33 people shot to death on a university campus in Virgina.
The BBC news is reporting that every South Korean is feeling
great shame because the gunman was born in Korea. The reporter says that Koreans in the United States are bracing for a "backlash."
When a Korean kills 33 Americans, Koreans are ashamed.
If a Korean kills 33 Koreans, are Koreans just as ashamed?
If an American kills 33 Americans, are Americans ashamed?
What if an American kills 33 Iraqis? Are Americans ashamed?
What if an American drops a bomb on an Iraqi city and the bomb kills 33 Iraqis, or maybe 33,000 Iraqis? Are Koreans ashamed?
What if an American kills everyone at a wedding in Afghanistan?
What if a young man from Michigan kills all the children at a day care center in Oklahoma City? Are Michiganders ashamed?
What if a dozen or more men from Saudi Arabia kill 3000 people in New York City? Are Iraqis ashamed?
What if a man from Texas orders teenagers from Ohio, West Virgina, Mississipi, North Dakota and Florida to kill thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq. Who is ashamed? Are Texans the most ashamed? Should the Dixie Chicks be ashamed?
What if the law did not permit an unbalanced college student to buy a gun that was made to kill human beings in great quantities and at great speed? Would there be any shame in that?
At my daughter's school, the public address system quietly broadcasts the special code words that every adult and child in the school has memorized. At the sound of those words (I can't tell you what they are) the teachers pull down the shades and lock the classroom doors. Then every 5-year-old, every 12-year-old, every Korean-American child, every African-American child, every Christian child, every Muslim child, every soft-cheeked, giggling, fidgeting little boy and girl hides under the trapezoid-shaped tables for the "lock-down" drill. They are learning that they must be prepared for the day that an angry man with a store-bought gun and store-bought ammunition comes into their school to try to kill them, their classmates and their teachers until the gunman himself is shot to death as the surviving children watch.
My God, I am so ashamed.
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1 comment:
some years ago, sometime in the 1990s before my then-boyfriend and i got sober, he was on a subway in new york city, returning from a night of drinking with a friend of his when a group of teenagers boarded the train. they were taunting my then-boyfriend and his friend and calling them gay because 2 men on a subway late at night couldn't possibly be anything but gay, i suppose. anyway, one of the teens was carrying what turned out to be a sharp letter opener and he stabbed my then-boyfriend, who almost died because of complications. the boy who stabbed him turned out to be jewish.
my father was ashamed because my then-friend's attacker was a jew. and i was ashamed of my father for being ashamed of thinking that a jew could not be a kid who stabs people on trains. because anyone can. anyone can.
china
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