Tossing up a veneer of propriety in order to avoid politically difficult topics is despicable.

Cal, I didn’t really expect an anti-Asian backlash either at VT or in the US in general. While racism still exists in the US, it generally takes on a public face in making fun of stereotypes or in viewing people as a group.

After the Spetember 11th attacks, anti-Muslim backlash was less than a lot of people feared and less violent than what occurred in Australia, where the attacks hadn’t even taken place. Since that time, it has become apparent that Muslim immigrants in the US find it easier to fit in than their counterparts in Europe.

East Asians in the US, if anything, seem to receive “positive” racism.

Every country exhibits the greatest discrimination against the largest minorities or those perceived to be causing trouble. In the US, this would be Blacks or Latino immigrants. American-born Blacks tend to be less economically successful and attain lower level of education than African immigrants, which I find somewhat surprising.

In Japan, both the large minority and perceived troublemaker roles are filled by non-Japanese East Asians, especially Koreans and Chinese, although South Americans, especially Brazilians and Peruvians, of Japanese descent or claimed Japanese descent have been getting more attention lately. They fit the mold of immigration more as it is seen in the US - poor ability in the local language, less education, dramatically lower economic status. They also tend to be somewhat more isolated than Korean or Chinese immigrants, who have access to larger and more established Korean and Chinese communities.

It is interesting that while it seems that in Japan there is a major issue concerning nationality and perhaps a perception in the Japanese media that the Chinese or Koreans are more prone to violence, I see none of that in the US.

In fact, everything I have read in the US indicates that Asian-Americans or Asian immigrants are rarely implicated in criminal activity. I know that their representation in prison populations here is far lower than their representation in the general population.

While many Americans know very little about Asians (and references to Orientals are common), it is my perception that the most common stereotypes in the States are that Asians are: 1. very hard working, and 2. very smart.

And I have to say that based on the Asian-Americans I have met the first is almost universal. I cannot think of a single example where the individual hasn’t been a virtual workaholic- and that applies to the people owning small stores as well as professionals.

That said, the US media still references Cho with the comment that he is Korean. It is odd because he is Korean in much the same way that many other Americans are Irish or Italian. He might have been born in Korea but he was raised and educated in America.

I sat in an airport bar and watched the television reports for a few hours waiting for a connecting flight.

As with any “breaking story” covered by the U.S. media, the coverage was long on words and short on detail.

Later when they identified the killer the media was equally clueless. Naturally no one could say why he did this.

I think the mentionned his nationality for a couple of reasons. 1. The most recent mass killings in the US have been carried out by white American boys who have become segregated from their peer group. The Columbine killers come to mind. Two suburban white kids from nice middle-class homes don trenchcoats and use automatic weapons to get revenge against the cool kids who they thought excluded them.

2. The media was focused on a student of foreign extraction because, probably to the dismay of the media, there was no evidence that this was a terrorist action or that the killer was Islamic.

3. I have heard black leaders admit relief that the killer was not black (like the DC snipers.)

4. America has become polarized over the whole issue immigrants. Of course, very little of that focuses on Asian-immigrants and Cho’s family has been in the US for a long time.

In the week since the media has kept this story at the top of the page far long than any news value would justify BUT I have seen nothing to indicate that the incident created any anti-Asian or anti-Korean feelings in the US. And there has been no mention of any feelings of that nature on the VT campus.

I agree with you on a lot of the Western coverage on Japan. How often do they mention that Japan has cut its defense budget five years in a row, for example?

Sometimes nationalism is a very natural response to being ‘attacked,’ especially when much of the Western media understands so little of the context behind the stories they’re writing about Japan.

When Alex Ramirez hits a home run, does any TV station remind us repeatedly, sometimes twice in the same sentence, that he’s Venezuelan? When BoA sells a million records, do we repeatedly hear that she’s Korean? Is Asashoryu consistently referred to as “Mongolian Asashoryu, from Mongolia”?

Their nationalities are known and mentioned, it’s not a secret, but their achievements are allowed to stand and they are often, even usually, talked about without their nationalities being mentioned.

My objection is not that TV stations (and I have repeatedly specified TV, without ever implying anythng about “the Japanese” - this is not a foreigner/native thing at all) mention or explain Cho’s nationality, only that his being Korean is one of the most repeated facts of his case.

Whether or not something is true is not the only mark of bias in news coverage. Often far more important is the selection of what is and is not mentioned. Cho’s Korean nationality is mentioned, even now, more often than his having grown up in Virginia or his having been angry at “rich kids.” By repeatedly reminding us that he was Korean (which was more of a legal status than a refelction of who he was or where he was from), it gives the impression that an irrelevant factoid is an integral part of the story. That’s misleading and irresponsible.

To use the example I mentioned above as a parallel, when that torso was found in Kabukicho, some facts were mentioned: Yes, a grisly murder had been committed. Yes, a number of foreigners lived in the area. Yes, some old people found that scary. None of that was untrue. Conflating those facts by reporting that a torso was found, then interviewing old people and asking them if the foreigners in the neighborhood scared them was a clear case of bias, clearly implying that a foreigner was responsible. That’s despciable and dishonest. That’s pretty much what’s going on when we hear again and again that Cho was a Korean national. There’s only one reason to keep saying it. The only real question is whether or not it’s intentional.

Again, this was an invective aimed at one segment of one medium: TV news. In no way is it even a criticism, much less a rant against Japanese media in general, far less the entire populace of Japan.