on the lives of members of the Korean diaspora, is affecting the Korean American response.

Please do not misunderstand our unwillingness to comment on sociological and psychological aspects of contemporary Korean American life. The lives of immigrants of color in the United States present many real challenges, among them psychological ones. There is a growing body of scholarship on the struggles of immigrant small entrepreneurs and their children. This, however, is not the proper time to engage these scholarly discussions.

The Asian American Psychological Association, of which Sumie Okazaki is a member, has released an official statement in response to this tragedy. You can find the statement at: www.aapaonline.org/conventions/news.htm.

Nancy Abelmann
Professor, Anthropology, East Asian Languages & Cultures, and Asian American Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Sumie Okazaki
Associate Professor, Psychology and Asian American Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign