Thursday, October 19, 2017

Week 5 - Chelsea Reyes A02

Chelsea Reyes
Section A02
Week 5
Initially when I first started reading the article by Hamamoto, I was not sure how it had anything to do with the class. The more I read it, the more I realized how some of the killers talked about in this piece would take aim at Asians/Asian Americans, or "yellow" people as they were referred to in the reading. There is a connection to this sort of fetish for Asian American individuals because they are seen as inferior, as referred to during WWII. An example murderer of this sort of instant would be Patrick Purdy, who got onto an elementary school campus in Stockton, CA and killed five children, all of whom happened to be of Asian descent. There is a connection to the war and this crime Purdy committed, because he was a son of a soldier who fought in Vietnam, from which he build up a hatred for Asians who were involved in the war. A more severe case would be Ricardo Munoz, who specifically sought out for yellow people because of the growing obsession that he got from his cousin who did two tours in Vietnam. The cousin showed Munoz a video of a Vietnamese woman who had a gun to her head as she performed sexual actions on him. The thought of being able to control one's life was sexually arousing to Munoz, which was how he chose his victims, who were typically yellow people.
Question: What is it that makes "yellow" individuals one of the main victims for crimes that were described in the reading by Hamamoto? What about them makes them more of a favorable victim than someone of another ethnicity?

References:
Boggs, C. (2013). Masters of War Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire. New York: Taylor and Francis.

Wolf, J. (2016, October 14). [ I-710/60 freeway interchange in Los Angeles]. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from https://a.scpr.org/i/00140ba40c042fbb47aa401277708b71/110244-full.jpg

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