REPRESENT? . . .**

Early reports are saying that the Virginia Tech shooter was a young Korean male student. Eh, I know, it shouldn't matter who the shooter was; it's awful, terrible, indescribable by any account. My gut seized in on itself the first moment I saw the news ticker. But I have to admit, if this is true, there's just something more wrenching and sadder to me, knowing now that this horrible act was committed by one of my own.

I'm not trying to create a "my people versus your people" kind of thing. This is an American thing, and my outrage at the senseless murders and deep sympathy at the great resulting pain will not diminish, nor be tempered in any way. But I guess this is a small moment of truth for me: there really is no such thing as a "model minority." Koreans can arm themselves to the max and go on mass-murder shooting sprees too.

Model minority issues aside, I wonder if his Koreanness is the very thing that armed his soul and spirit. Over my adult life, I've known a small number of Korean men who have been -- what's the word, traumatized? -- by their childhoods and families. They've endured physical and emotional abuse, often at the hands of their own fathers. They've run the gauntlet of "if you don't get perfect results in school, on the test, on college entrance exams, at work, then you're not good enough." They've sought the protection and solace of their mothers, only to watch their mothers be beaten on their behalf. They've experienced unreasonable pressures placed on their growing shoulders, insecurities heightened by insensitive parents and an unyielding society, stresses increasing upon themselves with no proper outlet for them because it's just unseemly for a "real" Korean man to seek counseling or worse, escape from the family unit, no matter how bad it was.

The news says the shooter was looking for his girlfriend. I can't make the mental leap from looking for one's girlfriend to shooting dozens of people and killing 32 or 33 of them. But then I throw some stones into the water -- childhood trauma, abuse, lack of adequate counseling, unstable and volatile home, inability to reason like a rational adult (you know, without firearms) -- and then it's easier for me to get to the other side of the river, look back, and see how it all transpired. It's not an excuse; it's a reason. Maybe.

Regardless, I'm bracing for the media onslaught. Don't we all already know this will be in the news for the next three weeks? And after some news outlets keep repeating the phrase "Asian man" to describe the shooter -- accurate, after all -- some Asian advocacy group somewhere will create an uproar about how Asian men are being demonized. And then I'll get some petition via email asking me to protest the irresponsibility of today's news media. And the Korean papers will be all over this for months to come. And every time I speak to my parents, they will shake their heads and cluck at the tragedy of it all, for the Korean people. And me too ... I think I might hold onto this a little bit longer for that fact, too ...

**Addendum: it's true. The shooter was a Korean national, in the country legally, studying to be an English major, apparently a quiet loner. What made him do it? Who knows? But another thought just occurred to me ... in the same way that so many irrational, stupid stereotypes and fears take root, will a person or people look at men like my brother and think for a fleeting frightened instant that he, too, might whip out a gun and go crazy on them? You know, because one other Korean man already did? Shudder to think.