Cultural Misfits and the Language of the Gun
New America Media, Commentary, Andrew Lam, Posted: Apr 08, 2009
Editor's Note: It's hard to find a cultural explanation as to why Cho Sung-hui, the Virginia Tech shooter, or Jiverly Linh Phat Wong, the Binghamton killer, did what they did. But both immigrants chose to empower themselves, if only for a brief while, with the language of guns, writes NAM editor Andrew Lam. He's the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora.
Whenever a minority commits a heinous crime, it seems to beckon us in the media to search beyond an individual motive for a cultural one. We saw it in the case of Cho Sung-hui of Virginia tech, and now, in the latest case involving Jiverly Linh Phat Wong -- (or Voong). He blocked the back exit of a civic community center in Binghamton, N.Y., where immigrants had gathered to learn English and shot 13 people to death before killing himself.
It is a habit of “finding the ethnic angle” that is endemic in the work of American journalists in an age of cultural diversity, and in order to sound credible, we often ask so-called experts to give their insights.
Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University and an expert on mass murderers, offered his take. "He was going to take his life, but first he was going to get even," Levin said the day after the Binghamton incident. "He was going to get sweet revenge against the other immigrants who had looked down upon him, among whom he had lost face. To him, that was an extremely important thing."
The keywords here are “revenge” and “lose face.” Those are the popular terms we in the media like to throw around when we think of the inscrutable Asians. To use them well is to impress the Early Show, whose anchors were easily impressed.
But revenge sounds a bit like a “martial arts movie” motive that hasn’t panned out. Shame is part of the equation, surely, but it doesn’t explain enough. Every day around the world, millions of Asians “lose face,” as it were. But they don’t turn into lunatics and kill innocent people. Besides, the extreme outcome of shame in East Asia, most pronounced in Japan and increasingly in South Korea, is suicide, not genocide. Shame is not always a bad thing. In Confucian-bound societies, shame motivates students and workers to improve their lot, and to keep society bound to a fixed moral standard.
Yet, how do we explain the actions of Cho, the 23-year-old English major, who killed 33 people, and Wong (or Voong) who killed 14, before taking their own lives? How to get inside the head of someone whose rambling letter mailed to a local TV station before his blazing murder-suicide bid is now giving psychologists a field day? The media now brand him as “depressed,” a “loner” and “delusional.”
Perhaps there’s another way to understand him, one that is somewhere between culture and psychology.
The opposite of a cosmopolitan has always seemed to me a kind of aphonic drifter. While he may move from one civilization to the next, he is disconnected to both. The successful border crosser is blessed with the power of metamorphosis and the gift of articulation. His counterpart, alas, finds himself tongue-tied and trapped in a defective chrysalis, unable to, but deeply desiring, change.
What keeps him from that covetous transformation is language, the loose tongue, that cunning go-between ability to slide between worlds. Cho spoke with a speech impediment that made him a pariah while in school. Wong, though having renamed himself and passed the U.S. citizenship test, was nevertheless defeated by the English language. He was reportedly “frustrated” by his inability to speak English despite two decades in America, and became, as his ex-co-workers described him, “quiet.”
A day after the Binghamton incident, a Vietnamese American blogged in his native tongue on the language issue, while sympathizing with the shooter. “America is a country full of foreigners, but what [distinguishes] 'natives' from 'immigrants' is an ability to speak English well. English for the Vietnamese overseas can be an issue of survival, and sometimes it’s an issue of life and death, as in the tragedy we just witnessed. I am not trying to defend Wong’s crimes... But I think I understand how humiliating it is to not be able to speak English in America.”
Shame, indeed, binds the tongue. Thus, while the successful border crosser uses language to overcome shame by refusing silence, while he finds ways to articulate his shame until he rearranges it and redefines himself, his counterpart remains retiring, finding no articulate way to transform himself in the new world.
If the Asian shame-based culture is still prominent, keeping its citizens in line and well behaved, it is the gun culture in America that is most conspicuous. It is there on TV and video games and the Internet and the silver screen, and it is the most accessible language for the tongue-tied. For them the gun –- be it in video games or at the practicing range -- speaks volumes.
Cho posted a video before his killing spree and his speech was largely incomprehensible, but what screamed out were the guns he displayed. They were his language.
Wong went to the firing range every Saturday, newspapers reported. It is there that he was most articulate.
So many famous immigrants have entered America’s public space through their power of language -- be it men or women of letters, like Ha Jin or Salman Rushdie, or musicians like Yo Yo Ma and Lang Lang. But there is another way to enter America’s consciousness –- through acts of violence -- and become infamous.
For some who feel powerlessness and marginalized but desiring change, the gun can be seductive. It provides power. It speaks in a language everybody understands. It speaks across color lines. It opens doors for the invisible into the public space.
Unfortunately, it is the language of annihilation and not creation. It speaks up once or twice, but often the user succumbs to his curse: that of silence.
Listen to Andrew Lam's radio commentary:
MP3
Related Articles:
Murder-Suicide in Suburbia: Wake-Up Call for Indian Americans
The Dark Twin of Our American Dream
Ten Minutes of Fame
Let it be Some Other 'Asian'
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User Comments
Kris on Apr 18, 2009 at 10:25:07 said:
Guns Don't Kill People! It's People WHo buy Guns and Use them to Kill other People. If they don't have money or credit cardds they can't buy guns to kill people. If they don't have fingers they can't shoot. So money kill people. And fingers - mostly indexes.
Or something like that. But Not -I repeat - never - never - the guns. Nope. Devoted NRA fan.
Hajira Hameeduddin on Apr 15, 2009 at 06:55:17 said:
Thank you for a thoughtful and articulate article; it has shed light on subtle points that make a big difference.
MaryJ on Apr 13, 2009 at 11:04:32 said:
The failure is not the US "gun culture", the failure is the US immigration system which should have kept a mentally disturbed person like Mr. Wong out of our country in the first place. When I was a child, the safety of American citizens came first, and "immigrants" with mental problems were not an issue. The only thing this country owed Mr. Wong was a ticket back to his native land; we are not responsible for his inability to assimilate into our culture.
Jerom on Apr 10, 2009 at 23:31:55 said:
This afternoon, I thought of writing a letter pointing out that every gunman responsible for his share of the last month’s carnage, had the legal right to own a gun. The officers killed in Pittsburg? Their shooter was a registered gun owner. The eight killed at a nursing home in North Carolina, he owned his gun legally. The family of five killed in Washington, the ten in Alabama, the shooters were all signed off as responsible citizens with full rights to their firearm.
But we’ve all heard the comebacks: guns don’t kill people, people do. If someone set someone else on fire with gasoline, do you outlaw gasoline? I thought, yah, enough of that debate. It never goes anywhere.
However, in hours while I sat drumming my fingers in contemplation, a gunman opened fire at a church camp in California, killing one and wounding four, and Alabama man shot and killed himself and his family of five, just days before his divorce hearing. And minutes later, as if not to be outdone, a Florida woman at a shooting range shot her son at close range, then turned the gun on herself. Yes, that last one is on video, calling to mind the latest of M. Night Shylman’s really bad movies.
Each of these massacres actually creates more support for guns in the home, guns in the glove compartment, guns in the teacher’s desk. The idea is that if only one of those convalescent hospital employees or immigration center teachers had thought to bring their AK-47 to work with them, then the crazy shooter would have been dead after a round or two.
Which raises the question: Who are the crazy shooters? Well, those other people. Not the good gun owners. The crazy shooters are those that have trouble controlling their impulses, who wake up feeling that they have nothing to live for, who come home from work in a rage, and decide to make others as miserable as they are. You know, those misfits have a fight with their boss and wish they could do something about it once and for all.
Funny thing. I feel that way about twice a week. When that happens, I reach for my….video games, punching bag, gym membership card. No guns. I’m one of those increasingly rare people who realize that access to a firearm can only lead to trouble.
NhuM on Apr 10, 2009 at 09:18:38 said:
The problem is really that crazy people have access to guns in America -- no matter what ethnic persuasion they are. If this guy had run amok in VN, chances are that it would have
been with a machete or knife and not a lethal weapon.
Dzung Vo on Apr 09, 2009 at 22:42:08 said:
Why does the media need to search for a cultural angle when a so-called minority commits a crime, but not when a White person commits a crime? When a White person commits a crime, why doesn't the media examine the violence and pathology that exists within White American culture?
Isn't that an example of racial bias within the media, to pathologize the cultures of people of color, without critically examining the dominant culture as well?
Jane on Apr 09, 2009 at 10:40:26 said:
Your article on the language challenges of the two men involved in the recent shootings was very powerful, and could provide both the media and the public with a way to better understand -- and possibly prevent -- such incidents in the future.
Jinl on Apr 09, 2009 at 06:59:50 said:
Very insightful article. One thing I'd like to point out is that it'll also always be a gender issue also. Maybe females are more quiet about it? or they have found solutions for it. Maybe the solution has found them. Would make another great article too.
culturepress on Apr 08, 2009 at 21:09:44 said:
I was just having a conversation with a close friend the other day about the Asian immigrant experience, and the culture of shame which many second-generation Asian-Americans find themselves struggling with or against, as we assimilate and attempt to find a place in Western society... This commentary delves briefly into the psychologies involved when a culture of shame meets American gun culture.
andytad on Apr 08, 2009 at 19:22:42 said:
"While he may move from one civilization to the next, he is disconnected to both."
An excellent point. That's not uncommon as some may feel they belong neither here nor there. So one needs to think about it before the journey. I do enjoy the article.
MC Blakeman on Apr 08, 2009 at 11:46:28 said:
Outstanding, Andrew!
Your insights are enlightening and the writing is superb.
MC
pen on Apr 08, 2009 at 11:03:11 said:
"If the Asian shame-based culture is still prominent, keeping its citizens in line and well behaved, it is the gun culture in America that is most conspicuous."
It's very important for people to realize that these shootings have occurred in the United States, stressing the fact that this type of violence does not occur in the same fashion or frequency in the shooter's country of ancestral origin.
newageblues on Apr 08, 2009 at 05:04:24 said:
Any chance of taking that picture of Cho down? It's sickening to look at.
-->But maybe that's the point. Change won't come from looking away.