Kozo Hattori believes the rampage shooting at UCSB was more than just a hate crime against women, it was also a hate crime against Asian-Americans.
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“Elliot Rodger was a good looking kid” was the first thing I thought while watching his “retribution” video the day after the shooting. How did this good looking kid have a tough time meeting women?
My next thought was “Is he hapa (Hawaiian slang for mixed race, usually Asian and White)?” I did a Google search on his ethnicity or photos of his parents, and at that time nothing came up. Sam Louie at AsAmNews and Joan Walsh at Salon also noticed how the media ignored Rodger’s mixed-heritage. Even in the time since the shooting, articles are still being published that refer to Rodger over and over as a “straight white male.”
When Rodger’s true ethnic identity was revealed, I instantly gained insight into his psyche. You see, I attended UCSB and lived in Isla Vista for almost a decade. During this time, I dated only white women, mostly blonde white women. It wasn’t until I started working on my dissertation about Asian American masculinity that I connected my exclusive desire for white women with self-hatred.
Rodger’s “manifesto” reeks of self-hatred: from his perceptions of Asians as “disgusting”, to an episode of harassing an Asian peer for talking to a white girl, to his desire to dye his hair blonde. What strikes me is that Rodger was never exposed to his Asian identity as something to be proud of. He compares his visit to Malaysia, his mother’s country of birth, as a bit less “strange and foreign” than his trip to Morocco.
On a pick-up artist bashing website (PUAHate.com), Rodger ridiculed an Asian male who wanted to increase his chances with white women: “Full Asian men are disgustingly ugly and white girls would never go for you. You’re just butthurt that you were born as an Asian piece of shit…You’ll never be half-white and you’ll never fulfill your dream of marrying a white woman. I suggest you jump off a bridge.”
When the media printed information about the victims of the shooting, it became clear to me that this was not just a hate crime against women, but also a self-hate crime against Asians. The media tends to refer to victims Hong, Chen, and Wang as roommates who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But in my mind, Rodger was trying to stamp out any Asianess in himself and his world. Rodger viewed his Asian roommates as “repulsive”: “These were the biggest nerds I had ever seen, and they were both very ugly with annoying voices.” He admits that he would “even enjoy stabbing them both to death while they slept.”
In addition, one can see self-hatred in Rodger’s monolithic objects of desire: “white girls are the only girls I’m attracted to, especially blondes.” Minorities who exclusively pursue white lovers can be seen as unconsciously trying to breed the color out of themselves.
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All of this brings us to Tiger Woods, whose Asian identity has also been overlooked by the media. “The first Black golfer to win the Masters” is actually more Asian than he is Black since his mother is Thai and his father had some Chinese blood. Interestingly enough, Tiger’s harem of jilted lovers looks a lot like Rodger’s sexual fantasies.
Although Tiger’s “acting out” at the expense of women is nowhere as heinous as Rodger’s acts of violence, it is still problematic. One has to wonder if Tiger’s apparent desire for only white women, mostly blondes, is also rooted in self-hatred. Woods and Rodger represent some of the problems bi-racial Asian men have fitting into Western social norms of masculinity.
Things get even more interesting if we include full-blooded Asian men in America in this examination. Lisa Hickey, CEO of The Good Men Project, recently published an article that tracks the patterns in mass shootings in America. Hickey argues that in “most cases, the catalyst for the shooting was something that threatened the man’s identity as a man,” and I agree.
…In the last 7 years, close to one quarter of the mass shootings (5 out of 22) have been done by Asian men. This, in a country where Asian men account for less than five percent of the population.
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What most people don’t note, however, is that in the last 7 years, close to one quarter of the mass shootings (5 out of 22) have been committed by Asian men. This, in a country where Asian men account for less than five percent of the population.
This statistic may seem alarming, but it comes as no surprise to anyone aware of Asian American male identity. When news of the Virginia Tech shooting started to leak out, a co-facilitator in an Asian American Pacific Islander empowerment program and I had the same thought: “Please don’t let it be an Asian man.”
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Asian men have historically been emasculated by Western culture. It is no coincidence that early Asian male immigrants were forced to take jobs normally assigned to women: cooking, doing the laundry and housework, etc. Depictions of Asian men range from nerdy to sinister to comical, but usually include an asexual quality.
I have been looking for a positive Asian American male role model since the death of Bruce Lee. Jackie Chan is depicted as more of a clown than a man, even though most of his stunts are nothing but cojones. Tiger Woods is Black. Don’t even get me started on Ken Jeong’s appearances which include the famous small penis scene in The Hangover, and voicing a female character in the animated film Turbo.
If there is any ethnic group in America whose masculinity is under constant attack, it is Asian men. So it seems to me that the disproportionate number of Asian mass shooters in America is not an anomaly.
I recently attended a Conversation on Compassion with Paul Ekman. In this talk, Ekman distinguished two different types of compassion: proximal and distal. Proximal compassion is an emotion based feeling that exists in the present moment. It is compassion to alleviate suffering felt right now. Distal compassion is cognitive and focused on the future—compassion to alleviate suffering in the future. Distal compassion relies on good social forecasting.
Asian American men could use a lot of proximal compassion, especially self-compassion, right now. I can’t help but imagine if something would be different, had Elliot Rodger had been introduced to a practice of cultivating compassion and self-compassion as a youth.
I’d also like to focus some time and energy on distal compassion. What is the forecast for a large group of men whose manhood is already under attack? This is especially relevant considering the glut of desperate Chinese men who will flood the international dating scene due to the one-child rule and a cultural preference for sons combined with illegal sex-selective abortions in China. How can we alleviate the present and future suffering of all the Elliot Rodgers, Tiger Woods, and Seung-Hui Chos in the making?
As the father of two Asian American sons, I am extremely concerned for the future America holds for Asian American men. I have no solutions, but I know that we cannot fix a problem until we recognize that a problem exists.
I think the main problem is that the child doesn’t understand the strength his Asian culture. Especially if the parents are from post English colonial countries, where self hate have already installed, so even their parents will actively spread negativities to them about Main Land China (which is the main power of Chinese culture despite everything that’s happened). Not to mention that especially if you are born in a Western country like America, of course you will want to hang with the considered ethnic majority, which are white people, they themselves have been brainwashed to accept institutional racist ideas, which… Read more »
Great piece. Brings to mind another point, the Chinese immigration laws only allowed men to come, or later it was a negotiated ratio of maybe 15 : 1, men to women allowed entrance. It was common at the time to target nations with these constraints, but never before based on gender, while the workers were wanted for railroad job and such, this was a double punishment Asians got for threatening whites in their minds. The white ideal was perpetuated, thereby, as the white man was a gatekeeper to happiness. So for the first waves were kept separate from (half) their… Read more »
…please delete the first post! Thank you.
I still live in the Bayarea and remain close to Asian cultures. It should be mentioned that Asians have their own issues with being racists also. I have dated Japanese, Chinese, Thai and Pilipino women. In my experience, Chinese and Japanese cultures have a fair amount of racism within them too. So lets not make the mistake that so many make, pretending that because racism is visited upon our culture that racism doesn’t exist in our culture. Again please don’t isolate yourself acting as if racism only happens to Asian men. What has happened to Asian men is directly related… Read more »
Bravo for you to speaking out. The feminists 2ere threatening to hijack this issue for their own political gain. The Asian male masculinity was defined in San Francisco around 1849 with the introduction of Yellow Peril discourse in culture. The gold rush was in full swing and Asians, driven by poverty and bad conditions at home were coming to America’s “Gold Mountain”. to seek their fortunes. White males upset at the competition, banded together to oust the Asian male from the gold fields. Asian men hen turned to doing other work to survive. One of those jobs doing laundry, which… Read more »
Bravo to you my friend for speaking out. I live in the Bayarea where these boys lived. I am a history major and have learned quite a bit about the Asian amer condition. Beyond that, I grew up in the Bay area and went to school with Asians. I also mentor and coach young Asian boys. When this story broke ,I can’t tell you how angry I was at how this story was “stolen” by those who had their own political axe to grind. Feminists took the story and could only or would only see what they wanted. They,.in spite… Read more »
This makes a lot of sense. I’ve heard gay friends express a distaste for dating Asian men because they see them as effeminate. It was a double-whammy on Rodger–as I saw only a couple of news sources point out–because he also got teased for being the smallest guy in his class. He wasn’t seen as masculine both because of his Asian heritage and because of his diminutive size. That’s the frustrating thing about the incident– too many people either write him off as a nutcase just looking for an excuse to go off, or some other pat explanation. It’s an… Read more »
I was in a relationship with an Asian American man when I was in college. He had a “thing” for blonde sorority girl types, which was funny because I was a nerdy brunette and not in a sorority. It actually caused problems in our relationship because I always felt like he wanted a hotter, blonder girlfriend but he had settled for me. I eventually broke up with him when I found out he had sent some love letters to a blonde girl he knew from his freshman dorm (they were friends but she wasn’t interested). He went to medical school… Read more »
Oh don’t worry, you will be getting more big Northerners coming from Main Land China 😛
I’m half Filipino, half Irish / Scottish. I was raised by my Filipino mother. My father died when I was 1 or 23 so I never knew my Irish / Scottish heritage. The main problem I had with my Asian heritage growing up was (white) people picking on me for it. I grew up in a white neighborhood in the most segregated city in the U.S. in the 1970s. My friends, family, and I compensated for the numbers disadvantage by weightlifting and / or taking martial arts. In other words as far as “masculine” was concerned, we had it covered.… Read more »
A lot to digest there; but in a overall sense, I think it speaks to society’s (or a broad portion of society’s) penchant to break down its understanding of power & culpability by the simplest and most visible demographic terms, when it is usually much more complicated & faceted. Power and culpability is not generalizable reliably, and I think this article really underscores that, along with the depths & detriments of stereotypes; in particular, ethnic ones. Also, I’d never come across the proximal and distal descriptions of compassion before either; thank you especially for this new perspective.
This is an interesting take on this. It just goes to show that misogyny, or any other hatred, is not so much about hating the other person, but about having problems with oneself and objectifying other people as “tokens” that will either detract or add to one’s sense of worth. I read another article talking about Elliot Rodger’s manifesto and misogyny had more to do with other men than with women – and that this is the problem: treating other people, in this case women, as objects or status symbols rather than human beings. And I think this is the… Read more »
Couldn’t agree more, Magda. I’m releasing a Raising Compassionate Boys audio series that focuses on treating boys as individuals and humans which, in turn, will teach them to treat others as individuals and humans. This morning I tweeted: “Love doesn’t stereotype. It sees each of us as unique and extraordinary and treats u accordingly.” Your comment reminds me of this humanity and individuality. Thank you for your wisdom and compassion. Kozo
Please do not use the term objectification, it dehumanizes men. It is a made up term to guilt male sexuality.
How so?
Please do not say what women should call their issues. It is a made up bullshit to try to silence women whenever it’s something men do against them.
Interesting piece, Kozo! Two data that may fit somewhere in your thesis: Asian shooter Wayne Ko killed, I believe 7, at Simon’s Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, MA, about 12 or so years ago. He cited some race-related hatred, although I don’t recall if it intimated any self-hatred. And the leading pop culture examples of heroic or virile Asian manhood these days are in sports: notably Ichiro Suzuki in baseball and Jeremy Lin in basketball. And I know it must have been an editor’s mistake that left Jet Li off your list of Asian male badasses (while we’re… Read more »
Thanks, Mike. Never heard about the Wayne Ko incident. I don’t think it is a “mass shooting” because only 2 individuals were killed, but it definitely is part of the picture. I agree with you that Suzuki and Lin are great role models although Suzuki is not Asian American. Jeremy Lin is a Bay Area local, so I’ve been watching him since he was on the Golden State Warriors. Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat, and Ken Watanabe are all Asian, not Asian American–I know Jackie Chan is Asian, but he has a career in America with Rush Hour, The Spy… Read more »
Actually, Wayne *Lo* killed “only” 2 people (injured 4 physically but injured an entire community emotionally). This was 22 years ago today. We now have the unfortunate distinction of sharing the anniversary of our shooting with Sandy Hook, which happened on the 20th anniversary of the shooting at Simon’s Rock. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Lo I attended Simon’s Rock with the first fall class after the shooting. As one of just a handful of Asian American students, I was mortified to learn that one of our own had been responsible for something that at the time was incomprehensible to me. The media did report… Read more »
i agree with pursuit
a very powerful article, and i hope it gets picked up by other news media
Thanks, James. I hope “other media” recognizes the problem, even if they don’t publish this article. Just saw a new shooting took place in Seattle. We really need to focus some compassion on boys these days–proximal and distal. Kozo
Really thought provoking stuff here. Asians, the forgotten minority. May this be the beginning of a lot of understanding coming down the road. Thanks for digging down into this tragedy a bit more. Keep it up GMP and you may become the go to site for the planet.
Thanks, PursuitAce. I have a feeling that this conversation is far from over. I see a lot more “coming down the road.” Unfortunately, much of it is not good which is why I wrote the piece. Thank you for being part of the conversation. Kozo