As Wander's mom once told me, "If they make fun of you again, and ask you if you know karate, just give them a good karate kick to the nuts!"

My wife came home today and asked me a somewhat perplexing question about the tragedy at Virginia Tech yesterday--when is the backlash going to start? Out of all the new information that was disclosed today about who the shooter was--being a loner, seriously depressed and deranged, on the brink of a psychotic break perhaps--what some have focused on was his race.

For an Asian here in the United States, I guess it's only natural to think this way. I hate to admit it, but the thought had crossed my mind, as well. Living in the minority in this country, we can't help but think this way. Life is a constant struggle to measure up to the majority. When we don't, it plays as an example of how we're inferior and perhaps lower-class citizens. And when a minority commits the ultimate act of murder, well, break out the torches and prepare the nooses 'cause it's time for a lynching. When the Japanese invaded at Pearl Harbor, Americans (who happened to be of Japanese descent) were rounded up and placed in internment camps. The acts of a radical group of Middle Eastern terrorists on 9/11 brought a wave of racism that many in this country still struggle with.

Timothy McVeigh kills 168 people in Oklahoma, and the country pointed to his extremist beliefs. At Columbine, it was the proliferation of media violence and suggestive music that was to blame. Charles Whitman and his killing spree from atop the University of Texas tower? Child abuse. Granted, these were acts committed by isolated people not affiliated at all with any larger entity that would pose any continuing threat, but I use them to illustrate the point that we didn't question their racial backgrounds in the aftermath. No one is going to go out and say that Caucasians are dangerous. And I'd hope the American people won't make an issue about Cho Seung-hui's Asian or Korean ethnicity either.

The guy was clearly not psychologically sound based on what little the community knew about him, and perhaps his racial background played a role in pushing him further into an isolated world within himself instead of fully interacting with those around him. I've often felt that sense of isolation at times just from being a minority in this country, and I find myself a bit intrigued by how he fell into this hole of despair. I share some similarities to him, being the first generation of an immigrant family to grow up here in the States and being a bit of a quiet loner (although not quite to his extent). I even noticed that I have the same birthday as him. Yes, it was tough being a kid with immigrant parents who spoke with accents and did things differently than what we saw other "American" families do. It's hard enough to fit in with the peer pressures of childhood and adolescence, and harder still with parents that were trying to fit in themselves. What makes me different? Perhaps I wasn't genetically fated to have the extreme psychiatric issues he may have had. I don't know. What I do know, though, is that I grew up with a close group of friends that never made race an issue. I was raised in perhaps one of the more racist areas of the country, and at times I think it was just by the pure grace of God that I met friends like the Kool-Aid Gang of this blog.

So when my wife asks me if there's going to be a backlash, I really hope that there isn't. There's certainly other minorities in this country dealing with the same issues as this guy who perhaps are sitting on that tipping point between a decent life and a tragic one. If we can learn anything from history or even this horrific event, it's that racism only fuels more disaster.