Oakland Shooting coverage... RACIST???

[Animaeish]

Regarding the Oakland shooting, I posted this comment at the website for Los Angeles radio station KFI:

Why did Kennedy feel it necessary to describe the Oakland shooter as an ASIAN man right off the bat? What's the relevance? I never heard any media dare describe the shooter at the Edison power company as a BLACK man. I only found out days later when his photos surfaced. And when shooters like Jared Loughner or the recent Hollywood shooter are reported on their race (White) is NEVER even discussed at all.

So we are left to conclude, concerning racial categories, there are two types of shooters in American media: Asian and NON Asian shooters. The non-Asian shooters are all those whose race isn't discussed up front, and perhaps maybe you learn about it in the follow up biography coverage, if it ever goes that far.

I wanted to know what fellow Asian Americans felt about this sentiment because many of my non-Asian friends think I'm being too sensitive.

[BaiginLong]

Actually...they tend to equivalently describe the ethnicities of suspects and perpetrators on the news; white, black, Asian, or Hispanic.

For example, "the suspect is described as an African American male", "white male", etc. etc. ad nauseum (especially with the majority being male).

You homed in on this a little too hardcore. Trust me when I say that I've been watching and listening to news for ages and this kind of thing isn't limited to when an Asian perpetrates a crime.

[Animaeish]

Actually no. You are describing how the news describes wanted suspects, not people who are dead or in custody. Trust me, I looked it up. I could not find a mention of race for any White or Black mass shooter in any initial reporting, even after they identified the names of the shooters.

The radio show host, Kennedy, went as far as to compare the Oakland shooter to the VA Tech shooter from 2007, just because they were both of Korean decent. I have NEVER heard a similar blanket comparison of any White mass shooters in the last five years, despite their shared ancestries.

I believe a different standard for Asians exists. Whites consider themselves too "normal" to bother mentioning their race for any reason. But Asians are different from their norm so they describe them at will. But the White media is so afraid of pissing off black advocacy groups that they go out of their way to avoid mentioning the race of a Black person involved in any crime.

[sageb1]

When r we going to call Kennedy a racial profiler, and rake him over the coals for the next 6 months?

This shooting though pales before the Zimmerman case.

The shooter in Oakland was pissed off that everyone made fun of his accent and the way he handled himself.

My guess is, this guy was shamed a lot as a kid. Tho, there are similarities to another shooting in the East when that guy shot up some community centre, a Vietnamese or Hmong guy, for similar reasons to the Oakland shooter. This was after Vtech.

I don't believe ANY of the Cho tapes had him complaining about the stuff the Oakland shooter complained about. He was too far gone to actually make it clear that he (Cho) was bullied in HS.

The two older Asian killers, both male, both in Oakland and out east, their upbringing led them to project their shame onto innocent bystanders in spectacular fashions.

In short, then, the problem is not the community or the education institution, it's the way Asian men are raised.

As for Kennedy, he's a racist for calling the shooter an Asian. Notice that I don't even call the Oakland shooter an Asian.

All I did for most of this post is rant about upbringing, which is most of the problem.

If you practise the child abuse of shaming on your kids, then you will reap the rewards accordingly.