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Thursday, April 26, 2007
Burden of collective guilt much too heavy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When news broke about the Virginia Tech shooting, Kay Kim hoped for one thing.
“The moment I heard about it, I said, ‘I hope he’s not Korean,’” said Kim, a prominent Realtor whose face adorns a billboard off I-85.
“That would be real bad.”
She, like us, would eventually learn the identity of the student who killed 32 Virginia Tech students and faculty members before committing suicide. Cho Seung-Hui . A Korean national.
Kim’s heart dropped.
“Even if we didn’t do it, we feel like we did it,” she told me Wednesday as we ate at Sydney’s International Seafood and Grill in Duluth. “It’s part of our culture to feel like we’re sort of responsible.”
Korean-Americans issued apologies to society and expressed sorrow in the aftermath of the massacre. The Korean American Association of Atlanta raised money for victims’ families.
In South Korea, the office of President Roh Moo-hyun released a statement that offered condolences to the American people and expressed the president’s wish that the “enormously saddened Korean-American community, along with all American citizens, would be able to wisely cope with the staggering trauma.”
Kim told me that if the South Korean government had not reached out to the American people, Korean-American communities nationwide would have encouraged it to do so. Very noble.
Back in the day, I used to be ashamed when a black person committed a heinous crime. A TV promotion would preview the incident. Like Kim, I’d utter a similar phrase.
“Hope he’s not one of us.”
About 20 years ago, I decided this collective guilt thing was too big of a cross to bear just because of a shared skin tone. It’s demoralizing, demeaning, an insult to me, the person, the individual, and it gets me no higher rank on society’s shaky scale of acceptance, likability and tolerance.
It took a while, but I let it go.
Why should I lament any more than a nonwhite because “Tyrone” shot somebody or carjacked someone? I’m not Tyrone. I didn’t pull the trigger. Didn’t steal the car, either.
Sure, he may be one of “us,” if you want to talk color.
But he’s not me.
If someone feels compelled to treat me unfairly, to look at me askance or suspect because of what Tyrone did, because of the skin I’m in, so be it. If someone wants to put me in a box, treat me differently, less humanely, cool.
Your loss. Not mine.
Tell me if I’m wrong. My sense is that this idea of collective guilt is practiced primarily in minority cultures. I’ve never heard a white person say that they were ashamed because another white person went on a killing spree. They might express sorrow, but skin tone doesn’t enter the equation.
On the other hand, I’ve talked to many Hispanics who express sentiments of shame, regret and responsibility — oneness — when a major crime story breaks that involves a brown-skinned person. Ditto with people from India.
And now we have the Koreans.
Well, I say let it go.
The Virginia Tech shootings weren’t about Korean-Americans as a group. It wasn’t about business owners like Kim, who has specialized in the reselling of homes for two decades. It was about a sick individual who happens to be Korean-American.
And Kim and the thousands of other Korean-Americans who live and work in Gwinnett had zilch to do with it.
• Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875 or e-mail rbadie@ajc.com.
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