Virginia Tech Reaction Part Two

This is going to ramble.

A while back, when I was in college, several of my friends were murdered. I wasn't extremely close to the victims; I had met one of them a few times, the others were people I hung out with at parties and shows. They were at my house the night before, and I could easily have been with them the night they died.

The killer was insane and it was theorized he had killed before, in his home state. He also wasn't white and he didn't "fit the profile" for being a serial killer. He didn't get the death penalty but he'll be in prison for the rest of his life.

The aftermath was horrible. There was exploitative media coverage and even a disgusting "blame the victim" element (I just saw that some piece of scum already took that low road with the VA Tech massacre). So above all, I really feel despair and empathy for the friends and families of the victims, and all the people at the university who are thinking "That could have been me. Why wasn't it me? It's not that I'm better, and they were worse. It could have been me."

Second, I'm getting really angry that scum like that blame-the-victims John Derbyshire guy are using this for self-promotion. Since he thinks a .22 is such an easy weapon that should have been overcome, he should try holding a press conference and shooting himself in the chest with one as a demonstration. One problem with .22 bullets is that they're so light, they ricochet off bones and tear through internal organs in multiple paths, and unfortunately I've heard of this because another of my friends was shot with one in a failed mugging (he lived and is fine).

Third, I'm nervous. I don't think there's going to be a huge backlash against East Asians. Still, anxiety was among my initial reactions on learning the shooter was a 1.5-generation Korean-American. Next, I'm angry at people who try to dismiss that reaction and say it's invalid. I was reading a Salon.com article about Asians leaving campus because they're nervous about a backlash, and a large number of commenters are accusing the writer AND the Asians of racism! Damn. If I was on that campus, I'd have the attitude "better safe than sorry" and want to keep my head down too. The attitude "don't talk about racism because if you do, you're racist" is infuriating. Partly because of the perpetual foreigner stereotype, all Asians are often lumped in with the actions of an Asian individual. People have been killed over less. In the 1980s, Chinese-American Vincent Chin was murdered by racists who were angry at Japanese companies taking their jobs. After 9/11, Sikhs were attacked. There's a pattern here, people. Now, I think most Americans are not going to blame Koreans and East Asians, but it's the minority that worry me, the ones that are looking for an excuse.

Finally, it makes me think about mental illness.

The last anecdote I have is from last year. The main reason we moved from our old apartment to our current little brick house is because of a young schizophrenic man who lived upstairs. Again, he didn't "fit the profile".

According to some basic things I've looked up, schizophrenics are not especially violent. Even those who hear voices saying things like "kill the postman" will tend to react: "I couldn't do that, killing is wrong, I like the postman, I'll try not to pay attention to that particular voice in my head". When their inhibitions against violence are lowered by certain drugs and alcohol is when the real danger begins. The schizophrenic who lived upstairs went through bottles of whiskey every day.

He was getting pretty bad. One day when he saw my husband was gone he knocked at my door and kept saying "let me in, I want to f**k you". I called the police, but they wouldn't arrest him. Later that day, he stabbed himself, went to a liquor store, blamed his roommate for stabbing him then ran off into the night. Together with his roommate I got him committed. This is actually not particularly difficult. It just means if the police apprehended him, he would be given a 48-hour observation at a mental health facility. He came back the next day and was apprehended. We moved out soon after that. I hope he's improved now, and nonviolent, but now that I'm cast as one of the characters in the insane narrative he constructed, I don't want to be around if he relapses and tries to pick up the story again.

I'll be watching the coverage closely for the mental health dimensions of this case.