04/20/2007: "I am not a killer"

mood: worried

I read a disturbing article in Newsweek: Loving the U.S., And Hating It Too: For South Koreans, the story of Cho Seung-Hui underscores a nation's ambivalent relationship with America. Koreans are worried that this one crazy's actions will provoke racial prejudice in the US against all Koreans and Korean-Americans.

I sincerely hope these fears are unfounded.

I've seen bigotry up close in all its ugly glory. My own father is a racist bigot when it comes to African-Americans. It tears me apart when I hear hate spewing from his mouth in the guise of "humor." And yet, and I don't want to minimize his bigotry in the least by saying this, he's relatively tame in his racism. To my knowledge he's never actually hurt a black individual in any way. His ignorance and fear makes him ooze his ugliness from afar.

I grew up in Eagan and Burnsville, two middle-class Twin Cities suburbs. I was exposed to racism from a very early age. Even though I'm only half Korean, I was still chased around by kids slanting their eyes with their fingers and saying, "ching-chong! Ching-chong!" or the ever-popular, "Chinese! Japanese! Dirty knees!" Whatever that means. Later I experienced a subtler kind of racism in high school from other Asians. "Are you Korean?" "Half Korean." "Oh." That exchange would be followed by a condescending/smirking/false-pity look. Maybe even an almost imperceptible snort of.... what? Contempt? I don't understand that to this day. I got the same look/snort from the Korean ladies at an Asian grocery store I used to go to in St. Paul. Then there was the jackass at a party who was ranting off about Asians in general while I was sitting five feet away from him. I don't even remember what he was saying, I just remember getting so mad I wanted to hit the guy but since I didn't want to ruin Chad's party we just left.

Then VT happened. I can't (don't want to) believe that anyone would be so idiotic as to funnel their anger for Cho against an entire race of people.

How do you write "I am not a killer" in Korean? I want to put that on a t-shirt.