Link roundup

[oyceter]

1. octopedingenue has already mentioned it, but Shojo Beat will be publishing an excerpt of Tezuka's Ribon no Kishi. Whoo! Must remember to buy that issue. Also, for anyone interested and in the area, the article also mentions:
   

   The 25-page excerpt in Shojo Beat will allow readers to see the roots of modern manga, and its appearance coincides with a major exhibit of Tezuka's work at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco that will open this summer. (emphasis added)

   
   
   EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! MUST GO SEE!



2. I haven't been blogging about the Don Imus or read up on the mainstream media reports, but other people are. ap_racism has got a Tim Wise article on the media backlash, and Claire Light has break down of all the wrongness in the responses.



3. I also haven't commented on the Virginia Tech shootings or read up on most of the mainstream media reports. First of all, it is a horrible, horrible thing, and my sympathies go out to the survivors and all the families. Secondly, I share hesychasm's unease in bringing race into this, but as it seems to be getting dragged in anyway, here are some bits of commentary from the Asian-American sphere, most of whom are, like me, afraid of backlash. Hyphen Blog has a collection of links. Claire Light's also got a reaction, particularly on Cho's background as a 1.5 generation Asian.
   
   Again, this is not to gloss over the awfulness of what happened, but just... Damnit. Why can't I be allowed to mourn like everyone else and instead have to fear what's going to be in the media next about Asian-Americans and Asian immigrants and third-culture kids?

Comments

[rilina.livejournal.com]

I echo your unease. This whole tragedy is so not about us, but when people make it about us, there's this urge to say, "Well, no, that's not right."

My mother called me last night to ask what the atmosphere is like on my campus, because she was worried about me. She told me to "lay low." I am fine, of course.

I am avoiding comment threads at major news outlets to keep my head from exploding.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I am trying to keep my head unexploded as well.

And just... damnit. I particularly agree with the fact that this shouldn't be about us or about Koreans or Korean-Americans or Korean immigrants, but since people are already starting to make it about that, what can you do?

[rilina.livejournal.com]

So far, the mainstream coverage that I've read today has been less insistent on mentioning the shooter's ethnicity or immigration status than it was yesterday. I would like to think that some people somewhere started thinking about the implications of what they were writing.

[oyceter]

Yeah, it seems to have died down now (at least on CNN and the NYtimes), thank goodness.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

The only way in which his race is relevant is that, unlike almost all spree killers, he wasn't white. Which is interesting as a side note, but when are we going to get the headline "WHITE MALE STRIKES AGAIN?"

[oyceter]

I know!

Thankfully, it does feel less concentrated on the "OMG! Asian!" bit now, though I am saying this only after reading NYTimes and CNN.

[cofax7]

I'm not you, of course, but I'm beginning to see more of a focus on his medical/psychological background than his ethnicity. The fact that he stopped to mail a package to NBC between the first set of killings and the second has pretty much blown all the other speculation out of the water.

FWIW: I think the biggest story here is going to be how someone who is so supremely fucked up could slide through the system like that and nobody did anything to help him. And then universities are going to start requiring students with mental health issues to either get treatment or withdraw, and won't that be a fun argument?

[oyceter]

That does seem to be where the story is heading now, at least from the few articles I've read today. It sounds awful to be relieved, because it's not as though the argument about mental health and treatment is going to be fun. Sigh. Lots of tangled stuff ahead.

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

I'm a horrible person or something because I couldn't bring myself to care about the Virginia Tech shootings as much as I've seen other people clearly do, aside from the university connection. But today, as soon as I saw the shooter's photograph on a national newspaper and a news report, I knew this was going to hit the fan. Instead of 'nerdy quiet boy is frustrated in love and goes on killing spree' to 'nerdy ASIAN boy can't get any and goes on killing spree'.

Of course cultural background is the explanation for everything these coloured folks do. They're not real individuals.

[minim_calibre]

Re: 2. Thanks for the links. I was starting to feel like I woke up in bizarro land, because for every one sensible comment I saw anywhere on this Imus thing, I'd see about 25 frothing mad white boys complaining about censorship and reverse racism while blaming rappers, reverends, and Al Roker.

Re: 3. I am so angry at the way the mainstream media focused on his race and nationality that it's taken me three tries just to write this. I think I'm actually (and this takes a lot of rage) write and complain.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

I'm freaking out in a totally different way, in that because of the nature of my job, I could very easily be in Lucinda Roy's position, and that's making me feel really sick to my stomach.

My Asian students pointed out that he was an English major

[mouseworks.livejournal.com]

I think it's more going to be a problem for kids who want to be writers and who have problems that aren't severe. Because they're kid writers and a bit intense, they're going to have people treat the wanting to write as a dangerous problem.

He's not a representative of Asians, but of mad wannabee writers, along with John Hinckley (mad would-be journalist).

[jinian.livejournal.com]

ZOMG TEZUKA I AM SO COMING TO VISIT

(Ignoring badness until I have more brain sorry.)

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I was about to say that the race/nationality issue had died down, until about an hour ago when somebody at the NYT started seeing similarities between the dead guy's home video and some Korean horror film. Because a guy brandishing a hammer never happens in American horror films or something?

I think I am sheltered by only watching ABC news, because Charlie Gibson is the buttoned-down, "please don't emote all over me" type. I tend to think that nonstop-news and OTT emotive speculation are much more prone to the blurty racist remark or the unexamined racist assumption, which is why I don't watch nonstop news.

[octopedingenue]

As an English major who got to hear the "OMG he was an ENGLISH MAJOR and his writing online had VIOLENCE in it" spiel yesterday, I'm...hoping(?) he'll end up a cautionary tale against English majors instead of Asians. Or something. Sigh. Lalala avoiding TV news and rereading depressing articles about the UT shootings, go Texas, you're outnumbered in bodycount now...

I should totally find some excuse to come stalk San Francisco this summer.

[chomiji]

Re point 3 - I find myself wondering whether some of the media overload on the VA Tech shooting has to do with the fact that many people here in the Washington DC area have friends or relatives who went to VA Tech (just for example, one of my sisters-in-law got her Master's there), and then all the major news media outlets have reporters here, so those reporters are hearing a lot of interest and concern about the topic, and are perhaps making some incorrect assumptions about how important it would be to the rest of the world.

Most of the emphasis in this area seems to be on how unstable the gunman was, and whether anything could/should have been done to head this off, given how troubled he clearly was.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I swiftly went into avoidance mode on the VT event, after eating dinner that night in a place blasting CNN (I should've left, but I was hungry, and bits kept getting through my concentration on my book). But before I started avoidance mode, the first thing that wigged me was when the shooter was identified as "Asian," and I immediately feared long ranting misconceptions of the "Asians are good students" variety mixed with "Yellow Terror," before I heard "he was on anti-depressants" and my mind exploded that way, too. I tried writing a post this morning and it was just overwrought, and I had to go with something else.

But ZOMG Tezuka exhibit!!!