In this week’s reading, Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence, written by Darrel Y. Hamamoto, I was repulsed to read some of these different stories. These stories about murder and serial killers were linked to society’s view of white people and people of color. One would think that any kind of killing itself is awful; but when a layer regarding racism is added, the whole story becomes even more horrifying, as we see how our society deals with these situations. For instance, in the section titled Cannibal and Headhunter, describes an incident that occurred between a white man, Jeffrey Dahmer, and a Laotian American teenage boy, Konerak Sinthasomphone. The boy was in the middle of escaping the horrors of Dahmer when police showed up. While Sinthasomphone was trying to get away, Dahmer explained to the police that the two of them had been “having no more than a lover’s quarrel.” In this situation, the police ignored the physical wounds on Sinthasomphone and listened to the white man. This ultimately resulted in the death of Sinthasomphone.
This story just goes to show how blatantly racist some people can be. Even though there were so many signs pointing to help the boy, the police officer disregarded him completely. Biases toward Asians may unfortunately be due to the Vietnam War and/or World War II, in which people were conditioned to see Asians as “the enemy.” However, how is one supposed to be able to differentiate between Asians and Asian Americans just by looks?
Image from University of Southern California Dornsife. Drawing Boundaries Around Who Counts as Asian American
Hamamoto, D.Y. (2003). Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence
Chatterjee, P. and Maira, S. (2014). The Imperial University: Race, War, and the Nation-State.
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