Insightful Observations

Stories I liked today, via Racialicious:

Let It Be Some 'Other' Asian, by Andrew Lam, New American Media.

All across America, no doubt, non-Korean Asian-Americans are now heaving a sigh of relief. “Asian,” after all, was the four-alarm-fire word we saw throughout the day after the shootings that took the lives of 33 people at Virginia Tech. The shooter was “Asian,” the news reports said. But who was this “Asian” exactly?

Before the news identified the killer as Cho Seung-hui, a 23-year-old English major from South Korea, all ethnic backgrounds were up for grabs. A Chinese friend from a small college town on the East Coast called to say: “Please, please let it be some other Asian. We’ll be in deep if it’s Chinese.”...

Covering Tragedy: Emerging lessons from the Virginia Tech Killings, by Kim Pearson, blogher.

3. Be careful about the "myths" that can become part of the narrative in a story like this one. Dave Cullen, a Dart Center Fellow, covered the 1999 Columbine shootings, and found that "nearly everything we know about it is wrong."...

...5.Try to stay independent of others' political, and personal agendas. Bernie at PopPolitics worries that the Jack Thompsons in this story will sway the debate away from the issue of guns in favor of scapegoating popular culture....

...7. Watch out for the rumor patrol. Joy Reid says the conspiracy theories are already circulating. Check out Snopes.com or other Urban Legends sites before passing along rumors. We've already seen how quickly speculation and rumor becomes news: remember those initial reports that the shooter was a Chinese graduate student? Don't be surprise if other "facts" from the early reporting in this story also turn out to be wrong.

8. Be thoughtful about stereotypes. When the initial reporting identified the suspect as an "Asian male," the Asian American Journalists Association felt compelled to remind journalists of the rule that race should only be included in a news story when it is clearly relevant...